The other day, I wrote about discovering another intertribal waterfront community, Ballast Island on the Seattle waterfront, that seemed to be consistently connected with Chinuk Wawa…

Guess which dialect of Chinuk Wawa they were talking in north-central Washington at the Turn of the Century?

Tune unknown, which may be a clue for us.

Clause-initial pus ikta, pus kata, and pus kah (synonymous with plain ikta, kata, and kah ‘what?, how?, where?’) in northern-dialect Chinook Jargon as spoken by Salish people is probably influenced by how their Indigenous languages work.

A search through my website indicates I haven’t yet verbalized the following observations:

Still more wonderful stuff from an eyewitness observer & speaker in BC!

Back when Alaskan newspapers existed only in California, someone was unfamiliar with the pronunciation of “Yakima” & with Chinuk Wawa.

Many thanks to David Gene Lewis PhD for his phenomenal research, presented over the years on his website, The Quartux Journal.

Today’s report is very data-heavy, so it will be valuable for research into the Canadian “residential schools”, and for genealogy.

Chinook Jargon is the only living descendant of “Nootka Jargon”.