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?
If you’ve found your way to this blog by typing “head hunting jargon” into a search engine, let me say, Beware. Two reasons: First: Head hunting was never a big thing in the… Continue reading →
How to write in Chinook Jargon? Thanks for voting! Share with friends so they can vote too! –David Douglas ROBERTSON–
Chinookers will recognize “callipeen” as a Jargon word for “rifle”–or generically for “gun”. I’m more used to the synonym “maskit” (musket), but both are valid. Like a lot of languages’ words for this… Continue reading →
Do check out Omniglot.com. It’s an extensive collection of the world’s writing systems. There’s something fascinating and eye-opening about seeing the many ways humans have invented to write their languages. I’ll have a… Continue reading →
If you were going to give a talk about Chinook Jargon at an elementary school, What would be your shortlist of grade-school Chinuk Wawa Words? I might for example go to the most… Continue reading →
I have just read a long JPCL review of Geo Lang’s “Making Wawa” book. The reviewer lists every page where George could have cited him. (The reviewer.) I’d like to find copies of… Continue reading →
The textbook for a linguistics course I’m teaching notes a distinct western Canadian dialect of English. For distinct lexical features, it pretty much only mentions “skookum”. I enjoyed the opportunity to expand on… Continue reading →
National Public Radio ran an interview this morning with Timothy Egan, the author of a new biography of Edward Curtis. It was fascinating, and it’s worth a listen. The book is titled Short Nights of… Continue reading →
Here’s a lexical item that could only come from Pacific Northwest English: siwash ducks. This is a Chinook Jargon loanword siwash ‘Indian, aboriginal’ modifying a native English word. It refers to the various species… Continue reading →
BC Indigenous people’s Chinuk pipa script: History, analysis and texts. This is a paper I gave at the 47th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages in Cranbrook, BC on August 3rd, 2012. In it,… Continue reading →
