An American Indian pidgin in a Top 20 song
I heard a Native American pidgin in an old Top 20 song today! Or I was hearing a creole of French that’s native to Louisiana! Or it was an amazing but believable African… Continue reading
Category Archive: Uncategorized
Earliest use of “law” in Chinook Jargon?
“Law”, like most English-origin loanwords in Chinook Jargon, was studiously omitted from the frontier-era vocabularies. You have to figure: reasons of economy. Paper was expensive, ink too. Both were rare. Anyone who could… Continue reading
Chinuk-wawa in education: The solar system
Chinuk-wawa was used to educate people about science, social studies and more — over 100 years before the revitalization and immersion program at Grand Ronde. In his Kamloops Wawa newspaper, Father Le Jeune himself didn’t… Continue reading
Hard hardwood, creolization, deviltree, and pissed-off voyageurs
Ah, some deviltree! Just in time for Halloweeeen! 🙂 q̓ə́l-q̓əl stík: Literally ‘hard-hard wood’. Finding this in C. Snow’s field notes with the meaning ‘oak’, I checked his sometimes interesting CJ phonetics against the Grand Ronde dictionary. Surprising… Continue reading
Same-sex marriage in Chinuk Wawa, 1876
I’m reposting this because, in the course of my work, I’ve revisited it and come up with what I think is the intended translation. Enjoy this lovely, elusive unicorn of a Chinuk Wawa sentence!… Continue reading
Basket Maker, West Coast Kloochman
Maybe she’s łəw̓ál̓məš — Lower Chehalis: Basket Maker, West Coast Kloochman (click to embiggen)
“Across the Wide Missouri” needs a script
Thanks to the powers that be, I have a copy of “Across the Wide Missouri“, the famous Hollywood movie with lots of Chinuk Wawa dialogue and a weirdly ingratiating Clark Gable. It would… Continue reading
An actual 1st-person, near-death experience (Le Jacq’s letter)
I hope you’re able to follow along when I present these little texts of Chinook Jargon. There is so much there. I try to give an English translation that suggests what an actual… Continue reading
Pooty good!
Just the bullets: New Chinuk Wawa word discovered: “pooty”.*. (As usual this only means we’ve just now noticed it). *Rendered in a Huckleberry Finn spelling to help you guess what it means. Got… Continue reading
Public service announcement: “alki” is not the future tense
Or, the Alki Point 🙂 In the interest of sharing knowledge of good Chinuk Wawa, I want to share how to use the words that you’re usually told mean “future”, “present”, and “past”… Continue reading