This 1861 article was written by renowned Chinuk Wawa expert James G. Swan…

Thanks to indefatigable anthropologist Jay Powell, a famous Pacific Northwest folk song that uses Chinook Jargon shows up in another version…

In a previous post, I claimed to have discovered a previously unrecognized French loanword < koulama > in early Chinuk Wawa, meaning ‘pipe’.

Thanks once again to Alex Code of PoCo Heritage for pointing me to this example of oral history being preserved in Chinuk Wawa.

Previously, on chinookjargon.com…

My readers have been known to come up with great responses when I challenge them…

A phrase I learned from doing research in Alaska is “skookum paper”.

On the subject of Americans’ familiarity with Chinese Pidgin English, I was struck that the following newspaper piece only bothers to explain one word.

The most recent English-language loans into BC Chinook Jargon, as odd and casual as they may sound to ear that are used to traditional (southern-dialect) CJ, are the normal way to express things… Continue reading →

A hat tip to Dr. Peter Bakker for nudging me to more fully explore British maritime fur-trader John Meares’ journals…