Category Archive: Chinook Jargon

The priest explains capitalism

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I thought this extended selection, where Father Le Jeune of the Kamloops Wawa responds to a reader’s complaints about his newspaper’s price, was a really great illustration of the kinds of education you can do in… Continue reading →

Hear a Chinuk Wawa lecture streaming tonight

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8pm Pacific time zone on CIRH Roundhouse Radio 98.3 from Vancouver BC: a guy called David Robertson, talking & singing about “The Chinook We Never Knew — But Will“. Stream it live…or any… Continue reading →

Be not quass of nika…

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Frederick Whymper‘s contribution to the Chinook Jargon doggerel canon! In “The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril & Heroism” (London: Cassell, 1883), this knowledgeable Northwest hand discourses sagely on Chinuk Wawa, including… Continue reading →

Happy New Year!

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Verses for the end of year Ilo drit ayu son iakwa nisaika mitlait Nanish alta wan sno iaka wiht shako kopit… “Not very many days do we have left here; Look now, one… Continue reading →

The doggerel hits the fan! “Klose Nesika Illahee”

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The doggerel hits the fan! Mysteries are sprayed liberally! From a one-page remembrance of an indigenous Warm Springs leader, “Stock Whitley” by Carson C. Masiker in Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, Vol. II no. 3-9… Continue reading →

Kanamokst as a noun!

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The word that was spelled kanamokst in the Kamloops area is known in every dialect of Chinuk Wawa. Dictionaries mostly define it in English as an adverb, “together”. This is what you’ll learn from the Grand Ronde… Continue reading →

Definitions *in* Chinuk Wawa

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Most wanted, to bring Chinook Jargon alive: definitions of the language…in the language. If we’re making the effort to revitalize an endangered idiom such as “Chinook”, we have to give new speakers a… Continue reading →

Hyou dams!

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Mirabile visu, a book review turns juicy! Commenting at length on Horatio Hale’s 1890 revision of his 1846 (Wilkes) U.S. Exploring Expedition report, a Robert Brown tosses in some great s#!+ in Chinook that you’ve never read… Continue reading →

The Chinook Old Testament is full of Jesus!

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Jesus or “ShK”, as Shisyu Kri is almost always abbreviated in the shorthand, has a surprising and enormous presence in the BC missionary text summarizing the contents of the Old Testament. (For my… Continue reading →

Trial run of the Chinook Bible History, 5 years earlier

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  5 years before it was published at Kamloops as a book, the Chinook Bible History in shorthand made a partial appearance in the Kamloops Wawa newspaper. At the end of one installment (KW#117, June… Continue reading →