Category Archive: Chinook Jargon

Til mamuk: a Kamloops idiom

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Til mamuk: literally “heavy work”: an expressive idiom for violent mayhem. You’re only going to discover this one if you take the trouble to dig into Kamloops Chinook Jargon, shorthand alphabet and all. First of… Continue reading →

Kata meaning “messed up” outside of Grand Ronde creole

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One use of qʰáta, literally ‘how’, that’s always seemed to me an idiom characteristic of the Grand Ronde (Oregon) creole variety of Chinuk Wawa is as a predicative adjective (or stative verb, it… Continue reading →

What do saying a Catholic mass & a near-death experience have in common?

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What do saying a Catholic mass & a near-death experience have in common? I’m sorry to say there is a sad answer to that, for many who went through the residential-school experience, but… Continue reading →

Alcoholism and the first literate generation

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I’m not intentionally connecting alcoholism with the introduction of literacy to people who had never known it, but you’ll often find the two subjects cheek-by-jowl in the letters of the Oblate missionary priests. One… Continue reading →

A weird duck from Duflot de Mofras

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Eugène Duflot de Mofras authored another of the French-language sources that are less well-known in the Pacific Northwest, but very valuable for researching our history. It’s his 1844 book “Exploration du territoire de l’Orégon, de… Continue reading →

A long(,) lost Jesuit manuscript of Jargon?

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Nous avons vu, entre les mains d’un Père Jésuite de Saint-Paul, un dictionnaire manuscrit assez volumineux sur la langue Tchinook, qu’il s’était, pendant quinze années, donné la fastidieuse peine de rédiger pour l’usage… Continue reading →

How to say “copy machine” in Chinuk Wawa

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(Just don’t say kaupy machine.)* Here is the moment when Chinook Jargon office work was born 🙂 As pictured above, issue #9 of the young Kamloops Wawa newspaper set several standards for the new literate culture that… Continue reading →

A toast to the Queen in 2015

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I’d like to point you to someone else’s blog post, where he tells of deciding to make a traditional yearly toast to the Queen more reflective of BC’s history. Read Mike Scoretz’s “Chinook Jargon… Continue reading →

A map of Fraser River gold-rush placenames is illuminating

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In 2012, Andrew Nelson and Michael Kennedy published a good article in the highly readable journal, BC Studies, that they titled “Fraser River Gold Mines and Their Place Names”.  (BC Studies 172 (Winter 2011-2012):105-125.)  It comes… Continue reading →

Proof of Chinuk Wawa use in brand-new Seattle

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This post is short and sweet to create: “New York Markook House“, the newspaper advertisement is headlined.  Seattle was originally called New York.  (The more distinctive “New New York” presumably was clunky!)  It… Continue reading →