iilhit: pidgin Secwepemctsin in Chinook Jargon?
A few years ago, I mentioned on the old CHINOOK group a Salish-looking word I found in Kamloops Wawa: iilhit. Back then, I didn’t grasp the meaning of iilhit, but because it’s used in… Continue reading
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Kamloops Chinuk Wawa: modern-times Chinook
In which we make the case that Chinook Jargon is well-equipped to discuss modern times. See how expressively the language is used here to talk about the latest in skyscrapers: Iakwa msaika nanich… Continue reading
Tobias takes shit (pardon my Chinook)
This is my current #2 favorite Jargon word. I’ve gotten to the book of Tobit/Tobias in the shorthand Bishop Durieu’s Old Testament History, serialized in our favourite 1890s newspaper, Kamloops Wawa. There is a word… Continue reading
A new online place to read more Kamloops Wawa
UBC’s “BC Historical Newspaper” collection online has added Kamloops Wawa. Very nice because they cover the later years, through 1918, that have been incredibly hard to find until now. There’s much more longhand English… Continue reading
“Paper money is a bitch”? McDollars?
We know that on the frontier, anything but solid coin was received with suspicion. (See “Abundance of gold & the shortage of money“.) Even so, I’m mystified about the gendered reference here: The… Continue reading
The 1895 Chinuk Pipa Kompani
1895 Chinuk Pipa Kompani Oh my gosh, I have just found the name of my next band. Dibs! In the second and last issue of the mini-newspaper Shugir Kin Tintin / Sugarcane Bell, its… Continue reading
Quinault “son”, the Indian Shaker Church, Chinook Jargon and Lushootseed
Sometimes a whole story springs from a single word. In Ruth Modrow’s typewritten 1971 dictionary of Quinault, a Salish language of southwestern Washington’s coast, an entry caught my eye as I was looking for… Continue reading
The Old Fur Traders, Established 1670
If you have heard of the Chinook Jargon trade language, a.k.a. Chinuk Wawa, you are doubtless aware of the outsized importance attaching to the Hudsons Bay Company in our Pacific Northwest history. One… Continue reading
Klootch, a puppy bitch
Posted as an example of the antiquated slur “klootch“ (also spelled “klutch” or “klooch”). –from the Portland Morning Oregonian, April 23, 1904, page 5, column 5. Here it’s the name of a female puppy… Continue reading
Radio news investigation: “When Was Chinook Jargon Prevalent In The Northwest?”
KUOW in Seattle has just published online an investigative news story titled “When Was Chinook Jargon Prevalent In The Northwest?“ It’s a carefully done, quite listenable feature in their Local Wonder series. Nixwa… Continue reading