[Edited with more info 11/20/2016 — see end of article.] I’ve been running a thread of Chinook Jargon advertisements, which will be continuing for quite a while due to the plenitude of spots… Continue reading →

     The local editors of Portland, Oregon, are abusing one another in choice Chinook, and such words as “siwash tillicums,”  “mesacha cultus wawa” are freely bandied as if they had a wonderful… Continue reading →

This is an old-school telling of the first Chinook Jargon joke I ever learned, back in 1998: the siktum dolla bit.  (Hat tip to Tim Montler for that.) (My comments after the proto-Trumpian ethnic-stereotyping fest… Continue reading →

  A nice, direct yet terse, advertising appeal in Chinook Jargon:      Msaika komtaks naika: naika Shon Hol: You folks know me: I’m John Hull, naika makuk msaika musmus, pi naika I… Continue reading →

I was saying the other day how ictas (“things, belongings, paraphernalia”) was among the first Chinook Jargon words to enter regional English. In terms of there even existing a community of speakers that could… Continue reading →

One of the earliest Chinook Jargon words to enter regional English, I’m finding, was ictas, used to mean “things; belongings; associated trimmings”.  From the start of publishing in Oregon, I find it sprinkled into casual… Continue reading →

Portlanders will recognize the name of Glisan. Military surgeon Rodney Glisan (1827-1890) published his “Journal of Army Life” as a book in 1874, with a good deal of discussion of his six years in the Oregon Indian… Continue reading →

Lively colloquial use of a language is gold.  Too many now-endangered or extinct languages lack clues to how they were once spontaneously spoken. I want to suggest that, of all the unexpected genres,… Continue reading →

“The Thlackamas Indians” is the headline on a pretty substantial unsigned article about the local Clackamas Chinookan tribe in the Oregon City (OR) Enterprise of Thursday, June 24, 1886 (page 1, all of columns 2… Continue reading →

File under ‘Chinook Jargon names’. (There are lots.) I wasn’t previously aware of Chief Nose-in-the-Soup. His name looks like it could be: A mocking English nickname — I hope not. A representation of… Continue reading →