‘Skookum,’ the vestige of a dead language, lives on
The northwest once had its own language and B.C. was at the centre of it
VANCOUVER— Those who have been in British Columbia may have heard it; those who grew up in the far western province may have used it. The word “skookum” pops up among the Pacific’s changing tides and high peaks from time to time without much attention on its origin.
Meaning strong or excellent, the word is a bit odd, but not so much as to never be uttered. On a Vancouver street you might be offered a compliment the likes of, “that’s a skookum jacket.”
Despite its popularity, many who say the word don’t know the story of skookum or its beginnings as part of the now dead language Chinook Wawa, which rumbled off the tongues of up to 150,000 people from Oregon to Alaska just 120 years ago.
Jay Powell, a retired University of British Columbia anthropological linguist, may well be the last known speaker to have learned the language — also called Chinook jargon — socially and still speaks it when he can. Powell remembers lumberjacks using it as a fun way to order beers in the Northwest as recently as the late ’60s.
But a century before, it was more than a novelty. It was the language of much of the province and considered by some to be the first language of Vancouver.
“When you were thinking of coming to the northwest, you needed a few things,” Powell told the Star, “a warm coat, long underwear and a Chinook jargon dictionary.”
With beginnings as a “pidgin” language for trading among Indigenous groups mostly using Chinook and various Salish languages, Canadian French and English eventually came into the fold. If one group couldn’t pronounce a word, they avoided it or changed it, Powell said.
It was the language commonly spoken by workers on the docks and in canneries on the shores of the province. As the first language to enjoy communitywide literacy, Chinook Wawa once even had its own newspaper printed in the Kamloops region of B.C.’s interior.
Over time, with the establishment of residential schools meant to smother Indigenous culture, and a growing presence of English in the region, the language faded away.
Still, Powell said, decades ago it wasn’t hard to find some who still spoke it to an extent and recalled speaking it on reserves in Northern B.C. years ago.
“We sang songs, and told stories, and made rude comments,” he said. “It was part of life.”
Eventually, as speakers passed on and took the language with them, when Powell used a Chinook Wawa word around a younger person sometimes they would remark their grandfather “used to speak like that” he said.
Still, he said, words originating in Chinook Wawa have wiggled in to common phrases across the continent and many people use them without any idea of their origin.
He said the expression “in the sticks” to refer to a remote place, or calling someone a big “muckamuck,” are Chinook Wawa words. The University of Washington has an online dictionary for the language.
But, for some reason, “skookum” stands out as one word still used widely in B.C. while remaining foreign to outsiders. Why skookum managed to last into modern times and enjoy common use in the province is fairly simple, said David Robertson, another linguist at UBC, who wrote an etymology paper on skookum in 2016; it sounds catchy to English speakers.
“‘Skookum’ as we use it nowadays fits into a really prestigious cultural space: synonyms for ‘cool,’ ” he said.
“Just as ‘groovy’ won’t quite go away, ‘skookum’ sticks stoutly with us.”
While skookum is recognized by people in Oregon and Washington, where it is the name of a brand of apples among other items, B.C. is the only place it seems to seep into regular conversation, Robertson says.
The province is the “skookum epicentre” he said, adding the word even had a cameo in the 2004 film “The Incredibles,” which was written by American Brad Bird, who hails from the northwest.
Robertson’s paper outlines how the origins of skookum include it being used to describe a kind of demon, making it a noun as well as an adjective. It has also been used as a synonym for Sasquatch.
Place names using skookum are dotted across the province, such as Skookum Lake or Skookumchuck rapids. Chuck refers to water.
But his own exploration of it found while it is often used as an adjective, references of the word in the noun form are rarer.
Now, he said, it exists often as a regional brand name for companies in the Pacific Northwest and is likely to live on in B.C.
In British Columbia, Powell still speaks Chinook Wawa when he can. Recently, he held an interview in the language with B.C. MLA Sam Sullivan, himself a Chinook Wawa enthusiast, via an organization highlighting B.C. culture called Kumtuks.
The organization’s name is Chinook Wawa for “knowledge.”
Over the last decade some community events have tried to revive interest in it, including holding Chinook Wawa sessions to help teach the language.
He said people in the Pacific Northwest should take pride in the language, suggesting that the 150th anniversary of B.C. joining the Canadian confederation next year is an opportunity to spur interest in it again.
Reviving languages is difficult though, Powell said. It’s a challenge to find people who can teach such a language when no one feels comfortable speaking it.
But still, he said, the history of it should be taught in public schools.
“It would be an interesting insert in a local history class,” he said. “But that’s never happened.”