Category Archive: Uncategorized

Why is it tumála, not *tumólo* etc.?

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A simple question: why is ‘tomorrow’ pronounced tumála in Chinook Jargon?

Boas 1892: Many discoveries in a short article (Part 17: ‘to roast’)

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Okay, class, settle down.

1892: A startling story

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Rumors got lots of play, it seems, in frontier-era Alaska, but calmer heads questioned them.

1857, Oregon: Close nanage this prisoner

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Typical for the frontier era, a newspaper had snarky comments about a local prisoner.

Ikta Dale McCreery yaka t’ɬap (Part 7: a Boas misunderstanding)

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Our BC friend Dale shared this one about 7 years ago, in the Facebook “Chinook Jargon” group.

Klamath-language ‘corn’ is another Jargon loan?

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Previously here, I’ve shown how southwest Oregon’s ʔewksgiˑsam hemkanks (Klamath language) is an example of another language (Canadian/Métis French) being preserved indirectly.

1901: “Hyas muckamuck” menu

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Oregon “Indian War” veterans were connected with Chinook Jargon, quite rightly, in the popular mind — that’s why this dinner that they gave in the nation’s capital has a Chinook menu.

AF Chamberlain’s field notes of Chinuk Wawa from SE British Columbia (Part 7: Breaking ground, breaking camp…)

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Again, I’ll highlight in orange some stuff that’s a new discovery for us!

1786: What a long Strange trip! James Strange’s journal on the PNW coast (Part 2: Vocabulary)

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The voyage of the Captain Cook and the Experiment is documented in the book, “James Strange’s Journal and narrative of the commercial expedition from Bombay to the Northwest coast of America” (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1982).

1786: What a long Strange trip! James Strange’s journal on the northern PNW coast (Part 1: Narrative)

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James Charles Stuart Strange (1753-1840), godson of Bonnie Prince Charlie, led a fur-trading expedition from India to Vancouver Island in the early era of contact between the Indigenous people there and non-Indigenous newcomers.