We’ve waded well into the waters of professional translator George Gibbs’s lovely sentences in Fort Vancouver-era Chinuk Wawa, so let’s launch farther out now.
Here’s a rarity.
In the Northern Dialect of Chinook Jargon, we find lots of examples of tanki son (as it’s written in the old Kamloops Wawa newspaper) to express ‘yesterday’…
We return to the unexpectedly informative appendix, the “SUPPLEMENTAL VOCABULARY”, in George Coombs Shaw’s 1909 dictionary of Chinuk Wawa.
Older people still remembered Chinuk Wawa well in 1915…
I guess I’ve heard all of these, not always realizing they’re special Warshington Talk!
Are you ready to learn more from the excellent Chinuk Wawa students & teachers at Oregon’s Lane Community College?
The Nez Perce War of 1877 was starting, and some Settlers felt “marked” by the Indigenous folks.
One of the many newspaper pieces in the era speculating on the origin of this word that was well-known to PNW English speakers.
Contrary to popular belief (among some Settlers and recent learners), you don’t need to put “mamook” before every verb!
