Alphabetical order in Chinuk-Pipa a.k.a. Chinook-Peipa

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When you’ve been researching a subject for 30 years, there will be topics that you thought you had already told people about. But haven’t.

David Corbett’s truly great talk at this last weekend’s 2026 Chinook Jargon Gathering at PoCo Heritage, in Port Coquitlam BC, raised this to my consciousness.

Just now I did a search in this website on “alphabetical order”, and found zippo about it.

So, for this historic and now endangered alphabet of squiggles that was used to write down approximately 1 million words of Chinuk Wawa (for real), how would we alphabetize all those words into a usable dictionary?

Which indeed is a giant project that I intend to accomplish.

There exist, it turns out, a number of answers.

1. English alphabetical order:

A. Brainless

What I did to make a smaller dictionary out of the Indigenous-written letters used in my dissertation was to follow English in alphabetizing my transcriptions. So the “shorthand” (Chinook-Peipa) letter that I transcribe into English-style letters as a comes first, then the shorthand letter that I represent as b, and so forth. Easy peasy, and highly usable by those literate in English, which is the main constituency of Jargon learners and talkers.

B. Overthinking…

Kamloops Wawa issues exist that tell us the names of the Chinook-Peipa letters. It says they’re the same as the English-language letter names. However, we hardly ever see that newspaper’s editor JMR Le Jeune alphabetizing stuff in any noticeable way. Wonder if he had something else on his mind? Read on!

2. Chinook-Peipa’s own alphabetical order

Above: an implicit alphabetical order FWIW
(image credit: Reddit)

In my work on original documents written by Le Jeune, I see that he made lots of lists. A methodical person. For rather a while, I wondered how on earth he was organizing something like a list of 200 people’s names. Then the rhyme and reason struck me, and it’s a highly logical if weird system. The order is (in one list I’m looking at):

  • A
  • O
  • U
  • I
  • WI
  • H
  • B / P
  • F / V
  • T / D
  • G / K
  • L /R
  • SH
  • S
  • N
  • M

Do you see it yet?

This is not one of those “lateral thinking” problems. That wouldn’t be fair — unless you already know Chinook-Peipa. Readers of it will be able to understand why I now show it this way:

  • Vowels are first:
    • The round ones:
      • A
      • O
      • U
    • And the curves: I
      {and probably the rarer YU}
    • Finally, diphthongs & triphthongs: WI
      {and presumably WA, AW, WAW etc.}
  • Second, the weirdo afterthought consonant: H
  • Third and last, the consonants that behave normally:
    • The straight lines
      {sorta rotating from “straight down” counterclockwise}:

      • B / P
      • F / V
      • T / D {and probably TH}
      • G / K {and probably K’}
      • L /R {and probably ɬ}
    • The curves
      {up, down, right, left}:

      • SH {and probably CH}
      • S {and probably C = TS}
      • N {and probably NG}
      • M 

So, if we wanted to follow an alphabetical order that’s unique to Chinuk-Pipa, we could easily do as I’ve just show you. Here’s an example of what that would look like in practice, using Kamloops Wawa :

  • ALKI
  • OIHAT
  • UKUK
  • IAKA
  • WIHT
  • HIHI
  • BISI
  • FLAWIRS
  • TANAS 
  • KILAPAI
  • LOLO
  • SHIM
  • SAHALI
  • NANICH
  • MAMUK 

How well would that work for you?

Some Indigenous-language dictionaries are extremely helpful — every page shows a small key to the alphabetical order used. This fits easily into a footer or header.

The big reveal now: I have no evidence that Indigenous people or other writer-speakers of Northern Chinook Jargon used the quirky alphabetical order that I’ve been showing you. I think it was only Le Jeune who arranged things that way. The whole rest of the speech community had no use for alphabetizing stuff, in fact.

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! Free stuff! Teach Yourself northern-dialect Chinook Jargon! It’s free!

And join free Zoom sessions…

Contact me for the Zoom link.

–and–

HIRE A LINGUIST! (me)

Category : Chinook Jargon, Chinuk Wawa