Tag Archive: folk linguistics

1 Comment

Mencken on Chinook Jargon’s influence

by

H.L. Mencken‘s famous 1945 book on “The American Language” (Supplement 1) gets into the subject of Chinook Jargon’s influence on our English, on pages 310-311. I hear a wisely skeptical voice in his… Continue reading →

0 Comments

Indian names

by

Presented, for your consideration: outsiders’ folk-linguistic perceptions of Indian names.  White folks love thinking about them. They have weird phonology… We have found that the easiest way to pronounce certain Indian names is to… Continue reading →