Happy New Year!
Verses for the end of year Ilo drit ayu son iakwa nisaika mitlait Nanish alta wan sno iaka wiht shako kopit… “Not very many days do we have left here; Look now, one… Continue reading
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The priest makes it explicit, pardon his French
I’ve previously told how “the M-word“, musum ‘sleep’, had lewd overtones in Chinuk Wawa. Now the priest makes it explicit. Writing in shorthand French, Father Le Jeune observes in Kamloops Wawa #121 (October 1894, page 170):… Continue reading
Merry Christmas!
<Miri Krismas> kopa msaika! <Merry Christmas> to you folks! My gift to you is the first-ever Christmas story to be written in Chinuk pipa shorthand. I hope you’ll enjoy how it ties together Chinuk Wawa… Continue reading
The doggerel hits the fan! “Klose Nesika Illahee”
The doggerel hits the fan! Mysteries are sprayed liberally! From a one-page remembrance of an indigenous Warm Springs leader, “Stock Whitley” by Carson C. Masiker in Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, Vol. II no. 3-9… Continue reading
“Fish house” part 3: it’s so definite
First I wrote about discovering a Heiltsuk word that probably showed how the Chinuk Wawa word — otherwise unknown to us — for “cannery” was fish house. Then I found backup for the… Continue reading
Chinook snowman
Snowman: Chinook. Chinook snowman!
Kanamokst as a noun!
The word that was spelled kanamokst in the Kamloops area is known in every dialect of Chinuk Wawa. Dictionaries mostly define it in English as an adverb, “together”. This is what you’ll learn from the Grand Ronde… Continue reading
Definitions *in* Chinuk Wawa
Most wanted, to bring Chinook Jargon alive: definitions of the language…in the language. If we’re making the effort to revitalize an endangered idiom such as “Chinook”, we have to give new speakers a… Continue reading
Canneries, culture contact, and spreading Chinook literacy
The unique BC alphabet for Chinook Jargon, Chinuk pipa, found a secure place in Indigenous people’s hearts in its first few years. Not just southern interior people, and not limited either to lower mainland… Continue reading
More about the flood of 1894
I blogged the other day about the great Fraser River flood of 1894; how about some Indigenous people’s eyewitness notes, in Chinuk Wawa? From Kamloops Wawa #118b, July 1894, page 131: <More about the flood.>… Continue reading