Teach Yourself

Teach Yourself Northern Chinook Jargon (Year 1)
By David Douglas Robertson, PhD

Tlahowyum! “Hi!”

This course will let you “teach yourself” the unique Northern Dialect of the Chinook Jargon language. (Call it “CJ” for short.)

You can do that in a literal way, without anyone else.

Or, you can use this course along with a friend, a community member, a teacher, or in our free online Zoom classes and videos.

This is set up as a 3-year course, having 10 units in each year, so there are 30 units total.

Every unit in this course will have 6 parts in it:

  1. A Lessonin how the language works,
  2. “Wawa Chinook”, which is a conversation between 2 or more people,
  3. Discussion Notes, to get you (and any other students / teacher) talking and thinking about what we’ve shown you,
  4. Reading/talking exercises to practice that knowledge (this is the core! You’ll be learning CJ by talking!), and
  5. Check Your Understanding, on a real example of the language being used.
  6. Vocabulary (Chinook to English, and English to Chinook)of all the words taught so far,

Year 1 will focus on giving you basic conversation skills.

Year 2 will show you the simple patterns that you can use to say practically anything in this language.

Year 3 will guide you to a full, independent understanding of whatever people say in Northern Chinook Jargon.

@learners and @instructors, please end me sound recordings, or videos, of yourselves! You can record the Wawa Chinook conversations, and/or the Vocabulary words, and/or your answers to the Reading/Talking Exercises!

We might put you into the podcasts & videos we’re making of these lessons! I’m at spokaneivy@gmail.com


Year 1 Curriculum

Individual Lessons and Supplementals can be downloaded separately below. Or, you can download the complete 10 lessons plans (161 page PDF).

LessonSupplemental
p1-2 Title page and Introduction (2 page PDF)n/a
p.3-4 BEFORE WE GET STARTED: Here are 11 words we’ll be using (2 page PDF)n/a
p.5-6 Lesson Plans List (2 page PDF)n/a
p.7-9 Lesson 1: All about Chinook Jargon; greetings; question words; interjections (3 page PDF)p.10-11
p.12-16 Lesson 2: Vowel sounds; yes/no questions; pronoun YAKA; preposition KOPA; adverb WUHT (5 page PDF)p.17-18
p. 19-25 Lesson 3: Consonants that English also has; the rest of pronoun YAKA; “this/that” OKOK; verb CHAKO; simple commands; Indirect Objects and more; more KOPA senses; TUMTUM emotions; “be-there” (7 page PDF)p.26-28
p.29-35 Lesson 4: Indigenous consonants; plural personal pronouns; “silent IT”; helping-verbs “want” & “know how”; adverb KAKWA; verbs aren’t marked (7 page PDF)p.36-41
p.42-47 Lesson 5: Spelling tricks; introducing hypothetical POOS; ILEP comparative / superlative; more family members including kids; “exist” & “live at”; silent “IT/THEY” is limited to objects / subjects (it can’t be with prepositions) (6 page PDF)p.48-55
p.56-62 Lesson 6: Chinook Peipa vowels; bigger numbers; “everybody”; question words = indefinites; “come BC” and “go store”; “they” = Passive; “little long time” & “un-long time” (7 page PDF)p.63-71
p.72-77 Lesson 7: Chinook Peipa straight-line consonants; numbers; motion for a purpose; silent “and/or”; “too/excessively” (6 page PDF)p.78-89
p.90-97 Lesson 8: Chinook Peipa curving consonants & dot “h”; SKOOKUM adverb; adverb positions; motion verbs including TL’AP (KOPA); time adverbs; numbers above 10; TUMTUM ‘think’; quantities first! (8 page PDF)p.98-112
p.113-121 Lesson 9: How to put Chinook Peipa letters together; noun + pronoun YAKA/TLASKA possession; X-TOWN/Y-ILAHI; more TILIHUM “people”; more TANAS- “little” (9 page PDF)p.122-138
p.139-143 Lesson 10: Chinook Peipa tricks; “give” (and give back) & “send”p.144-161

Year 2 Curriculum

Currently in production.

Year 3 Curriculum

Currently in production.

Additional Resources

Chinook Jargon: Word a Week with video, downloadable worksheets and answer sheets.