James “Jim” A. Wood‘s letter in Chinook Jargon to Professor Edmond Meany, June 25, 1907, regarding the upcoming (1909) Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Typically for the West, we were in a rush: the expo was planned… Continue reading →

So I take it: <hwshupmenqun> in Hul’q’umi’num’ of Vancouver Island, BC is said to mean “speak broken English”. In Americanist notation, that’d be xʷšəpménqən. It’s thought to be “probably from ‘shipman’ “. (With… Continue reading →

I’ve noticed this expression a few times through the years in my travels through the expansive Chinuk pipa shorthand world: makmak, with a human as its direct object. I couldn’t find a better illustration… Nowhere… Continue reading →

I heard a Native American pidgin in an old Top 20 song today! Or I was hearing a creole of French that’s native to Louisiana! Or it was an amazing but believable African… Continue reading →

“Law”, like most English-origin loanwords in Chinook Jargon, was studiously omitted from the frontier-era vocabularies. You have to figure: reasons of economy. Paper was expensive, ink too. Both were rare. Anyone who could… Continue reading →

Chinuk-wawa was used to educate people about science, social studies and more — over 100 years before the revitalization and immersion program at Grand Ronde. In his Kamloops Wawa newspaper, Father Le Jeune himself didn’t… Continue reading →

Ah, some deviltree! Just in time for Halloweeeen! 🙂 q̓ə́l-q̓əl stík:  Literally ‘hard-hard wood’. Finding this in C. Snow’s field notes with the meaning ‘oak’, I checked his sometimes interesting CJ phonetics against the Grand Ronde dictionary. Surprising… Continue reading →

I’m reposting this because, in the course of my work, I’ve revisited it and come up with what I think is the intended translation. Enjoy this lovely, elusive unicorn of a Chinuk Wawa sentence!… Continue reading →

Maybe she’s łəw̓ál̓məš — Lower Chehalis: Basket Maker, West Coast Kloochman (click to embiggen)

Thanks to the powers that be, I have a copy of “Across the Wide Missouri“, the famous Hollywood movie with lots of Chinuk Wawa dialogue and a weirdly ingratiating Clark Gable. It would… Continue reading →