Category Archive: Uncategorized

Baker is wide open!

by

A Chinuk Wawa item that we ought to be searching for in a Baker City, Oregon, museum…

How long has Chinuk Wawa had compounds? Plus: a lost dictionary.

by

How long has Chinuk Wawa had compound words?

More early Chinuk Wawa grammaticalization: mank- ‘Comparative’

by

mank-: This typical lower Columbia River way of forming the Comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs goes very far back…

Chinuk Wawa tree names in -stik (a Salish idea) … & a new etymology for ‘100’ (a Chinookan idea)

by

All of this forms a theme, keep reading. Let’s start out by thinking of Chinuk Wawa compound tree names ending in -stik, which go about as far back in time as we have documents… Continue reading

sun smoke boat

by

Commercial Chinuk Wawa, early post-frontier.

Fearing Death Soon, Red Defies Ostracism

by

Another case of the actual Chinuk Wawa words telling a different story from what the Whites claimed they meant! 

Walkie-talkie, or, more new Lower Chinookan etymologies

by

Walkie-talkie! I like how that works. Let’s talk about < waki >. 

Definite article was also early in Chinuk Wawa…from Salish

by

Yet another grammatical operator that crystallized early in Chinuk Wawa: the definite article.

Reduplication also grammaticalized early in Chinuk Wawa — from Salish

by

It’s often been remarked that Chinook Jargon has lots of repetition, which has seemed strange to English- and French-speakers.

An embarrassing question to crowdsource!

by

File this one under “I dreamed it, but it didn’t come true” 🙂