Kla-How-ya—Greeting

The study, revival and use of British Columbia’s various First Nations languages is steadily gaining ground today, along with the inevitable challenges posed by spelling and pronunciation.

So it was for the explorers, fur traders and Native tribes of old: how to converse effectively in a multitude of European and Indigenous languages.

The short-term but efficient solution came to be known as the Chinook Jargon, an amalgam of various Native dialects, English and French. It’s classified as being extinct today but some words remain with us, verbally and on our maps. For example: tyee for chief, skookum for strong, tilikum for friend.

How provincial Indigenous languages are making a belated but remarkable comeback, and the story of the Chinook Jargon next week in the Chronicles.

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PHOTO: This handbook was published in Victoria as late as 1931. —Author’s Collection