Category Archive: Chinook Jargon

Cruisings in the Cascades

by

Looking through an antiquarian bookseller’s website, I spied a neat-sounding book that was new to me. They wanted a shocking price, but Google Books had it as a free ebook 🙂 Turns out… Continue reading →

Sex! Or, why is the “M-word” taboo?

by

In Chinook Jargon dialects, the word “moosum” (“sleep”) is more or less tabooed. In some, which I associate with the Coast and which I tend to perceive as older, there’s a phrase “tenas moosum”.… Continue reading →

Thank you, Public Salon!

by

I want to put in a note of thanks to a remarkable cultural institution that I’ve recently become acquainted with: Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon in Vancouver, BC. Last week, I spoke at the… Continue reading →

He expected Chinook Jargon, he got pidgin Spanish?!

by

This anecdote from south of the known region that Chinook Jargon was used in (Sacramento, CA) unexpectedly yielded what looks like pidgin Spanish being used by Native people there.  The gentleman in question… Continue reading →

“Jumper is Chinook for thief”

by

I’ve written about the lexical contributions of Chinook Jargon to our Pacific Northwest English.  But here’s a piece about English speakers’ fairly early view of CJ as a kind of slang of its… Continue reading →

Racially insensitive verb

by

I thought of titling this post following my general habit: using the word under discussion.  But in the interests both of warning and enticing potential readers, I went for something more general.  This… Continue reading →

Bull teams and steam engines

by

(Edited 06/08/2016, to correct the year from 1897 to 1896.) This is the colophon of the Kamloops Wawa  newspaper, from the first issue that ran it.  That’d be November 1897, top of page 1.… Continue reading →

A trip to Metaline

by

To paraphrase Daniel Johnston, have you been to Metaline?  If you had visited that mining camp on the BC border in Washington’s first year of statehood, you might have found Chinook Jargon useful.… Continue reading →

Roy I. Rochon’s “The Yakama guide who led the first Rainier ascent”

by

Roy I. Rochon Wilson has a neat historical piece in Centralia, WA’s The Chronicle (“Serving the greater Lewis County , Wash., area since 1889”) Friday, March 8th, 2013.  The biographical note on the author tells… Continue reading →

Idle No More

by

Idle No More! A flash mob singing a Chinook Jargon song at Park Royal shopping centre, West Vancouver, BC. Commenters there (YouTube) have explained the lyrics.