Hayne & Taylor re Yukon CJ

[Mike Cleven]

At 09:31 PM 1/30/99 -0800, Liland Brajant ROS' wrote:
>David Robertson skribis kaj Mike Cleven prikomentis:
>>
>>>*page 87:  'The Indians talk a mixture of English and Hudson Bay
>>>[presumably Chinook Wawa] trading jargon -- a word here and a word there,
>>>and the rest by signs.'
>>
>>Ameslan is everywhere......
>
>As long as we're being picky about whether HBTJ and CJ were the same, I
>might as well point out that the "signs" referred to here were almost
>certainly *not* Ameslan.  Ameslan (or ASL -- both are abbreviations for
>"American Sign Language") and the aboriginal sign language of the Great
>Plains of North America are two completely independent languages, and in
>fact two completely different *kinds* of languages.

I know; I was trying to be cute (paranoid-cute), not accurate.  As far as I
know, the sign language in use on the Coast and a slightly different one on
the Plateau were also completely different form the sign language in use on
the Prairies/Plains, except insofar as much as the Plateau version may have
been influenced by the Voyageurs (and the coastal one by worldwide maritime
hand languages of the time).