Category Archive: Chinuk Wawa

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 →

Cathlamet on the Columbia

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“Cathlamet on the Columbia: Recollections of the Indian people and short stories of the early pioneer days in the valley of the lower Columbia River“, by Thomas Nelson Strong (The Holly Press, Portland… Continue reading →

A.C. Garrett’s lost Anglican manuscript in Chinook

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Chinook Jargon lore abounds with tales of lost resources.  There’s the pre-shorthand attempt to write CJ in Cree/Dene-style syllable symbols: Some 500 ‘books’ of such syllabic productions were said to have existed in the late… Continue reading →

What do you call a meteorite in Chinook Jargon?

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Bobby, I don’t know (this is paraphrasing James Brown because we are talking about rock history), but whatsoever I call it, I got to make it “Tomanowas“.  Chinook Wawa history is stone soul… Continue reading →

The People are Dancing Again, or, Hire a Linguist

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An excellent book can be made more excellent by hiring a linguist.  Today I’m commenting briefly about: The People are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon, by Charles Wilkinson… Continue reading →

Edward Holland Nicoll’s phony Chinook

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Maybe I shouldn’t be so tough on the author of this Popular Science Monthly feature (June 1889, pages 257-261).  In his “The Chinook Language or Jargon” — which follows an interesting argument with Prof. Huxley on… Continue reading →