1907 BC ad in Chinook Jargon: Chechacos and hyas snow and failed exocentric phrases!
We’ve seen a number of ads that used Chinook Jargon.
Image credit: Redbubble
Also advertisements 🙂
Here’s more, thanks to our reader Alex Code.
CHECHACOS and HYAS SNOW
(Newcomer) (Newcomers)Will serve their own best interests by looking over the stock and get-
ting prices from Lee’s Furniture Emporium and the large shipment
of Oilcloth and linoleum just received. Buy now and get first choice.A splendid line of Carpets and Carpet Squares Hall Curtains and
Carpet Squares; Rugs of all kinds.Hall Curtains, Linen Crumb Cloths, Etc.
John A. Lee’s Furniture Emporium
— from the New Westminster (BC) Daily News of May 8, 1907, page 5, column 4
Comment: Everybody knows the term chechaco, now usually spelled cheechako in English. (Chhi-chako in our BC Jargon teaching.) It means “newcomer”, “greenhorn”, “johnny come lately”.
Hyas snow is an odd thing. It’s haiyas sno “big snow”. Huh. In the setting of this ad, I’d expect hiyu snow (haiyoo sno), “many winters, many years”, as a proposed opposite of a newcomer.
Hiyu sno would still be an oddity, because it would be an “exocentric” phrase — one that doesn’t say out loud who or what “has many winters”. If you’ll excuse my Spokane French, it’s the same kind of thing as calling someone a “poophead”, because you’re not saying any words that specify whose head is poopy.
Exocentric expressions are pretty rare in Chinuk Wawa, and the language is resistant to creating new ones.
Keeping it real for a sec: I realize the shopkeeper, or the person who created their ad for them, might have just gotten absent-minded, and accidentally repeated chechaco…
