Author Archive

Komtakst/komtaks and klaksta/klaska in BC Chinuk Wawa

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In my 2012 dissertation, I took note of a pronunciation peculiarity of Kamloops-area Chinuk Wawa…

Lempfrit’s legendary, long-lost linguistic legacy (Part 4)

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Discoveries! I love it when we find “new” words in Chinuk Wawa.

1883: Sarah Winnemucca has opinions about Chinook Jargon in education

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A Native author and activist had her own views about educating kids in Chinuk Wawa that might surprise you…

Didactic dialogues in CW dictionaries, Part 4C (Gibbs 1863 ex phrases/sentences)

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Third in our mini-series of fluent southern sentences from US government treaty translator Geo. Gibbs:

yútɬiɬ-lapúsh ‘cocksure’, a Salish metaphor

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One of the uses of Chinuk Wawa’s yútɬiɬ ‘proud, arrogant; glad, happy’ is in a unique phrase from the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation community.

Howay [Haswell, Boit, Hoskins] “Voyages of the Columbia” (Part 3 of 5)

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Venturing farther into the published collection of reports on the journeys of the ship that the Columbia River is named for…

Ej, uxnem!

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This one’s just begging to be translated into Chinuk Wawa:

What Chinook do you remember? “kapn nos”

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Dale McCreery, a Michif who lives in Bella Coola, mentioned on the Facebook “Chinook Jargon” group something that he’s heard in that area:

Jargon dialects, and cultural differences in “t’əmánəwas”

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The use of Chinuk Wawa’s word “t’əmánəwas” in my article on the “sáyá, t’əmánəwas!” song from Renton, in the sense of a harmful spirit, strikes me as a particularly Puget Sound-area usage.

1862: Siletz chiefs’ speeches for back-translation into CW (Part 5 of 6)

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wə́x̣t nayka wáwa drét háyú mási kʰapa David Gene Lewis, PhD…