Themes of hybridity and mixing (culturally, racially, linguistically, etc.) are woven throughout Diamond Grill, right from the beginning. In the passage we analyzed in class, Wah traces the history of Chinese-Canadians through the evolution of mixed grill– and the evolution of language along with them, from “mixed grill” at the beginning to “mixee grill!” at the end. Later on in the book, Wah takes up this mixed language again, this time looking at how “high muckamuck,” a Chinook jargon word, ended up in his family’s vocabulary, and in the cook’s slang as “you mucka high” (“Sitcum Dollah Grampa Wah Laughs as He Flips” pages 68-70). Included in this chapter is a footnote on Chinook jargon– something I had a passing familiarity with but had never studied in detail. As I did more research, it became clear just how deeply hybrid the language in this chapter is.

As it says in the footnote, Chinook jargon was created in order to facilitate trade, taking words from Chinook and Nuuchanuulth, French, English, and other First Nations languages. Chinook jargon is more than just an assembled group of different words, however. Words and mixed to become phrases, and pronunciation is sometimes swapped from tongue to tongue. Looking at a Chinook jargon dictionary, it’s clear that the language surfaced from a practical environment– with only about 500 words, the vocabulary is bare-bones and the grammar is simplified about as much as it can be. However, the language is suited well for its purpose. I had a great time looking through one of the dictionaries (here‘s another one) I found online. “Olo – Hungry   also means thirsty; in combination with other words can mean to need or to want, i.e. olo moosum – to be sleepy, to need sleep” for example.

Chinook jargon is more than a linguistic hybrid, however. It is the product of cultural meshing, of transaction, of communication out of necessity. More than a product, it is the very thing that facilitated this meshing in the first place. As Fred’s family slips bits of their native languages into English (his grandmother’s “oof-da,” for instance) they are also asserting a bit of their culture into a world that requests (and demands) homogenization and assimilation.

 I relied heavily on this well-cited source for basic information on Chinook jargon, and here’s an interesting modern take on its legacy.