Lambert, Dale and Laura Lambert. 1998. Washington: Past and present. East Wenatchee, WA: Directed Media, Inc. This is an elementary-school textbook about Washington state for Washington students. I invite comment on some points… Continue reading
About CHINOOK JARGON!: This site is my way of sharing my ongoing discoveries about the Pacific Northwest’s unique, historic “national language”, Chinuk Wawa a.k.a. Chinook Jargon — and making a living using my… Continue reading
Still asking for you, my reader, to tell me if you believe there are any clear signs of stabilized pidgin / trade languages on the northern PNW Coast in the following reports…
There’s an obscure & obsolete Chinook Jargon word for ‘lend; borrow’ that came from “Chihalis” (Lower Chehalis Salish), said George Gibbs in 1863.
Continuing to examine John Box Hoskins’s 2nd NW coast journal, I ask you: Is there much communication here that can’t be explained as the use of a lot of gestures and a few… Continue reading
Back to the grindstone. Here we start Part 2 of our investigation into the assembled journals from one ship’s early fur-trading visits to the Pacific Northwest coast.
One of the many delightful little mysteries of Chinook Jargon is a word that chup henli (Dr. Henry Zenk) turned up in his important research into Grand Ronde’s variety of Chinuk Wawa.
There’s so much Lower Chehalis Salish influence, largely undocumented before my research, in Chinuk Wawa.
Languages of the northern Pacific Northwest coast have an odd form of word for ‘cat’, in all 3 unrelated language families:
Continuing our research on the earliest Native contacts with Newcomers on the Pacific Northwest coast is BC judge F.W. Howay’s “Voyages of the “Columbia” to the Northwest coast, 1787-1790 and 1790-1793” (Portland, OR… Continue reading
