Year 2 Curriculum

Teach Yourself Northern Chinook Jargon (Year 2): 10 Powerful tools

By David Douglas “Chinook-Man” Robertson, PhD with thanks to the Vadon Foundation and the Board of Directors of the Global Civic Policy Society

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.

Our Year 2 & Year 3 lessons are centered on taking what you’ve picked up from Year 1, and amplifying it into really useful Northern Chinook Jargon skills.

We carry over the Vocabulary (Chinook to English, and English to Chinook) of all the words from Year 1, and show you lots of example of real Chinook from real people.

Year 1 focused on giving you basic conversation skills.
Year 2 shows you the simple patterns that you can use to say practically anything in this language – illustrated with plenty of examples from real speakers.
- In Year 2, you also start seeing comments in each lesson that are designed to help Southern Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) speakers “translate” into and out of Northern CJ. This is because most of our learners already know not just English, but also Southern CJ. We’ll give you tips on how to translate between the two Chinook dialects.
- In this year, too, you find helpful hints about the different writing systems that have existed, besides the BC Learners Alphabet that we use here. This is because a lot of people come into our Northern dialect lessons already knowing some Southern dialect, and wanting to learn our unique, historical BC Chinook-Peipa alphabet (which we introduced in Year 1).
Year 3 will guide you to a full, independent understanding of whatever people say in Northern Chinook Jargon.