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Chinuk Wawa: Kakwa nsayka ulman-tilixam laska munkamtaks nsayka/As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak It The Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. 400 pp. $29.95 paper.
In an obscure 1978 dissertation, a linguist named Samuel Johnson demonstrated that most of the countless Chinook Jargon lexica compiled over two hundred years form a few distinct lineages.5 Joining the ranks of definitive dictionaries identified by Johnson is this spectacular new lexicon of our historic Northwest intercultural language, published by the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde in Oregon who, uniquely, adopted "Chinuk Wawa" as their mother tongue in the nineteenth century.
How do you say Alki, Washington State's Chinuk Wawa motto? We have long lacked reliable pronunciation guides to Chinook Jargon. It has been recorded following English spelling conventions, with the attendant ambiguities. The compilers of this new dictionary wisely recognize that most readers are literate...