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Nootka Jargon or Nootka Lingo was a pidginized form of the
Wakashan Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...
language Nuučaan̓uł, used for trade purposes by the
indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are composed of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and political identities. They share certain beliefs, traditions and practices, such as the centrality of sal ...
, when communicating with persons who did not share any common language. It was most notably in use during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was likely one precursor to Chinook Wawa, in Chinook Wawa's post-contact-form. A small number of words from Nuučaan̓uł (formerly called the Nootka language, thus the English names of its pidgin) form an important portion of the lexical core of Chinook Wawa. This was true, both in Chinook Wawa's post-contact
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 ...
phase, and its latter creole form, and remains true in contemporary Chinuk Wawa language usage.


Early origins

It is believed by theorists that Nootka Sound was a traditional trading hub for coastal First Nations groups long before contact with
Europeans Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (20 ...
. Russian and Spanish ships are believed to have been among the first colonizers to reach the west coast of
Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...
, followed closely by the British who anchored at ''
Yuquot Yuquot , also known as Friendly Cove, is a small settlement of around six people—the Williams family of the Mowachaht band—plus two full-time lighthouse keepers, located on Nootka Island in Nootka Sound, just west of Vancouver Island, British C ...
'' (aka
Friendly Cove Yuquot , also known as Friendly Cove, is a small settlement of around six people—the Williams family of the Mowachaht band—plus two full-time lighthouse keepers, located on Nootka Island in Nootka Sound, just west of Vancouver Island, British C ...
) in 1788. There is at least one account of British and Spanish interpreters learning Nootka Jargon, which consisted mostly of ''nuučaan̓uɫ'' words, but also took words, such as ''sail'' and ''stow'' from the Europeans with whom trade and interaction were occurring.


Documentation

These sources state that Early European mercantilists, operating in the region, created word lists for the jargon; most notably,
Captain James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and ...
documented 268 lexical items in his journal. John Jewitt also listed 87 vocabulary words, along with definitions in English, in his 1815 publication of ''A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, only survivor of the crew of the ship'' Boston, ''during a captivity of nearly three years among the savages of Nootka Sound: with an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives''.


Relation to Chinook Wawa

Nootka Jargon was the principal medium of communication between the Europeans and First Nations people for 20–30 years. It is argued the colonizers used this simplified version of Nuučaan̓uł, which they had become familiar with through maritime trade, when they continued their journeys down the Pacific Northwest Coast towards the mouth of the
Columbia River The Columbia River ( Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia ...
. About 5% of the Chinook Wawa lexicon originates in Nuučaan̓uł words, though the word-frequency for words of Nuučaan̓uł origin is higher in everyday Chinook Wawa speech and text. As to be expected when nonnative speakers are the language brokers of a contact language form, there were significant
phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
changes (see below), as well as a few morphological discrepancies in the way that words of Nuučaan̓uł origin entered the post-contact form of Chinuk Wawa.


Linguistic features

As referenced above, theorists suggest that the words of Nuučaan̓uł origin found in post-contact Chinook Wawa were introduced by Europeans who had never learned to speak the full Nuučaan̓uł language. This is evidenced by predictably systematic changes found in Chinook Wawa that differ from the original Nuučaan̓uł language forms. These systemic changes would logically be made by native speakers of
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
, in this case, principally English and French speakers. These include the replacement, of glottalized ejectives,
uvular Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not prov ...
stops and
fricatives A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
, and the
velar fricative A velar fricative is a fricative consonant produced at the velar place of articulation. It is possible to distinguish the following kinds of velar fricatives: *Voiced velar fricative, a consonant sound written as in the International Phonetic Alph ...
, with consonants found in the sound inventories of English and French, such as /b/, /d/, /g/, and /ʃ/.


See also

*
Haida Jargon In the 1830s a pidgin trade language based on Haida, known as Haida Jargon, was used in the islands by speakers of English, Haida, Coast Tsimshian, and Heiltsuk.Lyle Campbell (1997) ''American Indian Languages'', p. 24 See also * Nootka Jargon ...
* Chinook Jargon *
Medny Aleut language Mednyj Aleut (also called Copper Island Creole or Copper Island Aleut) is an extinct mixed language spoken on Bering Island. Mednyj Aleut is characterized by a blending of Russian and Aleut (primarily Attu) elements in most components of the ...


References

{{reflist North America Native-based pidgins and creoles Chinook Jargon