Misplaced Pages

#57942

57-562: Skookumchuck ( / ˈ s k uː k ə m tʃ ʌ k / ) is a Chinook Jargon term that is in common use in British Columbia English and occurs in Pacific Northwest English . Skookum means "strong" or "powerful", and "chuck" means water, so skookumchuck means " rapids " or " whitewater " (literally, "strong water"), or fresh, healthy water. It can mean any rapids, but in coastal usage refers to

114-527: A common language interact closely. Resulting from this contact a pidgin may develop, which may eventually become a full-fledged creole language through the process of creolization (though some linguists assert that a creole need not emerge from a pidgin). Prime examples of this are Aukan and Saramaccan , spoken in Suriname , which have vocabulary mainly from Portuguese, English and Dutch. A much rarer but still observed process, according to some linguists,

171-508: A dual genesis, positing that both origins probably have some legitimacy and that the two varieties eventually blended together. By 1840, Chinook Jargon had creolized into a native language for some speakers. In the Diocese of Kamloops , British Columbia, hundreds of speakers learned to read and write the Jargon using Duployan shorthand via the publication Kamloops Wawa . As a result,

228-566: A half-day immersion K–4 with slots for 25 students at Willamina Elementary School. Cole also started Chinuk Wawa elective classes at Willamina High School in 2011. Students there and at Willamina Middle School can earn high school and college credit for completion of the course. Lane Community College also teaches a two-year course of Chinuk Wawa. By 2012, it was discovered that there was only one person left in British Columbia who had learned Chinook Jargon from Elders. That person

285-424: A new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a pidgin , creole , or mixed language . In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include the borrowing of loanwords , calques , or other types of linguistic material. Multilingualism has been common throughout much of human history , and today most people in

342-586: A particular geographic region. For example, in Switzerland , the local French has been influenced by German and vice versa. In Scotland , Scots has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect. The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common when one language has a higher social position ( prestige ). This sometimes leads to language endangerment or extinction . When language shift occurs,

399-680: A result of widespread deaths from the Spanish flu and World War I . As late as the 1940s, native children were born in Tiller, Oregon , who grew up speaking Chinook Jargon as their first language. But by 1962, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) 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. In 2013, it

456-483: A section on Chinuk Wawa recorded by natives of the lower Columbia but not used by the elders at Grand Ronde. In 2014, the tribe made an app spanning traditional and modern vocabulary. In 2001, with funding from the Administration for Native Americans , the tribe started an immersion preschool. A kindergarten was started in 2004 by Kathy Cole, a tribal member and certified teacher, which has since expanded to

513-419: A society is called linguistic ecology . Language contact can take place between two or more sign languages, and the expected contact phenomena occur: lexical borrowing, foreign "accent", interference, code switching, pidgins, creoles, and mixed systems. Language contact is extremely common in most deaf communities , which are almost always located within a dominant oral language culture. However, between

570-416: 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

627-636: A trait that is typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. Newar has also absorbed grammatical features like verb tenses . Also, Romanian was influenced by the Slavic languages that were spoken by neighbouring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire not only in vocabulary but also phonology . English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which

SECTION 10

#1732783142058

684-658: Is French. It also makes use of English loan words and those of other language systems. Its entire written form is in the Duployan shorthand developed by French priest Émile Duployé. Many words from Chinook Jargon remain in common use in the Western United States and British Columbia. It has been described as part of a multicultural heritage shared by the modern inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. The total number of Jargon words in published lexicons

741-485: Is a belief 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 during contact. Current scholarly opinion holds that

798-514: Is embodied in Chinook. Emerging out of early contact and the fur trade, the Chinook jargon possesses at most 700 words derived in approximately equal proportions from the powerful Chinook Indians of the lower Columbia, from the Nootka people of Vancouver Island, and from French and English... jargon provided 'an important vehicle of communication for trading & ordinary purposes.' ... Chinook

855-507: Is entirely in the Duployan shorthand created by French priest Émile Duployé . The post-contact hypothesis suggests the language originated in Nootka Sound after the arrival of Russian and Spanish traders as a means of communicating between them and indigenous peoples. It eventually spread further south due to commercial use. University of Ottawa linguist David Lang has argued for this conclusion. Linguist Barbara Harris suggests

912-470: Is in the hundreds. It has a simple grammatical system. In Chinook Jargon, the consonant /r/ is rare. Such English and French loan words as rice and merci , for instance, have changed after being adopted to the Jargon, to lays and mahsi , respectively. Most books written in English still use the term Chinook Jargon, but some linguists working with the preservation of a creolized form of

969-478: Is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this phenomenon is not new, and it is not very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation of words from Latin , French and other languages into English in the 16th and the 17th centuries was more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely recognisable. Armenian borrowed so many words from Iranian languages , for example, that it

1026-458: Is the formation of mixed languages . Whereas creoles are formed by communities lacking a common language, mixed languages are formed by communities fluent in both languages. They tend to inherit much more of the complexity (grammatical, phonological, etc.) of their parent languages, whereas creoles begin as simple languages and then develop in complexity more independently. It is sometimes explained as bilingual communities that no longer identify with

1083-604: Is written in a variation of the standardized orthography of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde which differs significantly from the orthographies used by early linguists and diarists recording other versions of the Jargon: Contact language When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification . In some cases

1140-726: The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon was taking steps to preserve Chinook Jargon use through a full immersion head start/preschool that was conducted in Chinuk Wawa. The Confederated Tribes also offer Chinuk Wawa lessons at their offices in Eugene and Portland. In addition, Lane Community College offers two years of Chinuk Wawa study that satisfy the second-language graduation requirements of Oregon public universities. In March 2012,

1197-583: The Hudson's Bay Company , missionaries, and pioneers who came across the Oregon Trail from the 1830s to the 1870s. In Portland 's first half century (1840s–1890s), there were frequent trade interactions between pioneers and Native Americans. Many Oregonians used Jargon in casual conversation. Jones estimates that in pioneer times in the 1860s there were about 100,000 speakers of Chinook Jargon. It peaked in usage from approximately 1858 to 1900, and declined as

SECTION 20

#1732783142058

1254-658: 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 varied pronunciation of the Chinook Jargon. There is evidence that in some communities (e.g., around Fort Vancouver ) the Jargon had become creolized by the early 19th century, and that would have been among the mixed French/Métis, Algonkian, Scots and Hawaiian populations, as well as among

1311-468: 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

1368-541: The Yukon , and Alaska. It was the working language in canneries on the British Columbia Coast . Place names throughout this region bear Jargon names and words that are preserved in various rural industries such as logging and fishing. Linguist David Douglas Robertson and others have described Chinook Jargon as part of the shared cultural heritage of modern inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. As of 2009 ,

1425-859: The 1990s, the internet, along with previous influences such as radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has expanded and changed the many ways in which languages can be influenced by each other and by technology. Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had a profound effect on the development of Japanese , but Chinese remains relatively free of Japanese influence other than some modern terms that were reborrowed after they were coined in Japan and based on Chinese forms and using Chinese characters. In India , Hindi and other native languages have been influenced by English, and loanwords from English are part of everyday vocabulary. In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange, but that may be confined to

1482-523: The 19th century from the lower Columbia River , first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington , then to British Columbia and parts of Alaska , Northern California , Idaho and Montana . It sometimes took on the characteristics of a creole language . The contact language Chinook Jargon should not be confused with the Indigenous language Chinook . Reflecting its origins in early trade transactions, approximately 15 percent of its lexicon

1539-660: The Chinook Jargon were common in BC (native and non-native), until the mid-20th century. After 1850, the Wawa was still used in the United States portion of the Chinook-speaking world, especially in wilderness areas and work environments. Local creolization's 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. There

1596-487: The Chinook Jargon, which was widely spoken throughout the Pacific Northwest by all ethnicities well into the middle of the 20th century. These word tend to strongly index a local settler identity. Some words used to be shared with the Yukon, Alberta, Oregon , Washington , Alaska and, to a lesser degree, Idaho and western Montana . Note: The Incubator link at right will take you to the Chinuk Wawa test-Misplaced Pages, which

1653-589: The Grand Ronde reservation in Northern Oregon hired Tony Johnson , a Chinook linguist, to head its language program. Chinuk Wawa was chosen due to its strong connection to native identity on the reservation as well as being the only indigenous language still spoken at Grand Ronde. Prior to this, there were formal Chinuk Wawa classes taught by Eula Holmes from 1978 until her death in 1986. Eula Holmes' sister, Ila, held informal and sporadic classes to teach

1710-406: The Jargon had the beginnings of its own literature, mostly translated scripture and classical works , some local and episcopal news, community gossip and events, and diaries . Marah Ellis Ryan (c. 1860–1934), an early Native American activist and novelist, used Chinook words and phrases in her writing. In Oregon , Chinook Jargon was widely used by natives, trappers, traders, employees of

1767-495: The Jargon words 'wapato' (a root that tastes like a potato) and 'chaplill', the word for the bread cakes made from this root (Lyon 2016:41). The word recorded for 'king' by Drake was 'hióh' (recorded also as 'hioghe'). Lyon thought it was a match for the Wawa word hi-yú, meaning a gathering, or much, plenty. Lyon was not able to conclude whether Drake encountered people of the Northwest Coast. In 2021, Melissa Darby studied

Skookumchuck - Misplaced Pages Continue

1824-620: The Jargon, but the consensus is that the pidgin peaked in use during the 19th century. During this era, many dictionaries were published to help settlers interact with the First Nations people living in the Pacific Northwest. Local settler families exchanged communiqués that were 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

1881-613: 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. In 1997,

1938-460: The adjective follows the noun: court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior. A language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek , Latin, Portuguese , French, Spanish , Arabic , Persian , Sanskrit , Russian , German and English have each seen periods of widespread importance and have had varying degrees of influence on the native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway. Especially during and since

1995-543: The adoption of further non-aboriginal words has been observed. During the gold rush , Chinook Jargon was used in British Columbia at first by gold prospectors and Royal Engineers ; as industry developed, Chinook Jargon was often used by cannery workers, hop pickers, loggers, fishermen, and ranchers. It is possible that, at one point, the population of British Columbia spoke Chinook Jargon more than any other language, even English. Historian Jane Barman wrote: The persistence of everyday relationships between Natives and Europeans

2052-457: The cultures of either of the languages they speak, and seek to develop their own language as an expression of their own cultural uniqueness. Some forms of language contact affect only a particular segment of a speech community. Consequently, change may be manifested only in particular dialects , jargons , or registers . South African English , for example, has been significantly affected by Afrikaans in terms of lexis and pronunciation , but

2109-597: The ethnographic records and the records left by Francis Drake's expedition. She found new evidence that the people Drake met were speaking some Jargon words to Drake and his men. The pre-contact hypothesis states that the language developed prior to European settlement as an intra-indigenous contact language in a region marked by divisive geography and intense linguistic diversity. It eventually expanded to incorporate elements of European languages, with approximately 15 percent of its lexicon derived from French . The Jargon also acquired English loanwords, and its written form

2166-529: The first Europeans to use Chinook Jargon were traders , trappers , voyageurs , coureurs des bois , and Catholic missionaries . The original Jargon was a pidgin, originally used as a second language by speakers of other Native American languages in the area. It had sentence-initial negation, which is atypical of regional languages, and also didn't have typical complex morphology . It had an SVO structure , while Chinookan and Salishan languages were VSO. However, local Athabaskan languages were SOV, so this

2223-483: The language that is replaced (known as the substratum ) can leave a profound impression on the replacing language (known as the superstratum ) when people retain features of the substratum as they learn the new language and pass these features on to their children, which leads to the development of a new variety. For example, the Latin that came to replace local languages in present-day France during Ancient Rome times

2280-476: The language to the public. Henry Zenk was brought onto the project in 1998 after having previous experience with the language, documenting it in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Community classes were started in the summer of 1998, and a dictionary was released in 2012. This dictionary was compiled from the Chinuk Wawa of Grand Ronde elders, chiefly from the Hudson, Wacheno and Riggs families. The dictionary features

2337-458: The language used in Grand Ronde, Oregon , prefer the term Chinuk Wawa (with the spelling 'Chinuk' instead of 'Chinook'). Historical speakers did not use the name Chinook Wawa , but rather "the Wawa" or "Lelang" (from Fr. la langue , the language, or tongue). Wawa also means speech or words; "have a wawa" means "hold a parley", even in modern idiomatic English, Lelang also means

Skookumchuck - Misplaced Pages Continue

2394-531: 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

2451-558: The other dialects of English have remained almost totally unaffected by Afrikaans other than a few loanwords. In some cases, a language develops an acrolect that contains elements of a more prestigious language. For example, in England during a large part of the Middle Ages , upper-class speech was dramatically influenced by French to the point that it often resembled a French dialect. The broader study of contact varieties within

2508-606: 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 . In many areas it was simply "the old trade language" or "the Hudson Bay language". Whether Jargon was a post-contact or pre-contact language has been the subject of debate among scholars. In 2016, linguist John Lyon studied

2565-468: The powerful tidal rapids at the mouths of most of the major coastal inlets . Places named Skookumchuck include: Tidal rapids termed skookumchucks include: Chinook Jargon Chinook Jargon ( Chinuk Wawa or Chinook Wawa , also known simply as Chinook or Jargon ) is a language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest . It spread during

2622-537: 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, saying " konoway tillicums klatawa kunamokst klaska mamook okoke huloima chee illahie " – Chinook for "everyone was thrown together to make this strange new country [British Columbia]", lit.   ' All people go together they make this strange new land ' . An art installation featuring Chinook Jargon, "Welcome to

2679-541: The word lists collected by Francis Drake and his crew on the 1579 voyage that took them to the Oregon coast. Lyon compared the seven words and phrases found on the Native vocabulary list recorded by Drake and his men with the vocabularies of Native languages on the west coast (Lyon 2016). Of the five single words on the list, Lyon found that the word petáh, which was the Native word for a root that can be eaten raw or made into cakes called cheepe , were meaning matches for

2736-401: The world are multilingual. Multilingual speakers may engage in code-switching , the use of multiple languages in a single conversation. Methods from sociolinguistics (the study of language use in society), from corpus linguistics and from formal linguistics are used in the study of language contact. The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words. Much

2793-593: Was Jargon in use in Queen Charlotte, but this " Haida Jargon " is not known to have shared anything in common with Chinook Jargon or with the Nootkan-Chinookan "proto-jargon", which is its main foundation. There are a few main spelling variations of Chinook Jargon but each individual writer also had their own spelling variations. Jargon Chinook Alphabet (Grande Ronde): Many words are still used throughout Oregon, Washington , British Columbia,

2850-511: Was Jay Powell, a University of British Columbia anthropological linguist who had dedicated himself to the revitalization of Indigenous languages. A small group led by Sam Sullivan formed around him, organizing learning sessions and starting the BC Chinook Jargon initiative website. Sullivan's efforts to expand public awareness of Chinook Jargon have included an interview with Powell conducted entirely in that language. The interview

2907-655: Was at first considered a divergent branch of the Indo-Iranian languages and was not recognised as an independent branch of the Indo-European languages for many decades. The influence can go deeper, extending to the exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such as morphology and grammar . Newar , for example, spoken in Nepal , is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese but has had so many centuries of contact with neighbouring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection ,

SECTION 50

#1732783142058

2964-521: Was influenced by Gaulish and Germanic . The distinct pronunciation of the Hiberno-English dialect, spoken in Ireland , comes partially from the influence of the substratum of Irish . Outside the Indo-European family, Coptic , the last stage of ancient Egyptian , is a substratum of Egyptian Arabic . Language contact can also lead to the development of new languages when people without

3021-540: Was organized through Kumtuks, a British Columbia focused educational video series whose name comes from the Chinook word for knowledge. The online magazine Kaltash Wawa was founded in November 2020 using BC Chinook Jargon and written in Chinuk Pipa, the alphabet based on Dupoyan shorthand. British Columbian English and Pacific Northwest English have several words still in current use which are loanwords from

3078-437: Was probably a result of contact — a cross-language compromise. Only later did Chinook Jargon acquire significant English and French lexical items. The Jargon is influenced by individuals' accents and terms from their native languages; as Kanakas married into First Nations and non-native families, their particular mode of the Jargon is believed to have contained Hawaiian words or Hawaiian styles of pronunciation. In some areas,

3135-452: Was reported that there was one native speaker of Chinook Jargon (specifically the Grand Ronde variety). An estimated 1,000 people had oral or written knowledge of Chinook Jargon as a second language. In 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated based on the self-reported American Community Survey that around 45 people (with a margin of error of 25) spoke Chinook Jargon at home in the period 2009–2013. According to Nard Jones , Chinook Jargon

3192-522: Was still in use in Seattle until roughly the eve of World War II , especially among the members of the Arctic Club. Seattle was the last city where the language was widely used. Writing in 1972, Jones remarked that "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." There is some controversy about the origin of

3249-437: Was the language of instruction in the school for Indian children that Hills established near Victoria in 1860. ... Chinook entered the mainstream. ... It was only after mid-century, when almost all Indian adults had learned basic English in school, that everyday use of Chinook died out in British Columbia. A heavily creolized form of Chinook Jargon is still spoken as a first language by some residents of Oregon , much as

#57942