Chinook Jargon

CHINOOK JARGON  () is a pidgin language that was used on the west coast of N America, roughly from California to Alaska, to facilitate communication between FIRST NATIONS groups, and between First Nations and non-aboriginals. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as simply "Chinook," this lingua franca consists of words and phrases borrowed from different aboriginal languages, including NUU-CHAH-NULTH (Nootka), Lower Chehalis and the Chinook language spoken by the people who formerly occupied the mouth of the COLUMBIA R. It also contains French and English words. During the 1880s, the OBLATE missionary Jean-Marie Le Jeune used a French shorthand system as an orthography, and later instituted the Jargon's "golden age" with a short-lived publication called the KAMLOOPS WAWA. The language, which has a small vocabulary of about 700 words, was spoken by 250,000 people at its peak but by 2000 was known by only a few. Familiar words include tyee ("chief"), skookum ("strong"), tillikums ("friends"), klahowyah ("greetings"), cheechako ("newcomer"), saltchuck ("ocean"), and POTLATCH, an adaptation of the Nuu-chah-nulth word for "giving." See also FIRST NATIONS LANGUAGES.

Reading: Charles Lillard and Terry Glavin, A Voice Great Within Us, 1998.