1909: A hilarious Jargon song for Christmas
A nice local report of post-frontier Native celebration of Christmas in Umatilla County, northeastern Oregon.
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1891: Poor old Angeline, getting tooted on?
Not do diminish the importance of this substantial human-interest piece about a major Native figure, but I suspect we have a rare Chinuk Wawa ‘fart’ sighting here…
SO MANY Métis words in interior PNW languages (Part 1: Dakelh)
In this mini-series, I’m not going to list all the Chinuk Wawa, and later English, loans found in each language. I’ll do that in separate articles. The idea here is to demonstrate to… Continue reading
1868: A newfound quote + 3 Indigenous speakers of BC Métis French
I’ve written a number of times about the Métis French that was BC’s lingua franca until Chinook Jargon — another Métis language — took over…
Loanwords into BC Interior Languages: Métis Traces
Continuing our exploration of Métis connections to the Pacific Northwest landscape, let’s feature several nouns from the interior of British Columbia.
1879: Capt. Jemmy Jones
I’ve been to the one on Tillicum Road, and I’ve seen baby strollers on the ice, but never a rascally rogue like Jemmy Jones!
1787-1788: Colnett, and no existing NW Coast pidgin
A British commander travels much of the Pacific Northwest coast in the interest of fur trading…
1892: “The Approach of Spring” poem
Ah, that rarest of creatures, a poem in Chinuk Wawa that rhymes! (Scroll to the end for an extraordinary “back-translation” challenge.)
1895: How to say trout in Chinook
Voici l’anglais avec son sang-froid habituel!
1897: Yaka sick
In 1897, a number of Northwest US newspapers were passing around a supposed quotation of a big political personality, and embellishing it…