Some history from one of the oldest Settler communities in Washington State, now a backwater…

One example sentence in an old Chinook Jargon dictionary made me look twice…

A good All Saints Day subject: there’s a really good article published last week up in Kamloops…

I’ve once again managed to find a connection between Halloween and Chinuk Wawa 🙂

In British Columbia, the old word < moosum > (músum) ‘sleep’ fell into disfavor because of its longstanding naughty overtones…

pʰáɬlam (< patlum > in BC spelling) is a famous old Chinuk Wawa expression…

Other Chinuk Wawa words entered English earlier, usually in Oregon and Washington, but “cheechako” can technically be called a Canadianism…

“Full of”, in Chinuk Wawa, is just plain “full”.

When I checked whether an 1897 German book’s “chicamin silver” was real Alaska Jargon, I got excited for a second by the article under a racist headline… Cannery, Haines, AK (image credit: Haines Sheldon… Continue reading →

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