iilhit: pidgin Secwepemctsin in Chinook Jargon?
A few years ago, I mentioned on the old CHINOOK group a Salish-looking word I found in Kamloops Wawa: iilhit. Back then, I didn’t grasp the meaning of iilhit, but because it’s used in… Continue reading
A few years ago, I mentioned on the old CHINOOK group a Salish-looking word I found in Kamloops Wawa: iilhit. Back then, I didn’t grasp the meaning of iilhit, but because it’s used in… Continue reading →
In which we make the case that Chinook Jargon is well-equipped to discuss modern times. See how expressively the language is used here to talk about the latest in skyscrapers: Iakwa msaika nanich… Continue reading →
This is my current #2 favorite Jargon word. I’ve gotten to the book of Tobit/Tobias in the shorthand Bishop Durieu’s Old Testament History, serialized in our favourite 1890s newspaper, Kamloops Wawa. There is a word… Continue reading →
UBC’s “BC Historical Newspaper” collection online has added Kamloops Wawa. Very nice because they cover the later years, through 1918, that have been incredibly hard to find until now. There’s much more longhand English… Continue reading →
What looks like a gratuitous sexist insult, “wake klooch kloochman” in my previous post, naturally invites a prayerful response. Spoiler alert — this gets gratuitous too. The Lord’s Prayer in Chinook Nisika Papa kla… Continue reading →
We know that on the frontier, anything but solid coin was received with suspicion. (See “Abundance of gold & the shortage of money“.) Even so, I’m mystified about the gendered reference here: The… Continue reading →
1895 Chinuk Pipa Kompani Oh my gosh, I have just found the name of my next band. Dibs! In the second and last issue of the mini-newspaper Shugir Kin Tintin / Sugarcane Bell, its… Continue reading →
Sometimes a whole story springs from a single word. In Ruth Modrow’s typewritten 1971 dictionary of Quinault, a Salish language of southwestern Washington’s coast, an entry caught my eye as I was looking for… Continue reading →
If you have heard of the Chinook Jargon trade language, a.k.a. Chinuk Wawa, you are doubtless aware of the outsized importance attaching to the Hudsons Bay Company in our Pacific Northwest history. One… Continue reading →
Posted as an example of the antiquated slur “klootch“ (also spelled “klutch” or “klooch”). –from the Portland Morning Oregonian, April 23, 1904, page 5, column 5. Here it’s the name of a female puppy… Continue reading →