Keel-A-Pie, the Chinuk Wawa operetta (third page)
As we “keel-a-pie” (return) to the story: in today’s installment, we learn more of the scene-setting details…
As we “keel-a-pie” (return) to the story: in today’s installment, we learn more of the scene-setting details…
Today’s page brings us our first Chinook Jargon song of the piece, but I have other major points to make. One is courtesy of my readers…
I’ve already presented you the article that led me to finding this long-rumored but previously undiscovered operetta in Chinook Jargon (and English).
Thanks to Donald Bushaw’s clue mentioned yesterday, I was able to hustle downtown to the Northwest Room of the Spokane Public Library, and gleefully scan C.H. Hanford’s “Halcyon Days in Port Townsend” (1925).… Continue reading
An obscure paper in an obscure journal by someone you never heard of in connection with this language…it all leads to a wonderful discovery: the long-rumored “opera in Chinook Jargon!”
So there’s this word < elamí > ‘alms’ (charity, baksheesh, largesse) in Francis-Norbert Blanchet’s Chinook Jargon dictionary.
Sam Johnson had a brilliant insight: you have to examine every Chinook Jargon dictionary in detail.
It’s useful to distinguish types of Chinuk Wawa texts (and those in any language) by their setting, author, and audience…
I’m filing this under “fictional Chinuk Wawa”: the Jargon as used in annoying and phony ways.
We have a small sample of the Chinuk Wawa of a major figure in British Columbia history: