1890s: “Hobnobbing with a Countess” in the Okanagan
I want to make brief reference to the diaries of an Ontarian who immigrated to southern interior British Columbia’s Spallumcheen Valley…
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Some Wahkiakum County history
Some history from one of the oldest Settler communities in Washington State, now a backwater…
Eats Shoots & Leaves, Chinook Edition
One example sentence in an old Chinook Jargon dictionary made me look twice…
CW & St Joseph’s Catholic church, Kamloops
A good All Saints Day subject: there’s a really good article published last week up in Kamloops…
1893: Happy Chinook Halloween
I’ve once again managed to find a connection between Halloween and Chinuk Wawa 🙂
Losing ‘sleep’ up north
In British Columbia, the old word < moosum > (músum) ‘sleep’ fell into disfavor because of its longstanding naughty overtones…
Getting drunk with the Canucks etc.
pʰáɬlam (< patlum > in BC spelling) is a famous old Chinuk Wawa expression…
Cheechako entered English via the Klondike
Other Chinuk Wawa words entered English earlier, usually in Oregon and Washington, but “cheechako” can technically be called a Canadianism…
Patl kopa is bad, mamuk patl kopa is good
“Full of”, in Chinuk Wawa, is just plain “full”.
1905: “Silver chickimun” in Alaska
When I checked whether an 1897 German book’s “chicamin silver” was real Alaska Jargon, I got excited for a second by the article under a racist headline… Cannery, Haines, AK (image credit: Haines Sheldon… Continue reading