Category Archive: Uncategorized

“iaka siahus NOUN”

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It’s a while since I shared a little grammar lesson, so start your egg timer: (Image credit: Orthodox Christian Network.) aias tlus iaka siahus Barbara very good her face Barbara “Barbara’s face was… Continue reading →

Mixed-breed ‘cat’?

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More tricky treats for your October: (Image credit: The Daily Coyote) A single strange word in somebody’s old field notebook doesn’t have to have much significance. Sometimes a mistake is a mistake is… Continue reading →

lisítaluy: Yet another Jargon word discovered

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lisítaluy: (Photo credit: LewisTalk) It’s glossed as “squash” in the Quinault Salish dictionary I have. Every time I saw the word, I thought, That looks so weirdly intricate in Quinault. To be native,… Continue reading →

Franz Boas learns Chinook shorthand in an evening & writes a want ad in it!

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File this under Believe It Or Not! Perhaps THE most amazing case of synchronicity in our Chinook Jargon world: the, well, legendary Franz Boas (he founded the Department of Anthropology and indirectly the… Continue reading →

A. Delano & why Chinuk Wawa was thought to extend to the Rocky Mts.

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Not too long ago, I read the Forty-Niner A[lonzo] Delano’s 1854 book: “Life on the Plains and Among the Diggings; being Scenes and Adventures of an Overland Journey to California: with Particular Incidents… Continue reading →

Chinuk Wawa alím ‘to rest’ is Salish

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This Chinuk Wawa word alím ‘to rest’ has been a puzzle. Grand Rounde’s dictionary plays with possible French or Lower Chinookan sources for it…    (Photo credit: Cheryl’s Trading Post) But now that I’m constantly… Continue reading →

Dudes of Seattle

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I though you’d enjoy a couple of fun anecdotes from Clarence Bagley’s detailed, knowledgeable “History of Seattle” (published there by S.J. Clarke Publishing Company in 1916). (Image from Amazon.com.) The first has to… Continue reading →

HORSES! CUITANS!!

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Sometimes you just need a dose of old-time advertising in Chinuk Wawa… HORSES! CUITANS!! The subscriber begs leave to inform his numerous friends and the public generally, that he is always on hand,… Continue reading →

Salish as an intercultural lingo…before Chinuk Wawa?

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I have an idea building in my mind that Coast Salish provided an intercultural lingo, maybe before “contact” with the (drifted ashore/dead/floating houses/other hypotheses) white people…and definitely soon after. (Photo credit: SFU Museum.)… Continue reading →

‘Round water’, a Native metaphor

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Words for ‘bay’… In Chinuk Wawa you say luʔlu-tsəqw, ’round-water’. And you think, yes, that makes sense. (Images from Australia.com.) Salish speakers in the homeland of Chinuk Wawa agree with you. Quinault speakers say tál̓-maɬ-ču which… Continue reading →