A Voice Great Within Us: The Story of Chinook

Ronald Henry is director of the School of Translators and Interpreters
at Laurentian University.

In this introduction to Chinook (which is more for the layman than the
linguist), the authors peer into the history of Chinook in search of the
voice within British Columbian language. This skookum short story of
Chinook, as recounted by two men, tells of people’s language
experience as they translate their reality into words. It also shows
that this language lingers here and there as a true potlatch of words
now recorded on pehpah.

The existence of the Chinook language—its origin, evolution, and
demise—is revealed as a shadow of the country’s history. Everyone
came together—Native, French, English—and invented a new instrument
of communication. Although the dominant King George ideology prevailed,
Chinook inhabits colloquial “west talk” and the gazetteer names
places from the Klootch Canyon, to Lebahdo, to Tumtum Creek and Siwash
Bay.

The lexicon provided is composed of some 300 wonderful Chinook words,
many of which reflect European components of the language.