Russenorsk (; , ; English: Russo-Norwegian) is an extinct dual-source "restricted

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language 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 f ...

" language formerly used in the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

, which combined elements of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and Norwegian. Russenorsk originated from Russian traders from Kola (north-western Russia) and Norwegian

fishermen A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishers and fish farmers. Fishermen may be professional or recr ...

from

Tromsø Tromsø is a List of towns and cities in Norway, city in Tromsø Municipality in Troms county, Norway. The city is the administrative centre of the municipality as well as the administrative centre of Troms county. The city is located on the is ...

(northern

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

). It was used extensively in Northern Norway for about 150 years in the

Pomor trade The Pomor trade (; ) was carried out between the Pomors of Northwest Russia and the people along the coast of northern Norway, as far south as Bodø (town), Bodø. The trade went on from 1740 until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Pomor tr ...

. Russenorsk is important as a test case for theories concerning pidgin languages since it was used far away from most of the other documented pidgins of the world. As is common in the development of pidgins and

trade language A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a language systematically used to make communication possib ...

s, the interaction of fishermen and traders with no common language necessitated the creation of some minimal form of communication. Like all pidgins, Russenorsk had a rudimentary grammar and a restricted vocabulary, mostly composed of words essential to Arctic

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...

and trade (

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...

, etc.); however, Russenorsk was used outside of fishing and trade context during the off-season as it was not uncommon for Russians to remain in Norway during the winter.

History

Barter In trade, barter (derived from ''bareter'') is a system of exchange (economics), exchange in which participants in a financial transaction, transaction directly exchange good (economics), goods or service (economics), services for other goods ...

existed between Russians and Norwegians for 150 years in

Troms Troms (; ; ; ) is a Counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. It borders Finnmark county to the northeast and Nordland county in the southwest. Norrbotten Län in Sweden is located to the south and further southeast is a shorter border with ...

and

Finnmark Finnmark (; ; ; ; ) is a counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. By land, it borders Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland (Finland), Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norweg ...

counties. This barter was supported by the Norwegian government, and King Christian VII conferred city status to several settlements, such as

, to facilitate it. Norwegians mainly traded fish for flour and wheat from Russians. The trading went on throughout the sunny months of the year and was beneficial to both sides; Norwegians had access to cheap fish in the summer, whilst Russians had surplus

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

. Traders came from the areas near

Murmansk Murmansk () is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast in the far Far North (Russia), northwest part of Russia. It is the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle and sits on both slopes and banks of a modest fjord, Ko ...

and the

White Sea The White Sea (; Karelian language, Karelian and ; ) is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is surrounded by Karelia to the west, the Kola Peninsula to the north, and the Kanin Peninsula to the nort ...

, most often to the towns of

Vardø Vardo or Vardø may refer to: Places * Vardø Municipality, a municipality in Finnmark county, Norway *Vardø (town) (Norwegian language, Norwegian; ), , or is a List of towns and cities in Norway, town and the administrative centre of Vard� ...

, Hammerfest, and Tromsø, occasionally further south to the Lofoten islands. The earliest recorded instance of Russenorsk was in 1785. It is one of the most studied northern pidgins; many linguists, for example, Olaf Broch, studied it. Unlike equatorial pidgins, it was formed from only two languages, Norwegian and Russian. Furthermore, these languages are not from the same branch of Indo-European languages. Also unlike equatorial pidgins, Russenorsk was formed from one social class. Until 1850, Russenorsk was socially acceptable for all social classes. In 1850, Russenorsk became more limited to Norwegian fishermen, whereas Norwegian traders learnt Russian through exposure in Archangelsk and Russian trade centers, often formally studying the language to the extent that they could communicate in rudimentary Russian. This increase in Russian study caused the devaluation of Russenorsk in terms of social status. In 1917, Finland's declaration of independence from Russia caused the Russian–Norwegian border to decrease significantly. In 1919, the border disappeared completely. Furthermore, the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

limited international contact significantly, decreasing the need for the common language between Norwegians and Russians. The last such Norwegian–Russian trade occurred in 1923.

Phonology

Russenorsk uses many of the phonemes common to both Norwegian and Russian, altering phonemes only used in one. Pronunciation depended on the language background of the speaker. *, absent in Norwegian, became : (, 'how many?') → . *, absent in Norwegian, became : (, 'good') → . *, absent in Russian, became : ('half') → . *final voiced consonants, absent in Russian, became unvoiced: ('sea') → More is known about the Norwegian variety of Russenorsk due to the fact that most of the texts in Russenorsk were written by Norwegians. In the few Russian records of the language, there are examples of both and in the words (, 'to give') and (, 'captain'), for which the Norwegians used . The Russian affricate in words such as (, 'tea') was substituted by the Norwegians with the fricative .

Vocabulary

Corpora Corpus (plural ''corpora'') is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of ...

of Russenorsk consist of lists of individual words and phrases as well as records of dialogues compiled by linguists such as Just Knud Qvigstad. The corpora include c. 400 words, about half of which only appear once in the records (so-called

hapax legomena In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

); therefore, the vocabulary contained only 150–200 core words. The origin of its vocabulary is generally held to be approximately 40% Russian and 50% Norwegian, with the remaining 10% from Dutch,

Low German Low German is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language variety, language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" ...

, French, English,

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...

, and Swedish. Many words in Russenorsk have a synonym from the other primary language. *, (halibut) *, (man) *, (this) *, (not) Some words can be etymologically traced to both Norwegian and Russian, for example, (Norwegian) and (Russian). Some words have an unclear etymology; for example, or could have come from Russian, Swedish, or Finnish. Some Russenorsk words survive in the dialect of

: * (Russenorsk: , , 'to steal') * (, 'bread')

Grammar

One of the characteristics differentiating the pidgin from

jargon Jargon, or technical language, is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside ...

is its grammar; however, Russenorsk did not go through tertiary hybridization. Russenorsk is mainly influenced by Norwegian grammar, leading some to conclude that it is a variant of Norwegian with some Russian influence. A lack of

metalinguistic awareness Metalinguistic awareness, also known as metalinguistic ability, refers to the ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language and to use metalanguage to describe it. The concept of metalinguistic awareness is helpful in explaining the ex ...

amongst Russenorsk speakers may have led them to believe they were speaking the language of their interlocutor; that is, that Russians believed they were speaking Norwegian and vice versa. There are no clear verb conjugations. The main indication of a verb is the suffix , for example, (the captain is asleep in his cabin). Nominative nouns usually end with . Conjunctions used to make compound sentences or dependent clauses are , , and . is used as an interrogative word. The general word order is SVO, with some alterations for questions and sentences with adverbs. is used as the only preposition for the

oblique case In grammar, an oblique ( abbreviated ; from ) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case and, sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, ...

: *For possession: ('your watch') *For location: ('little money in the pocket'), and ('Is the captain aboard the ship?') *For temporal relation: ('tomorrow'), ('last year'). *For direction: ('I will throw you in the water'), ('How many days did you travel from here o getto Arkhangelsk?'), ('go to Arkhangelsk').

Morphology

Russenorsk does not have extensive morphology, but has some unique characteristics. The ending does not come from Russian nor Norwegian, but it may come from Solombala English. The ending , from Norwegian, is used to indicate nationality or profession, for example ('Russian'), ('Norwegian'), or ('trader'). Other morphological features are

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

, such as ('after tomorrow'), and

compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of custom medications to fit unique needs of patients that cannot be met with mass-produced formulations. This may be done, for example, to provide medic ...

, such as ('cow') and ('shirt') to ('cowhide').

Syntax

One characteristic syntactical attribute of Russenorsk is the tendency to move the verb to the final position when the sentence has adverbs. This is found in neither Russian nor Norwegian. Another is that the negator (, ) precedes the verb, but can be separated from the verb. This is unlike negation in either Russian or Norwegian, but it may have come from Finnish, in which this syntax was probable. Moreover, the use of barter-focused language established frequent use of interrogative speech in sentences.

Examples

marks Russian origin, marks Norwegian.

Sentences

Notes and references

Notes

References

Bibliography

*Broch, I. & Jahr, E. H. 1984. ''Russenorsk: Et pidginspråk i Norge'' (2. utgave), Oslo: Novus. *Broch, I. & Jahr, E. H. 1984. "Russenorsk: a new look at the Russo-Norwegian pidgin in northern Norway." In: P. Sture Ureland & I. Clarkson (eds.): Scandinavian Language Contacts, Cambridge: C.U.P., pp. 21–65. *Jahr, E. H. 1996. "On the pidgin status of Russenorsk", in: E. H. Jahr and I. Broch (eds.): Language contact in the Arctic: Northern pidgins and contact languages, Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 107-122. *Lunden, S. S. 1978. Tracing the ancestry of Russenorsk. ''Slavia Orientalis'' 27/2, 213–217. {{Authority control Extinct languages of Europe Norwegian language Russian-based pidgins and creoles Pomors Languages attested from the 18th century Languages extinct in the 19th century Barents Sea History of Finnmark History of Murmansk Oblast History of the Arctic Norway–Russia relations