Chinook Jargon

Chinook Jargon
a pidgin based largely on Nootka, Lower Chinook, French, and English, once widely used as a lingua franca from Alaska to Oregon.
[1830-40]

* * *

also called  Tsinuk Wawa 

       pidgin, presently extinct, formerly used as a trade language in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It is thought to have originated among the Northwest Coast Indians (Northwest Coast Indian), especially the Chinook and the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) peoples.

      The peoples of the Northwest Coast traded extensively among themselves and with communities in the interior. A large proportion, if not most, of Chinook Jargon vocabulary was taken from Chinook proper. It is thought that Chinook Jargon predates indigenous contact with Europeans and European Americans, which was initiated in the 18th century pursuant to the fur trade. The English (English language) and French (French language) elements in the pidgin's lexicon (vocabulary) seem to be primarily borrowings into Chinook Jargon after it had become widely adopted as the lingua franca for the fur trade.

      Chinook Jargon dispensed with some polysynthetic aspects typical of the grammar of American Indian languages—that is, with the practice of combining several small word elements (none of which may be used as a free, or stand-alone, word) to form a complex word. For example, Chinook Jargon provided free pronouns for subject and object without any corresponding affixes to identify tense, gender, possessive, or other such variables, so that “he spoke” would be translated as yaka wawa, where yaka indicated third person singular (and was occasionally used for the plural form as well) and could mean ‘he,' ‘him,' ‘his,' ‘she,' ‘her,' or ‘hers' and wawa was defined as ‘to speak,' ‘speech,' ‘word,' or ‘language.' The same phrase would be translated in Chinook proper as I-gikim ‘he spoke.' Chinook Jargon also partially adopted the subject–verb–object (SVO) syntax that is typical within the verb complex (the verb and its affixes) in northwestern American Indian languages, as in ukuk man tšaku ‘that man came.' This is different from the VSO pattern in which noun phrases and the verb complex are sequenced in Chinook proper, as in áiuu i-qísqis ‘the blue jay went on' (literally, ‘he went on [masculine singular]-blue jay').

      Indigenous, European, and European American traders helped spread Chinook Jargon from areas around the Columbia River north to southern Alaska and south almost to the present-day California border. In the late 19th century, however, English started supplanting Chinook Jargon as a lingua franca. By the early 20th century, Chinook Jargon was virtually extinct in the United States (with the exception of a few words used locally as slang), but it survived a few decades longer in British Columbia.

Salikoko Sangol Mufwene
 

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Chinook Jargon — chinuk wawa, wawa, chinook lelang, lelang Spoken in Canada, United States Region Pacific Northwest (Interior and Coast) Native speakers – Language fami …   Wikipedia

  • Chinook Jargon — Chinook Wawa Gesprochen in USA, Kanada Sprecher < 100 Linguistische Klassifikation Pidginsprache Amerindisch Chinook Wawa Offizieller Status …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Chinook jargon — ☆ Chinook jargon n. a pidgin consisting of extremely simplified Chinook intermixed with words from English, French, and neighboring American Indian languages: formerly used among traders and Indians in the coastal areas of NW North America …   English World dictionary

  • Chinook Jargon — Chinook′ Jar′gon n. peo a pidgin based largely on Nootka, Lower Chinook, French, and English, once widely used as a lingua franca from Alaska to Oregon • Etymology: 1830–40 …   From formal English to slang

  • Chinook Jargon use by English-language speakers — British Columbian English and Pacific Northwest English have several words still in current use which are loanwords from the Chinook Jargon, which was widely spoken throughout the Pacific Northwest by all ethnicities well into the middle of the… …   Wikipedia

  • Chinook Jargon language — #REDIRECT Chinook Jargon …   Wikipedia

  • Chinook Jargon — noun a pidgin incorporating Chinook and French and English words; formerly used as a lingua franca in northwestern North America • Syn: ↑Oregon Jargon • Hypernyms: ↑pidgin …   Useful english dictionary

  • Chinook Jargon — noun A pidginized Native American language used by various tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Syn: Chinook Pidgin, Chinook Wawa …   Wiktionary

  • Chinook jargon — noun Usage: often capitalized J Date: 1840 a pidgin language based on Chinook and other Indian languages, French, and English and formerly used as a lingua franca in the northwestern United States and on the Pacific coast of Canada and Alaska …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • Chinook Jargon — noun an extinct pidgin composed of elements from Chinook, Nootka, English, French, and other languages, formerly used in the Pacific North West of North America …   English new terms dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”