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Mobilian Jargon (also Mobilian trade language, Mobilian Trade Jargon, Chickasaw–Choctaw trade language, Yamá) was a
pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
used as a
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
among Native American groups living along the
Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...
around the time of European settlement of the region. It was the main language among Indian tribes in this area, mainly Louisiana. There is evidence indicating its existence as early as the late 17th to early 18th century. The Indian groups that are said to have used it were the
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, Apalachee, Biloxi, Chacato, Pakana, Pascagoula, Taensa, Tunica,
Caddo The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language. The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, w ...
,
Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classif ...
, Houma,
Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
, Chitimacha, Natchez, and
Ofo Ofo (), stylised as ofo, was a Beijing-based Bicycle-sharing system, bicycle sharing company founded in 2014. It used a Bicycle-sharing system#Dockless bikes, dockless system with a smartphone app to unlock and locate nearby bicycles, charging ...
. The name is thought to refer to the Mobile Indians of the central Gulf Coast, but did not originate from this group; Mobilian Jargon is linguistically and grammatically different from the language traditionally spoken by the Mobile Indians. Mobilian Jargon facilitated trade between tribes speaking different languages and European settlers. There is continuing debate as to when Mobilian Jargon first began to be spoken. Some scholars, such as James Crawford, have argued that Mobilian Jargon has its origins in the linguistically diverse environment following the establishment of the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
colony of
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...
. Others, however, suggest that the already linguistically diverse environment of the lower
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
basin drove the need for a common method of communication prior to regular contact with Europeans. The Native Americans of the Gulf coast and Mississippi valley have always spoken multiple languages, mainly the languages of the other tribes that inhabited the same area. The Mobilians, like these neighboring tribes, were also multi-lingual. By the early 19th century, Mobilian Jargon evolved from functioning solely as a contact language between people into a means of personal identification. With an increasing presence of outsiders in the Indian Gulf coast community, Mobilian Jargon served as a way of knowing who was truly a native of the area, and allowed Mobilians to be socially isolated from non-Indian population expansion from the north.


Distribution

Mobilian was used from the
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...
northwest coast and area of the current
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-
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border westward as far as eastern
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and in the north from the lower
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(currently south and central
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) to the southern
Mississippi River Delta The Mississippi River Delta is the confluence of the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, southeastern United States. The river delta is a area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Isl ...
region in the south. It is known to have been used by the Alabama, Apalachee, Biloxi, Chacato, Pakana, Pascagoula, Taensa, Tunica, Caddo, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Chitimacha, Natchez, and Ofo. Although, there is some evidence that Mobilian Jargon was used about 500 miles upstream the Missouri River near the Oyo or Osage Indians during the late 18th century. Some scholars also have reason to believe that the language was used or somehow came in contact with groups using the Algonquian languages of the Northeast to Midwest, with which Mobilian Jargon shares a number of words, such as papo(s) or papoš, meaning 'baby, child', which undeniably resembles the Narragansett word with the same meaning, pápūs. It is unknown how the crossover between the languages occurred; some possibilities include direct contact with Algonquian-speaking peoples in Virginia and North Carolina, or perhaps contact with French explorers using the Algonquian language at the time. Other Europeans also learned the language, but not in a way where they understood the cultural aspects of it; just enough for them to be able to trade with the Indians.


Origins

The accepted view of the origin is that it developed from contact with the French in the 18th century. But there is obscurity in that. It seems that there was a pre-European origin that is supported through its well-established use in diverse indigenous contexts, geographic overlapping with that of Southeastern Indian groups formerly associated in multilingual paramount chiefdoms of the pre-Columbian Mississippian complex, and its indigenous grammar. Mobilian Jargon has a recorded history of at least 250 years where the first reliable evidence dated 1700. For two centuries it was socially accepted to use as a lingua franca with the outsiders they interacted with, such as traders and settlers. It is presumed that fur traders spread the language to Choctaw and Chickasaw provinces. Though Indians spoke in Mobilian Jargon to outsiders, the outsiders did not have a full understanding of how special the nature and functions of Mobilian Jargon was. Because of this, the Indians created a cultural barrier, preserving their cultural integrity and privacy from non-Indian groups. The pervasiveness of Mobilian Jargon, as a result, created its longtime survival. Mobilian Jargon is a pidginized or "corrupted"/"complex" form of
Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
and
Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classif ...
(both Western Muskogean) that also contains elements of Eastern Muskogean languages such as
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and Koasati, colonial languages including Spanish,
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, and
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, and perhaps Algonquian and/or other languages. Pamela Munro has argued that Choctaw is the major contributing language (not both Choctaw and Chickasaw) although this has been challenged by Emanuel Drechsel. He has concluded that the presence of certain Algonquian words in Mobilian Jargon are the result of direct contact between the Mobilians of the Mississippi valley and
Algonquians The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups. Historically, the peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes. T ...
moving southward. For the most part, these "loanwords" differ by only one or two letters.


Grammar

In its syntax, Mobilian Jargon was fundamentally Muskogean and compared to other southeastern Indian tribes it showed a reduced morphology. Its lexicon shares major similarities to other Muskogean languages, in particular to Chickasaw and to Alabama. Though it evolved from more complex and polysynthetic Native American languages, Mobilian Jargon has a simpler structure where verbs are not required to have subject or object affixes and the subject-object-verb ordering in the sentence is variable. It also requires a separate word after the verb to indicate tense, whereas Muskogean languages use a suffix. It has a simplified syllable and sound structure and a simplified grammar as compared to Choctaw, its primary parent language. Mobilian Jargon was at one point a Muskogean- based pidgin. It was linguistically reduced from analytical grammar. Mobilian Jargon related to Muskogean proper linguistics and historical facts. Mobilians used a lot of Western Muskogean in their spoken language. Compare the personal pronouns among Muskogean languages:


Revitalization

Mobilian has not survived as a functional language. There is documentary evidence of it in numerous historical records such as journals, diaries, reports and scholarly treatments. What was recorded, though, was very little, and it is safe to assume that Europeans did not have a full understanding of Mobilian. They believed that Mobilian was the mother of all other Indian languages, failing to notice that it was actually a hybrid of the Choctaw and Chickasaw languages. When it was no longer needed as a spoken trade language, Mobilian was lost and eventually became extinct. It was first written about in the 1700s and was spoken until the 1950s, In the 1980s elders in the Louisiana region could still recall a few words and phrases. In 2012, the Mezcal Jazz Unit of
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, France, collaborated by Internet with Grayhawk Perkins, a historian of the Muskogean nation, to make a recording titled ''Thirteen Moons'', which features "the soulful chants of ancient folk tales and more modern stories told in Mobilian."


Notes


References

* * * Drechsel, Emanuel. (1997). Mobilian Jargon: Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American Pidgin.
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* Crawford, J. M. (1978). The Mobilian Trade Language. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. * Drechsel, Emanuel. (2008). Mobilian Jargon in Historiography: An Exercise in the Ethnohistory of Speaking. * Martin, Jack B. (1998). Review of Mobilian Jargon: Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American Pidgin * Encyclopædia Britannica. Mobilian Jargon. * Drechsel, E. J.. (1983). Towards an Ethnohistory of Speaking: The Case of Mobilian Jargon, an American Indian Pidgin of the Lower Mississippi Valley. * Drechsel, Emanuel
Mobilian Jargon in Southeastern Indian Anthropology
(2001). In R. Bonney & J. Paredes (Eds.), Anthropologists and Indians in the New South. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. * "Mobilian Jargon." Houma Language Project -. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2015. * Mobilian Jargon in Historiography: An Exercise in the Ethnohistory of Speaking (n.d.): n. pag.


External links

* {{Authority control North America Native-based pidgins and creoles Languages of the United States Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast Extinct languages of North America Mississippian culture