“The renamed Tumwater Middle School in Portland, Oregon’s suburb of Beaverton honors the Chinuk Wawa language”, says the media headline.

Among the countless facts of Chinuk Wawa that only become clear once you leave dictionaries behind…

… and non-inanimate uses of both ikta ‘thing’ and “silent it”?!

And 2 polarities!

In one phrase of a story told by Victoria Howard, we have a beautiful illustration of the importance of “word order” in Chinuk Wawa.

It’s been weeks since I published the previous installment in this mini-series, but #5 is worth the wait:

Now that I’ve gone and given you a complete list of expressions that Father St Onge’s 1892 manuscript dictionary shows for the < komtoks- > Habitual “Characteristic” prefix…

Early in the post-frontier era, an immigrant from Switzerland to BC was eulogized, in part for his experience of gold-rush Chinuk Wawa.

This is the last regular installment of Walter Shelley “El Comancho” Phillips’s Chinook-for-kids column that I’ve managed to find.

Lempfrit’s 1849 dictionary manuscript…a couple more pages…