Author Archive

1840-1841: The US Ex Ex, the PNW, and the still-local Chinuk Wawa

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We get quite the useful picture of how widespread the already-creolized Chinuk Wawa was in 1840-1841, when we absorb this great report:

Didactic dialogues in dictionaries of Chinuk Wawa (Part 1: AC Anderson)

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(First in a mini-series.) The credited author disclaimed all responsibility…

Progress on ‘when’ in Kamloops CW

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By chance, we don’t exactly know how to say ‘when’…

1861: “Our Port Townsend Correspondent” urges proper Native pronunciation

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This 1861 article was written by renowned Chinuk Wawa expert James G. Swan…

Another version of the “Seattle Illahee” song!

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Thanks to indefatigable anthropologist Jay Powell, a famous Pacific Northwest folk song that uses Chinook Jargon shows up in another version…

Even more traces of Canadian/métis French “calumet” (‘pipe’) in early-contact PNW

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In a previous post, I claimed to have discovered a previously unrecognized French loanword < koulama > in early Chinuk Wawa, meaning ‘pipe’.

CW oral history of Dryad Point, BC

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Thanks once again to Alex Code of PoCo Heritage for pointing me to this example of oral history being preserved in Chinuk Wawa.

1853: George B. McClellan’s PNW railroad survey diary

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Previously, on chinookjargon.com…

Crowdsourcing challenge: More Chinook Jargon archival audio?

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My readers have been known to come up with great responses when I challenge them…

Earliest, best evidence of the Alaskan phrase “skookum paper”

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A phrase I learned from doing research in Alaska is “skookum paper”.