(Part 1 here.)  (Part 2 here.) Today: cannon shots are fired.  Worthless white men think a Sechelt translation session is a card game, and want to join in.  We learn that the first… Continue reading →

Herewith part 2 of a substantial and detailed travel story. (Part 1 here.) Eyes peeled!  You’re going to learn some new Jargon vocabulary. Lili iaka patl smok kanawi kah ilihi kopa British It… Continue reading →

Here is a travel story that’s so detailed and awesome, I want to share a whole lot of it.  Due to its length, I’ll do it in installments. So now, from Kamloops Wawa #146… Continue reading →

General Sheridan, that is.  He of US Civil War fame. We have already encountered him (in “Talk Strange Language“) as one of what we could call the Civil War Chinuk Wawa “code talkers”.… Continue reading →

  A very important message: Wik maika mamuk mimlus maika itluil: Please don’t kill yourself. Much less important is today’s grammar note.  Metaphorically, you can now stop knocking yourself out trying to express reflexive verbs in Chinuk… Continue reading →

Chinuk Wawa was used in frontier courts, in making treaties, in dealing with the cops — all the functions of the Official White-Aboriginal interface. (The image is not Chinuk Wawa.  It’s graffiti in… Continue reading →

It seems that I’ve written and written about newfound Chinuk Wawa words for “sleigh”. In a current project of databasing Father Louis-Napoléon St-Onge‘s handwritten dictionary, I encounter his entry under an English word… Continue reading →

Annie Zíxtkʷu York said, in “Thompson Ethnobotany” and the “Thompson River Salish Dictionary”: kʷúkʷns  ‘highbush cranberry’ is a Chinook Jargon loan into this southern interior BC language. This is new to me.  Any… Continue reading →

From time to time I’ve wondered how to say “shadow” in the Jargon. I haven’t found it in the best dictionary, the one from Grand Ronde. Some authorities have included “shade” and “shadow”… Continue reading →

It occurs to me that Iʹve never seen a map in Chinuk Wawa. So this was a good find. Itʹs meant to show how the house that the Virgin Mary was born in, and… Continue reading →