Mock Chinook Jargon
The other day, I shared a couple of genuine Chinuk Wawa letters from the far northwest corner of Washington State, the Bellingham area. Today, from the same region but instead continuing my sporadic… Continue reading
Category Archive: Uncategorized
0 Comments
Bill Kaihumua weds a queen of the Quiniaults
The intersection of Chinook Jargon and Hawaiian Pidgin English? What language did the blissfully wedded couple talk at home? The Hawaiian Gazette of November 26, 1907 reports (page 8) on the nuptials of Maggie… Continue reading
Even newer light on “moniasses”
Once you get the fraught title out of the way, “The Aryan Element in Indian Dialects” is one heck of an article.
Inventor of Dene syllabics slams inventor of Jargon shorthand
-Notorious Northern character Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice’s “Carrier Reading-Book” (Stuart’s Lake Mission, BC: 1894) starts with one of his diatribes. This might seem odd in a lesson book. But there’s a very real reason… Continue reading
Ways to express fractions in Chinuk Wawa
Fractions are a challenge, in the majority of human languages that I have experience of. This has to do with culture and history. Some regions of the planet — not all — have… Continue reading
My native language (the Chinook)
Behring Sea Arbitration: Appendix to Counter-Case of Her Majesty’s Government. Pages 533-921 of “Fur Seal Arbitration: Proceedings of the Tribunal of Arbitration, Convened at Paris/Volume VIII” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1895). This is… Continue reading
Crowdsourcing challenge: find the original of this Chinook Jargon letter
EDITED 10/25/2017: thanks to several goodhearted readers, I can now add the entire Chinuk Wawa text, at the end of this post. Bonus: it’s actually 2 letters! Look below. I’ve had the heck… Continue reading
Two old saws
A couple of persistent stories about Chinuk Wawa. From “The Story of Metlakahtla” by Henry S. Wellcome (London: Saxon & Co., 1887). It’s a narrative of how the missionary Reverend William Duncan came… Continue reading
My dad was a Chinook interpreter
Heck of a story. “Parks and Redwoods, 1919-1971: Oral history transcript” is “an interview” of Newton Bishop Drury (1889-1978) “conducted by Amelia Roberts Fry and Susan Schrepfer. It’s at the Bancroft Library of… Continue reading
The Halloweena Indians
(Image credit: YouTube) For another seasonally appropriate article, turn out the lights and draw close as I tell you about…the Halloweena Indians. Scary! On a cold day when white people were still outnumbered… Continue reading