Roy I Rochon Wilson’s Chinook Jargon (Cowlitz Tribe): an opportunity
My comment on Roy I. Rochon Wilson’s (1927-2025) Chinuk Wawa:
Image credit: egreenway.com
If you don’t participate in a community of speakers of an essentially unwritten language, you won’t be speaking it in an understandable way.
I own a copy of Wilson’s book of the Gospel of John.
(this image from it is courtesy of Alex Code)
I find his Chinook Jargon incredibly hard to understand — despite my 30 years of work speaking it, and having my PhD in Linguistics on it.
There is a simple reason.
Wilson “translated” from an English-language edition of the Christian Bible in the following way:
He looked up each word of the English, one after the other, and simply strung together the Chinook words that he amassed.
(More or less the same way people come up with “your name in Ancient Egyptian” or “Chinese” tattoos.)
That’s not how you talk any language on Earth.
Really shame that. (This is me pulling the reverse, doing a literal word-by-word translation from Chinook into English, with an inadequate outcome, trying to express:) That’s a shame.
I believe Wilson may have grown up hearing some Central-Dialect Jargon, an incredibly vital and important language for his people, the Cowlitz Tribe.
And he did many incomparably great things for the tribe.
But I wish I and other speakers of fluent Chinuk Wawa had been able to hang around with him while he was alive…
It would have been wonderful to witness the potential results of an encounter between his deep and lively mind and a strong grasp of this language.
Thinking optimistically: Roy Wilson laid the groundwork for a truly great restoration of an overlooked dialect of Chinuk Wawa to the Cowlitz Tribe —
— who used to speak it so much, it was even the language of their business meetings!
I met Roy once. There is an extended sketch of his life, along with meditations on his importance and influence in his Cowlitz Tribe, in Christine Dupres’s book Being Cowlitz (U of Washington Press, 2014). On pp 110-111 Roy is quoted talking about hearing the tribe’s many languages while growing up (along with many other Cowlitz families, his relocated to Yakama Res. in the early 20th c). Joe Peter, from whom Harrington’s kid assistant J. P. Marr recorded 10 hours of Chinuk Wawa (on the mistaken impression that he was hearing Chinookan!), is mentioned: “We hand many languages [and] in the early days of my life I heard more Indian than English. . . . You knew what they were talking about, but not what they were saying, so you got one of the elders, like Mary Kiona, to talk to you . . . or Joe Peters [sic] would be an intermediary.”
Much appreciated, Henry!
Thank You for an incredibly honest and correct review of Grandfather Roy’s attempt to translate the Bible into Chinook. Duane Pasco said the same to me about Grandfather’s attempt to translate the Bible.
Grandfather was my dear friend and mentor for nearly 25 years. To his credit he never claimed to be a fluent speaker. He told us about attending the yearly tribal meetings of the Cowlitz and that three separate languages were spoken by the Cowlitz people. For that reason, the meetings were held in Chinook Jargon. Grandfather did not want to see the language lost so he gathered together 23 different books and dictionaries and compiled them into CHINOOK WAWA. I am amazed at the job he did when you consider he typed with two fingers. It was a labor of Love.
Thank You for the incredibly honest and correct review of Grandfather Roy’s attempt to translate the Bible. Grandfather gave Duane Pasco a copy of the Book of John and Duane told me it didn’t make sense.
Grandfather Roy Wilson was my friend and mentor for nearly 25 years. To his credit he never claimed to be a fluent speaker. He told us that when he was a child, he was present at the yearly gathering of the Cowlitz tribe. The Cowlitz spoke 3 separate languages, so the meetings were held in Chinook Jargon. Grandfather did not want to see the language disappear, so he created a Chinook Jargon dictionary from 23 books and dictionaries.
Creating the dictionary, CHINOOK WAWA, was quite a feat considering he typed with two fingers. It was definitely a labor of Love. When he was done with the dictionary, he started holding classes at St. Mary’s (the Cowlitz Mission) in Toledo, WA. I attended the first class and then brought what I learned back to the Seattle area to teach what I had learned that week. Grandfather learned along with us and if we got in a pinch we would ask Duane Pasco for advice.
hayu masi, Laura! Your experience is so valuable to hear about, and helps me understand things better. — Dave Robertson