Category Archive: Uncategorized

Whoa Haw, God Dam: How they talked Chinook in Idaho

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Those of you who are saying “That’s no surprise” are duly noted, but let’s read on…

The Human Side of the Indian

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Indians are people too! This had to be pointed out in 1906!

Whiskey Dick! How’d that name happen?

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Part of our Pacific Northwest language heritage is the names of places here.

Clah’s Chinook revisited

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With the help of some friends, I’d like to hark back to a reported Chinuk Wawa conversation.

The Indian History of the Modoc War

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Subtitled, thoughtfully, “And the Causes That Led to It”. 

I’m afraid this won’t be a very tame post…

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…because it’s happily snarled up.

Frontier Yarns

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I’m curious what my readers will think about the Chinook Jargon quoted here…

“Ancotty” as a loanword into regional English

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It can’t be a coincidence that post-frontier Pacific Northwest settler society, preoccupied with building up the mythic greatness of its earliest arrivals, borrowed Chinuk Wawa’s word for “old times” into English… 

“Chako” may be a Nootka Jargon compound, & Chinookan

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The unavoidable Chinuk Wawa word “chako” (cháku) is typically explained as having come to us originally from Nuuchahnulth (“NCN”, of Vancouver Island, Canada)…but it may have as many as three sources. 

West Coast CPE, 19th c.

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One of the topics that keeps intersecting with my unifying theme of Chinook Jargon is the use of multiple pidgin languages here in the West.