A variation on some of the oldest PNW folkloric jokes —

Haruo Aoki’s high-quality dictionary of the Sahaptian-family language that most of us casually call Nez Perce, which is Ni•mi•pu•tímt in the language itself, contains another word that makes us think about the history… Continue reading →

One of the big differences between the 2 living dialects of Chinook Jargon: ± aspiration.

More reading practice in Chinook for you, from the news of 1895!

Pidgins are by definition endangered languages. Northern Chinook Jargon is a pidgin.

In the northern dialect, we have this account of an anonymous kid who just couldn’t resist expressing himself in Chinook Writing:

Song #10 from Myron Eells’s little book, “Hymns in the Chinook Jargon Language“, 2nd (expanded!) edition (Portland, OR: David Steel, 1889):

Published after the Chinook Jargon newspaper “Kamloops Wawa” had stopped regular publication, this newspaper article in German (from the USA!) is nonetheless interesting.

Ever since my research showed that there’s a very distinct dialect of Chinook Jargon that’s historically spoken north of the Columbia River, I’ve been talking about a 2-way split, of a “Northern” versus… Continue reading →

The pictures in the Chinook Jargon newspaper “Kamloops Wawa” were always among the most popular elements in it…