CHINOOK JARGON AS A BC ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE: The following is an argument I wrote up as a grad student, a few years back. It’s keenly relevant now, eh?
Listening to a podcast in American English, I was struck by a phrase used: “doing God knows what“.
Still another version of the Civil War “code talking” Chinook Jargon anecdote/joke!
The Seattle Times’ Nick Deshais (who used to report here in Spokane) has a great article in that paper’s “Traffic Lab” series:
Let me echo the sentiments of Bright and Olmsted!
The farthest southeast that I’ve found accounts of people speaking Chinuk Wawa is in Modoc-Klamath country of far south-central Oregon, which abuts Achumawi territory, in the northeastern corner of California.
My thanks go to Gaye Schafer for sharing this book of her ancestor’s frontier-era memories of Oregon, and other Pacific NW areas.
Are ‘fast’ & ‘slow’ ever Adjectives in Chinuk Wawa? Nope.
Naika tloosh tilihum (my good friends),
The Secwépemc word suptsín, ‘beard’, shows up in the Chinook Jargon newspaper!
One of the persistent urban legends about Chinook Jargon has been that there are Russian words in it. Uh-uh.
