Certain words, eras, cultures and little surprises

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Well, I wouldn't touch this thread with a 20-foot mouse extension cord.

But... the Northwesterners on the group are probably familiar with
Callahan's cartoons.  (Some of us probably have had the pleasure of
meeting him around Portland, as well.)  Anyway, here are a couple of his
on the subject of dogs as, um, nutrition, presented with examples the
outraged mail he received.

http://www.callahanonline.com/calhat18.htm

http://www.callahanonline.com/calhat4.htm

(My favorite in that collection, by the way, is the "Sally Struthers Car
Alarm."  Ah, Callahan, one of my guilty pleasures.)

I am a bit delicate in my Web presentations in order to avoid attracting
controversy to the Jargon, revising terms such as "Chinaman" to
"Chinese," for example, when they appear in general context not
referring specifically to actual usage in the frontier Jargon.  It's not
inappropriate when presented in a historical context--but currently a
very "hot button" for some.

I might take this opportunity to mention that the archives of the
Salishan and Chinook lists are now available to the public in archive
form.  I think this is great--but all posters might wish to be aware
that their messages to this membership list do now find their way onto
the Web (and probably, as many other messages in Web digests do, might
also show up indexed individually in the search engines).  (See
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/chinook.html)

There's this great program on the educational channel here, shown around
4 am (apparently for an audience of school VCR's) on speaking Japanese
for beginners.  It's lively and fun.  They sometimes explain quirky
little cultural details following this terrific animation of the earth
colliding with a meteor or something, under the warning, "Culture
Shock!"  I should cook up a little graphic like that to place beside
terms which have shifted in meaning over the years (such as "siwash,"
which became an epithet but has apparently reverted to a generically
descriptive term, and "mamook," which took on a certain adolescent
connotation for years which has also faded).

Alki,

Jeff


On Mon, 25 Jan 1999 11:57:04 -0800, you wrote:

>> While we're really far off-topic here, can I ask why so many Sioux dog
>> jokes at powwows?  

>           Probably because some of the Northwestern
>	tribes that hunted on the plains didn't eat dogs
>	and thought the Siouxian people (and Lewis and Clark) barbarians
>because
>	of the practice. I believe the Nez Perce were most outspoken in
>this
>	view.
>
>	Which reminds me of a joke my friend Yvonne Marie, a good
>Catholic
>	Sioux gal, used to tell:
>