Frederick Roehrig: A forgotten name in Salish linguistics

Abstract

Professor Frederick Louis Otto Roehrig, a distinguished philologist, linguist, and polyglot, traveled broadly in North America doing research on languages from several families. His research in the Pacific Northwest resulted in vocabulary lists from several Salish languages. Because the collected data often represent several dialects of the same language, they allow us to see some details about a language at the time of early contact. For example, Roehrig’s lists are useful for the study of variation and change within the Central Salish language, Halkomelem.