Klahowya, nika tillcum

October 7, 2018 2:40 PM

100,000 people from the California / Oregon border to the Inside Passage spoke this language, and it was used in legal courts and newspapers from 1800 to 1905. So what happened to Chinook Jargon, also known as Chinook wawa?

How trade shaped an Amerindian Creole in the Pacific Northwest.
Chinook Wawa at the Oregon Encyclopedia. A Fun And Exciting Look At Chinook Jargon

Kahta Mamook Kopa Chinook Wawa - How to speak Chinook
more Language Resources


The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the most endangered languages in the world

posted by the man of twists and turns (8 comments total)

Great post, thanks for these links. There is also a very active Chinook Jargon blog.

I've come across the occasional reference to a "Kaigani Jargon" - the Kaigani being Haida speakers who in the recent past moved to SW Prince of Wales Island in SE Alaska. This was presumably a North Coast equivalent trade language, perhaps necessary because Haida, Tlingit and Sm’algyax̣(Tsimshianic) are three fairly deeply disconnected language isolates from both each other, and from all the rest of the Indigenous languages of the Americas (which probably reflects an extraordinarily long continuous history of this very fragmented landscape).
posted by Rumple at 2:47 PM on October 7, 2018 [5 favorites]

Thanks for posting this!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:19 PM on October 7, 2018

It greatly distresses me to hear time after time of the elimination of languages. To hear that something different was purged just because America must be rolled flat and made homoginous.

I just always feel a greater and greater shame in the history and short-sightedness of my nation. I wish we would embrace the "Nation of Immigrants" narative that we so proudly (but poorly) cling to when we chaistise other countries for their fear of new ideas.

Please folks, tell me I am wrong and that there is a strong movement in the modern day to create "The Great Melting Pot" instead of "The Great Strainer"...
posted by FleetMind at 3:23 PM on October 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

Skookum!
posted by humboldt32 at 3:27 PM on October 7, 2018 [8 favorites]

Don't fall in the salt chuck!
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 5:02 PM on October 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thank you for this post! I've been looking for Chinook Jargon resources lately, because it really helps understand the place names in Washington State. Not five miles from where I live is Cultus Bay, which is right next to Useless Bay, and I am delighted that they mean the same thing!
posted by surlyben at 6:44 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think it's fascinating that Chinook Jargon picked up "kanaka", a Hawaiian word. They seem like such distant cultures! But they're not really, a lot of Hawaiians sailed to the west coast in the 19th century and there was a lot of interaction.
posted by Nelson at 1:01 AM on October 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

Chinook wawa at Languagehat.com
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:00 AM on October 11, 2018 [1 favorite]