1895: Olympia society has its way with Jargon loans

Technically just one step into the post-frontier era, 3 Chinuk Wawa words in the Oly paper aren’t really translated…

Didactic dialogues in CW dictionaries, Part 4E (Gibbs 1863 ex phrases/sentences)

The fifth installment in our mini-series on the exemplary Chinuk Wawa utterances of George Gibbs!

Chinuk Wawa ‘mole’ from a Salish metaphor?

Are pigs and moles similar, in a Salish point of view?

Lempfrit’s legendary, long-lost linguistic legacy (Part 6)

The 6th pair of page images from an unexpectedly important but long overlooked Chinuk Wawa document!

1880s: Archie Boyd’s Skagit reminiscences (hats off to Jargon in France)

The title of the article at the Skagit River Journal site is long and informative:

Chinuk Wawa in the news: Tumwata Middle School achievers

I want to direct your attention toward a newspaper article that involves Chinook Jargon!

The Mission Field and “Chinhook” (Part 3 of 6)

Victoria, British Columbia, was already a highly cosmopolitan town by 1862, making Chinuk Wawa an indispensable tool for everyone there.

Fort Vancouver: Salish ‘wild hops’

Advice: whenever you see a “sauvage” or sáwásh, get closer & have a careful look.

Howay [Haswell, Boit, Hoskins] “Voyages of the Columbia” (Part 5 of 5)

One last time (in our mini-series on Howay’s collected journals of the Columbia Rediviva) — do we find any evidence whatsoever of Chinook Jargon, or any other stabilized pidgin/trade language, existing in 1792 along… Continue reading

1883: Dr. McKay’s pronunciation is our beeswax

My esteemed friend Henry Zenk once wrote a book chapter examining Dr. William C. McKay’s 1892 address on the 100th anniversary of Captain Robert Gray’s (“)discovery(“) of the Columbia River.