Annals of Astoria

[Ross Clark (FOA LING)]

 Working from memory here, but I don't believe there's any mention in
Vancouver's account of recruitment of local interpreters. What you get is
comments that people understood Nootka here, here and here, and then as soon
as you get into Puget Sound and the Gulf, that they didn't understand Nootka
at all. I would guess that they got by as best they could with gestures and
so on. They might have picked up a few Salish words, but I don't think
there's any vocabulary extant. Vancouver himself was constantly frustrated
in his attempts to learn local languages. They didn't pick up Nootka again
until they got to the north end of the passage, where, as they rightly
perceived, people knew it as a second language from overland trade links
with the west coast.

Ross Clark

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cleven
To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Sent: 27/01/2002 11:56 p.m.
Subject: Re: Annals of Astoria

It's interesting to consider who Vancouver had on board for translators
on the inland sea; is anyone familiar enough with his logs to know
whether they used the Nootka Jargon with the locals, through an
interpreter most likely; it's been unclear to me in the counts I've read
exactly what they spoke to the chief of, say, Homulchesan (Xwm7'letsx7wn
or something like that in Squamish) at the mouth of Burrard Inlet; it
seems unlikely that Nootka was spoken there; I'd guess they'd taken on a
Straits Salish speaker somewhere en route, but what they spoke to
him/her remains an issue.  English pidgin mixed with Nootka Jargon,
maybe?