Author Archive

Gibbs 1863 on dialects in Chinuk Wawa

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In my opinion, the best of the English-speaker-oriented Chinook Jargon guides in the frontier era may well have been George Gibbs’s “A Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon“.

I think we can add pípa-sàmən to the “general lower Columbia” (Central Dialect) lexicon

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My 2023 post about “Bridge River paper salmon” is about the Northern Dialect.

Ankati Kamlups Indyustrial Skul (1890-1978)

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Good thing to use your Chinook Jargon knowledge on: Image credit: Parks Canada ANKATI KAMLUPS INDYUSTRIAL SKUL (1890-1978) Ayu tanas klaska chako iakwa kopa klunas 108 ilihi, kopa klunas 38 hlwima Sawash tilikom… Continue reading →

Do we really believe there was a Jargon phrase “lám pi tsə́qw”?

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At least as early as his 1884 edition, John K Gill of Portland included in his Chinook Jargon dictionary an entry <lum-pe-chuck> ‘grog’.

‘Not working’, ‘out of order’, ‘down’ = KAKSHIT

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The word that also means ‘to be broken’ comes in handy in our modern tech age…

HIRE A LINGUIST! What this atrocious housing development name tells us about the need for good Chinook Jargon dictionaries

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Can you say HIRE A LINGUIST! in Chinook Jargon?

1877, WA: A klootchman’s grave

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I’m making note of this frontier-era news article not only for its casual use of Chinook Jargon (which every reader understood), but also to show that “fish Indians” was very common terminology.

Is the -muləqan variant for ‘elk’ just Lower Chinookan?

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Yup, for ‘elk’ in Lower Chinookan, Franz Boas documented both the -mulak root shape that gave us Chinook Jargon’s mulak, and also this: 

The 1st & 2nd CJ compound nouns ever documented?

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There were compounds in “Nootka Jargon”; we find them at least as far back as <Tais frijoles> from José Mariano Mociño / Moziño in 1792, literally ‘chief beans’.

Spotted in the wild: 4 kinds of Skookum at Okanogan Museum

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Say what you will about the imagery, but the word Skookum is a core memory for lots of us from northeastern Washington state. These are displayed at the truly well-done Okanogan County Museum in… Continue reading →