POLL: What to call this language?
Someone asked me on Facebook what we should call this language. She’d been told that some names for it might have negative connotations for certain people. Would you vote for your top 2… Continue reading
Author Archive
“Stalking the Haplocerus in the Selkirks” by W.A. Baillie-Grohman
“Stalking the Haplocerus in the Selkirks” by W.A. Baillie-Grohman. From The English Illustrated Magazine, May 1895, page 127-133. This is one of those great old outdoors narratives in a gentlemen’s hunting (&c.) magazine. It’s about… Continue reading
“Cumtuxiana”!
I transcribed this jocular musing on rampant borrowings into frontier-era Western US English, from the Daily Alta California newspaper, 3 August 1851, page 2, column 2 (top). There’s quite a trove of what… Continue reading
14 years ago this week in the CHINOOK list
Since I recommend the old CHINOOK listserv to folks still as an online research tool, I’m going to start a weekly look back. Here’s a sampling of what was being asked about and… Continue reading
“Quiggly hole”, “quiggly town” and “kick willy”
Acknowledgments are due to Mike Cleven for making me aware of these Canadianisms borrowed from Chinook Jargon. Here’s another good online discussion of uniquely Canadian words. There are a lot of ways to… Continue reading
Nisbet, “David Douglas: A Naturalist at Work”
Nisbet, Jack. 2012. David Douglas: A naturalist at work / An illustrated exploration across two centuries in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: Sasquatch. I was given a superb holiday present by my wife: a… Continue reading
“Head hunting jargon”: fair warning
If you’ve found your way to this blog by typing “head hunting jargon” into a search engine, let me say, Beware. Two reasons: First: Head hunting was never a big thing in the… Continue reading
Reader poll: how to write in Chinook Jargon?
How to write in Chinook Jargon? Thanks for voting! Share with friends so they can vote too! –David Douglas ROBERTSON–
Callipeen
Chinookers will recognize “callipeen” as a Jargon word for “rifle”–or generically for “gun”. I’m more used to the synonym “maskit” (musket), but both are valid. Like a lot of languages’ words for this… Continue reading
Omniglot.com
Do check out Omniglot.com. It’s an extensive collection of the world’s writing systems. There’s something fascinating and eye-opening about seeing the many ways humans have invented to write their languages. I’ll have a… Continue reading