Workshop Addresses.....

[David Robertson]

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Mike Cleven wrote [in regard to the number of
present-day speakers of Chinook Jargon who should be listed in language
catalogs]:

>
> I think it's time we gave Ethnologue a wake-up call........
>

[Dave sez] It's worth the effort, I'd say.  Pidgin or creole languages are
always a difficult case, in terms of counting the number of speakers.  But
the Chinook Jargon is certainly "less dead" or "has more speakers" than
for example the Mobilian Trade Jargon in the SE United States, which I
understand is not remembered by anyone now.  Chinook is remembered by
people, and many of these people are able to hold conversations in the
language.

What more basic way is there to measure whether a language is
alive, than this?  I'm inclined to say that Chinook Jargon should indeed
be listed by Ethnologue, and other linguistic encyclopedias, as a living
language.  It may be that there is virtually no "community" of CJ
speakers; it could even be that nobody has conversations in the Jargon
at all, but this wouldn't change the situation.  We'd still have to admit
that there are speakers of CJ, and that's the basic issue.

After all, we never would have said that Quileute or Eyak "are extinct"
just because there were only one or two speakers of each left alive...

Hayas masi kapa mesayka munk k'wlan nayka "makwst sent"!

Best,
Dave