Tilicum

[Mike Cleven]

Tom Larsen wrote:
>
> Well, this is just another example of how you can't trust everything you
> read in Ethnologue.  Kiksht is not Lower Chinook, it's another name
> (actually the native name, if I'm not mistaken) for Upper Chinook.  It
> is my understanding that there are no speakers left of any kind of Lower
> Chinook ("Shoalwater", Clatsop). Tony Johnson would probably know more
> about this than I would, though. I note in the snippets from the
> Ethnologue that were cited that they have also classed Clackamas as
> Lower Chinook.  This is also incorrect.  Clackamas was a variety of
> Kiksht (Upper Chinook).
>

Ethnologue's listing for the Jargon seems also out-of-date re numbers of
speakers etc. but since we don't have exact figures and citations it'd
be hard to provide info for them to change.  As the recent citation from
Spuzzum concerning a man of Basque descent whose native tongue was the
Jargon (and second tongue was Mandarin), Terry's mention of a cannery
foreman from Bella Bella who supervised the workplace in Jargon in the
'50s and so on....it seems there might be countable a much larger number
than the hundred or so speakers cited by Ethonologue; admittedly they're
all "scattered", as Ethnologue says, but a whole generation of Jargon
speakers (of a multitude of backgrounds) doesn't all die off at
once......

Man the cannons and boil some oil - I'm pondering the logistics of
finishing my long-abandoned education towards an MA in history and
linguistics; thesis topic possibly Jargon usage in the non-native
community in the 20th Century.  I promise to wear a big bulls-eye on my
back (and front)....

Mike Cleven
http://www.cayoosh.net (Bridge River-Lillooet BC - history)
http://www.hiyu.net (Cayoosh Jargon phrasebook/history)