Planning: The Great Chinook Jargon dictionary (1st note)

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In honour of the 15th anniversary of this website of mine today, let’s plan ahead!I’ve spoken for years about the need to gather all of the uncommonly ample data (by pidgin/creole language standards) on Chinuk Wawa into a single GREAT CHINOOK JARGON DICTIONARY.

Image credit: We’re Parents

Might be a project that’s tailor-made for crowdsourced work!

Now, some notes, beyond saying that nearly all existing published dictionaries of CJ are now copyright-free and should be folded in…

The Southern Dialect already has a phenomenal dictionary, the 2012 Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon “Chinuk Wawa: As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak It”. I would expect community skepticism from that quarter about being folded into a larger project. But one can still cross-reference to it.

The Central (i.e. Columbia River-centric) and Northern (i.e. BC & WA/AK) Dialects have no published dictionaries yet. Interim steps might be to create one for each.

A Central Dialect dictionary is easy enough to define the scope of. It will include

  • all pre-1855 Chinook Jargon, therefore every reference based on that earlier data:
    • James G Swan,
    • George Gibbs,
    • Horatio Hale,
    • John Ball,
    • John F Noble,
    • Granville Stuart,
    • Francois-Norbert Blanchet,
    • Modeste Demers,
    • the Flumgudgeon Gazette,
    • the Lewis & Clark journals,
    • Gabriel Franchere,
    • Alexander Ross,
    • Alfred Seton,
    • the Fort Astoria journals,
    • Fort Vancouver journals, et al.
  • And quite a lot of post-1855 data
    • from Louis-Napoleon St Onge,
    • the great Joe Peter of the Cowlitz Tribe,
    • and the Shoalwater Bay speakers interviewed by JP Harrington.
  • I also consider it crucial to include the Jargon words and phrases that got borrowed (and calqued) into Indigenous languages of the area:
    • Lower Chinookan,
    • Lower Chehalis,
    • Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie Athabaskan,
    • Cowlitz,
    • K’alapuyan,
    • and so on.

A Northern Dialect dictionary also has clear boundaries that are similar to the above. But there’s even more material to put into it, thanks to the BC Chinook-Peipa literacy of the 1890s to 1920s, not to mention other letters written by Indigenous people in BC & WA.

𛰅𛱁‌𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆‌𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙‌𛰃𛱄𛰙? qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? Qu’en penses-tu?
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?

Hey! Teach Yourself northern-dialect Chinook Jargon!

And join free Zoom sessions…currently Sundays @ 9AM!

Contact me for the Zoom link.

HIRE A LINGUIST! (me)

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