Author Archive

Salish ‘mind’ as a discovery in Chinuk Wawa

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Every so often, my digging in the mountains of BC Chinuk Pipa (or “shorthand”) Chinuk Wawa writing turns up a new word.

1902: Alaskan Inuit pidgin English (/Hawai’ian)

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It’s been known for some time that there was a pidgin Inuit language in far northern Alaska’s frontier days…

1891: Chinuk Wawa time capsule in Victoria, BC

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It’s been 129 years — let’s dig this up & find out what the “book in Chinook” is!

1893 (!) : Reminiscences of Nanaimo’s old days

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Well, this article appears on what passed for the kids’ page, so the 1850s and 1860s would’ve seemed like long ago…

There’s more than one way for a cat to be skinned: Multiple CW quasi-passives, plus metatypy?

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Hayu masi to Beth for commenting in chinuk-wawa…

The Catholic Digest tells about Chinuk Wawa shorthand…if you have the resources to access it

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This being a capitalistic world…

Found: the Quasi-Passive, also in 1st-person plural

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I’ve pointed out many times that the closest thing Chinuk Wawa has to a “passive voice”, parallel to English “I really got cheated”, is to literally say “they did it”.

1907: Suggested carnival names

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“Snuggestions” (!) for the name of a post-frontier Walla Walla carnival’s “main street” included several in Chinuk Wawa…

1902: The Tillicum Hiyu Wawa Club of Aberdeen

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Another of the many social clubs in the post-frontier Pacific Northwest that took Chinuk Wawa names…

“Cheechoko’s Dream” song

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A misspelled Jargon word is a clue to some missing songs…