New discoveries again!

With a grateful tip of the hat to Professor Leslie Saxon of the University of Victoria’s Department of Linguistics.

Here’s an early western Washington settler’s recollection of his first trip “down” Puget Sound — meaning northwards — in 1848, and of pretending not to understand Chinuk Wawa once.

Here’s the staff of the Kamloops Catholic mission, who ran the “Industrial School” —

An ad in frontier-era Washington Territory didn’t have to explain its use of Chinook Jargon.

With a couple of characters speaking mixed Chinook Jargon & Chinese Pidgin English, none of it translated, thus probably lifelike.

From an evening of Bible stories told in Chinook Jargon (“Kamloops Wawa” February 1916, No. 259):

This particular idea of a “court language” doesn’t refer to speaking in the courts, with a judge.

A neat example of untranslated Chinook Jargon in a local newspaper!

From “Kamloops Wawa” #124 (January 1895), page 2, the local news in Chinuk Wawa!