Chinook Jargon


Chinook Jargon is a nearly extinct American indigenous language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest, and spreading during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia and parts of Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana while sometimes taking on characteristics of a creole language. It is partly descended from the Chinook language, upon which much of its vocabulary is based.
Chinook Jargon language use itself stretched from Alaska, the Yukon, and general British Columbia in the North, down through Puget Sound and Oregon, and in the southernmost areas it was in North California. In the east it stretched to Idaho and Montana.
Many words from Chinook Jargon remain in common use in the Western United States and British Columbia today. The total number of Jargon words in published lexicons numbered only in the hundreds, and so it was easy to learn. It has its own grammatical system, but a very simple one that, like its word list, was easy to learn. Though existent in Chinook Jargon, the consonant is rare, and English and French loan words, such as rice and merci, have changed in their adoption to the Jargon, to lice and mahsie, respectively.

Name

Most books written in English still use the term Chinook Jargon, but some linguists working with the preservation of a creolized form of the language used in Grand Ronde, Oregon prefer the term Chinuk Wawa. Historical speakers did not use the name Chinook Wawa, however, but rather "the Wawa" or "Lelang". Wawa also means speech or words - "have a wawa" means "hold a parley" even in idiomatic English today, and lelang also means the physical bodypart, the tongue.
The name for the Jargon varied throughout the territory in which it was used. For example: skokum hiyu in the Boston Bar-Lytton area of the Fraser Canyon, or in many areas simply just "the old trade language" or "the Hudson Bay language".

History

The Jargon was originally constructed from a great variety of Amerindian words of the Pacific Northwest, arising as an intra-indigenous contact language in a region marked by divisive geography and intense linguistic diversity. The participating peoples came from a number of very distinct language families, speaking dozens of individual languages. By 1840, it had creolized into a native language for some speakers. It peaked in usage from approximately 1858 to 1900, and declined as a result of the Spanish flu, World War I and residential schools.
After European contact, the Jargon also acquired English and French loans, as well as words brought by other European, Asian, and Polynesian groups. Some individuals from all these groups soon adopted the Jargon as a highly efficient and accessible form of communication. This use continued in some business sectors well into the 20th century and some of its words continue to feature in company and organization names as well as in the regional toponymy.
In the Diocese of Kamloops, British Columbia, hundreds of speakers also learned to read and write the Jargon using Duployan shorthand via the publication Kamloops Wawa. As a result, the Jargon also had the beginnings of its own literature, mostly translated scripture and classical works, and some local and episcopal news, community gossip and events, and diaries. Novelist and early Native American activist Marah Ellis Ryan used Chinook words and phrases in her writing.
In Oregon, Chinook Jargon was widely used by Natives, trappers, traders, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, missionaries, and pioneers who came across the Oregon Trail from the 1830s-1870s. In Portland's first half century there were frequent trade interactions between pioneers and Native Americans. After about 1900, when such daily interactions were less frequent, Jargon was spoken among pioneer families to prove how early they arrived out west. Many Oregonians used Jargon in casual conversation—to add humor, whimsy or emphasis and to exhibit deep knowledge of Oregon's history. Though traditions of speaking Jargon faded away among the non-Native population, some of Oregon's tribal groups continued speaking Chinook Jargon, though usage was diminished.
According to Nard Jones, Chinook Jargon was still in use in Seattle until roughly the eve of World War II, especially among the members of the Arctic Club, making Seattle the last city where the language was widely used. Writing in 1972, he remarked that at that later date "Only a few can speak it fully, men of ninety or a hundred years old, like Henry Broderick, the realtor, and Joshua Green, the banker."
Jones estimates that in pioneer times in the 1860s there were about 100,000 speakers of Chinook Jargon. The language was being used, even entire paragraphs, without translations in local newspapers from at least Oregon and Washington states. It was also used by teachers to teach natives at school, by shopkeepers to sell things, by courts as an interview tool or to judge if a person was a citizen or not, by priests to teach religion, and between children playing on the street.
In the 20th century, Chinook Jargon entered a slow decline. As late as the 1940s, native speakers were still being born in Tiller, Oregon, but by 1962 the Summer Institute of Linguistics estimated that only 100 speakers were left. In the 2000s, Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon started a three-semester university program teaching Chinook Jargon The 2010 United States Census recorded 640 native speakers.

Origins and evolution

There is some controversy about the origin of the Jargon, but all agree that its glory days were during the 19th century. During this era many dictionaries were published to help settlers interact with the First Nations people living there. The old settler families' heirs in the Pacific Northwest sent communiques to each other, stylishly composed entirely in "the Chinook". Many residents of the British Columbia city of Vancouver spoke Chinook Jargon as their first language, even using it at home in preference to English. Among the first Europeans to use Chinook Jargon were traders, trappers, voyageurs, Coureurs des bois and Catholic missionaries.
Hawaiians and American in the region made much use of it as well. In some places Kanakas married into the First Nations and non-native families and their particular mode of the Jargon is believed to have contained Hawaiian words, or Hawaiian styles of pronunciation. Similarly the Jargon as spoken by a Chinese person or a Norwegian or a Scot will have been influenced by those individuals' native-speaker terms and accents. In some areas the adoption of further non-aboriginal words has been observed. The Chinook Jargon naturally became the first language in multi-racial households and in multi-ethnic work environments such as canneries and lumberyards and ranches where it remained the language of the workplace well into the middle of the 20th century. During the Gold Rush, Chinook Jargon was used in British Columbia at first by gold prospectors and Royal Engineers; then as industry developed, Chinook Jargon was often used by cannery workers, hop pickers, loggers, fishermen and ranchers of diverse ethnic background. It is possible that at one point the population of BC spoke and understood Chinook Jargon more than any other single language, including English. Historian Jane Barman wrote,
A heavily creolized form of Chinook Jargon is still spoken as a first language by some residents of Oregon, much as the Métis language Michif is spoken in Canada. Hence, Chinuk Wawa as it is known in Oregon is now a creole language, distinct from the widespread and widely varied pronunciation of the Chinook Jargon as it spread beyond the Chinookan homeland. There is evidence that in some communities the Jargon had become creolized by the early 19th century and that would have been among the mixed French/Métis, Algonkian, Scots and Hawaiian population there as well as among the natives around the Fort. At Grand Ronde, the resettlement of tribes from all over Oregon in a multi-tribal agency led to the use of Chinuk Wawa as a common tongue among the linguistically diverse population. These circumstances led to the creolization of Chinuk Wawa at Grand Ronde. There is also evidence that creolization occurred at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz reservation paralleling Grand Ronde although, due to language revitalization efforts being focused on the Tolowa language, Chinuk fell out of use.
No studies of British Columbia versions of the Jargon have demonstrated creolization. The range of varying usages and vocabulary in different regions suggests that localization did occur — although not on the pattern of Grand Ronde where Wasco, Klickitat and other peoples adopted and added to the version of the Jargon that developed there. First-language speakers of the Chinook Jargon were common in BC, until the mid-20th century. It is a truism that while after 1850 the Wawa was mostly a native language in the United States portion of the Chinook-speaking world, it remained in wide use among non-natives north of the border for another century, especially in wilderness areas and work environments. Local creolizations probably did occur in British Columbia, but recorded materials have not been studied as they were made due to the focus on the traditional aboriginal languages.
Many believe that something similar to the Jargon existed before European contact — without European words in its vocabulary. There is some evidence for a Chinookan-Nuu-chah-nulth lingua franca in the writings of John Jewitt and in what is known as the Barclay Sound word-list, from the area of Ucluelet and Alberni. Others believe that the Jargon was formed in the great cultural cauldron of the time of Contact and cannot be discussed separately from that context, with an appreciation for the full range of the Jargon-speaking community and its history.
Current scholarly opinion holds that a trade language probably existed before European contact, which began "morphing" into the more familiar Chinook Jargon in the late 1790s, notably at a dinner party at Nootka Sound where Capts Vancouver and Bodega y Quadra were entertained by Chief Maquinna and his brother Callicum performing a theatrical using mock English and mock Spanish words and mimicry of European dress and mannerisms. There evidently was a Jargon in use in the Queen Charlotte, but this "Haida Jargon" is not known to have shared anything in common with Chinook Jargon, or with the Nooktan-Chinookan "proto-jargon" which is its main foundation.

Orthographies

There are a few main spelling variations of Chinook Jargon but each individual writer also had their own spelling variations.
1. English, French and German-Based Spelling:
In a general sense, when words derived from English or French the original English/French spellings were used. Words not derived from English/French were written in an approximate spelling based on mainstream English, French or German spelling. This would mean, for example, "cloochman" for "woman, wife", "house" for "house", and "le clou" for "nail, claw". This spelling doesn't take into account the actual mainstream pronunciation of the words in Chinook Jargon.
2. Approximate Sound-Based Spelling:
With every writer having their own variation of a fairly standardized spelling based on their own dialect, the same examples above could be "tlotchmin, haws, leklo".
3. IPA-based spelling for use on smartphones and early computers:
This was used on the Chinook Jargon Listserve in the 1990s and other places where it was/is difficult or impossible to type using actual IPA symbols.
4: IPA-based Grand Ronde Spelling:
This is only used by speakers of the Grand Ronde dialect in Oregon.
Below is a comparison chart.
Listserv SymbolGrand Ronde VariationsOther VariationsEnglish
?, 7uh?oh
!ejective
haspiration
wrounded
afather
ay, aisky
aw, owcow
bbill
ctscats
chtj, ty, sh, schurch
e, ehbet
E, V, vu, o, ebut, mutt
ey, eisay
ddog
ffather
gget
hhappy
Ibit
ieebeat
kcow, anchor
kwqueen
llove
L, hlclock
tl, thllateral affricate
mmom
nno
ono
pspit
qdeep "queen"
rrobber
ssink
shshoot
tstyle
uwoo, umoon
uêbook, put
uybuoy
wwater
xvelar fricative
Xuvular fricative
yiyear

Use

historians are well acquainted with the Chinook Jargon, in name if not in the ability to understand it. Mentions of and phrases of Chinook Jargon were found in nearly every piece of historical source material before 1900. Chinook Jargon is relatively unknown to the rest of the population, perhaps due to the great influx of newcomers into the influential urban areas. However, the memory of this language is not likely to fade entirely. Many words are still used and enjoyed throughout Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Old-timers still dimly remember it, although in their youth, speaking this language was discouraged as slang. Nonetheless, it was the working language in many towns and workplaces, notably in ranching country and in canneries on the British Columbia Coast where it was necessary in the strongly multi-ethnic workforce. Place names throughout this region bear Jargon names and words are preserved in various rural industries such as logging and fishing.
The Chinook Jargon was multicultural and functional. To those familiar with it, Chinook Jargon is often considered a wonderful cultural inheritance. For this reason, and because Jargon has not quite died, enthusiasts actively promote the revival of the language in everyday western speech.
The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon is taking steps to preserve Chinook Jargon use through a full immersion head start/preschool which is conducted in Chinuk Wawa, in hopes of fostering fluency in the language. The Confederated Tribes also offer Chinuk Wawa lessons at their offices in Eugene and Portland, Oregon. In addition, Lane Community College offers two years of Chinuk Wawa language study that satisfy second-language graduation requirements of Oregon public universities.
In March 2012, the Tribe published a Chinuk Wawa dictionary through University of Washington Press.
At her swearing-in as lieutenant governor in 2001, Iona Campagnolo concluded her speech in Chinook, observing that "konoway tillicums klatawa kunamokst klaska mamook okoke huloima chee illahie" - Chinook for "everyone was thrown together to make this strange new country."
An art installation featuring Chinook Jargon, "Welcome to the Land of Light" by Henry Tsang, can be viewed on the Seawall along False Creek in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia between Davie and Drake streets. Translation into Chinook Jargon was done by Duane Pasco.
A short film using Chinook Jargon, "Small Pleasures" by Karin Lee explores intercultural dialogue between three women of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds in 1890s Barkerville in Northern British Columbia.

Revival of the language

Chinuk Wawa was classified as extinct until the 2000s when it was revived, notably in 2014 with the release of Chinuk Wawa—As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak It by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. In 2018 a textbook for Chinook Jargon in Esperanto was published by Sequoia Edwards. In 2019 "Chinuk Wawa" became available as a language option on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own. In 2020 Chinook Jargon was added to Tatoeba.org, a website that collects and crowd-translates sentences in various languages.
During termination of aboriginal peoples by the United States government, speaking of the language was forbidden, and as a result, developed a decline of speakers. After the conclusion of the termination era with the restoration of tribes in the pacific northwest area, revival of Chinuk Wawa began. To date, there are fluent speakers of Chinuk Wawa, primarily in the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Influence on 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 20th century. These words tend to be shared with, but are not as common in, the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska and, to a lesser degree, Idaho and western Montana.

Chinook Jargon words used by English-language speakers

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