Dakelh/Yinka Dene & CJ

[Dave Robertson]

Hi, please read all the way down; this is from one of the best websites I've
ever seen - from the Dakelh people in B.C.

http://cstc.bc.ca/yinkadene/contact.htm

When Europeans first entered our territory in 1793, our people did not speak
European languages, and no European could
speak any of our languages. Indeed, even now, there are very few outsiders
who can speak our languages. How did the
Europeans communicate with us?

The fur traders brought three languages with them. The officers or
"gentlemen" generally spoke English as their first
language; most of them were Scotsmen and spoke a Scots dialect of English.
The men were mostly French-speaking
Canadians. The officers could often speak French, which they learned as they
worked their way Westward from Montreal.
Many of the fur traders learned to speak Cree on the prairies. Cree was also
one of the languages of the métis people who
over time came to represent a significant portion of the Hudson's Bay
Company people. The fur traders employed small
groups of Iroquois hunters, but they could all speak French or Cree.

In the earliest days, it appears that communication was via Cree. Some
members of the fur trading parties spoke Cree, which
they had learned on the Prairies. Some Sekani people could speak Cree, and
many could speak Dakelh. Sekani people
served as interpreters between Dakelh and Cree. Very few Dakelh people could
speak Cree, so communication using Cree
was apparently always via Sekani interpreters.

As time went on, some Dakelh people learned English or French through
contact with the fur traders and could communicate
with them directly. Until European settlement intensified toward the end of
the nineteenth century,these were a small
minority, almost invariably men who worked extensively with the fur traders
or, in a few cases, people who associated
closely with the Catholic missions.

Europeans sometimes learned a small amount of Dakelh, but in almost all
cases this consisted of the names of objects; very
few Europeans ever learned to understand Dakelh or carry on a real
conversation. Daniel Harmon, who was the Northwest
Company factor at Fort Saint James and Fort Fraser between 1809 and 1819,
gives a list of about 300 Dakelh words that he
learned in his Journal. (Interestingly, Harmon mentions that he ordinarily
spoke French with his Cree wife and Cree with his
children.)

The Roman Catholic missionaries who arrived at Fort Saint James in 1865
needed to communicate more extensively and in
greater depth with our people in order to spread their religion. They
therefore made an effort to learn to speak our languages.
Some of them learned to speak a little bit, and many of them memorized
prayers, but hardly any of them really learned any of
our languages well. The great exception is Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice, who
was stationed at Fort Saint James from 1885
until 1904. Father Morice began to study Dakelh in Williams Lake with Jimmy
Alexander, the son of the Hudson's Bay factor
and a Dakelh woman, who was sent to school at St. Joseph's school. Father
Morice learned Dakelh well. He later published
a number of works about Dakelh language and culture.

When the missionaries arrived in 1865 none of them knew any Dakelh, and few
Dakelh people knew much French. The
language in which they communicated was Chinook Jargon. Some Dakelh men knew
Chinook Jargon; the missionaries would
speak in Chinook Jargon and one of these men would interpret the speech into
Dakelh. Chinook Jargon came to be widely
used by Europeans coming up from the south, who were accustomed to using it
to communicate with native people. As a
result, a certain number of Dakelh people, mostly men who freighted on the
Fraser River, learned Chinook Jargon. The
Dakelh word for "chief" dayi comes from Chinook Jargon.

Chinook Jargon is no longer in use in our territory. Older people remember
hearing it used when they were young, and some
people know a few words. Many older people can still sing the Chinook Jargon
song that they used to sing when the Bishop
came to visit, but they do not understand it. Hardly anyone can actually
speak it. Many people recall elders who could speak
Chinook Jargon. For example, in her book The Carrier, My People Lizette Hall
reports that her father, Louis-Billy Prince
(1864-1962), could speak Chinook Jargon, as well as Dakelh, English, French,
Sekani and Beaver.

Chinook Jargon

Chinook Jargon is a trade language that was used extensively in the
nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth century
for communication between Europeans and First Nations people in much of the
Pacific Northwest, including British
Columbia. Chinook Jargon should not be confused with Chinook, which is the
native language, now extinct, of the Chinook
people, whose traditional territory is around the lower reaches of the
Columbia River, near Portland, Oregon. Although
many Chinook Jargon words come from Chinook, the real Chinook language is
quite different from Chinook Jargon.

Chinook Jargon is a language with a simplified grammar that draws its
vocabulary from several languages. The largest parts
of its vocabulary come from Chinook and Nuuchanuulth, followed by French. It
also contains words from other native
languages and from English. Some Chinook Jargon words have made their way
into British Columbia English. An example is
saltchuck "ocean".

The grammar of Chinook Jargon is simple in that there is no conjugation of
verbs or declension of nouns. For example: "I
speak Chinook Jargon" is Naika wawa chinook wawa. Here naika is the
equivalent of English "I" or "me". To say "He
speaks Chinook Jargon", we say Iaka wawa chinook wawa. We just change "I" to
"he"; the verb "to speak" wawa, does not
change.

Scholars do not agree on the origins of Chinook Jargon. Some people think
that it came into existence as a result of the
arrival of Europeans who did not speak native languages. They argue that
native people did not need a trade language like
Chinook Jargon because so many of them could speak other native languages
and so could serve as diplomats, traders, and
interpreters. Other scholars say that it was convenient for people who did
not speak another native language to be able to
trade directly, without an interpreter. They point out that some of the
earliest European records of contact with native people
in the Pacific Northwest contain what appears to be Chinook Jargon. This
suggests that Chinook Jargon was already in
existence when Europeans arrived. It does seem to be clear that the arrival
of Europeans helped to spread Chinook Jargon.

There are two main varieties of Chinook Jargon: native and European. The
native languages that contributed words to
Chinook Jargon had a number of sounds that were unfamiliar to and difficult
for Europeans. These included the ejectives
(glottalized consonants), the voiceless lateral frictive (often written lh
or hl), and the lateral affricates (often written tl and
dl). When native people learned Chinook Jargon from other native people,
they generally preserved these sounds. However,
Europeans usually had great difficulty pronouncing these sounds and changed
them into more familiar sounds. In this way,
there arose a phonetically simplified version of Chinook Jargon that did not
contain sounds that were unfamiliar or difficult
for speakers of European languages. Where Chinook Jargon was spread by
Europeans, it was the simplified, European
variety that was spread. This is why in our area even our own people used
the European variety of Chinook Jargon. Our own
people had no difficulty with the exotic sounds, but since they learned
Chinook Jargon from Europeans, who did not produce
them, they never heard them.

By the end of the nineteenth century Chinook Jargon was in extensive use
throughout the Pacific Northwest. Here in British
Columbia it was used most extensively on the Coast and in the South,
especially along the Fraser River. European settlers
learned it and used it to communicate with native people. Missionaries gave
sermons in Chinook Jargon and published
hymns, prayers, and catechisms in it. In 1890, Roman Catholic missionaries
created a writing system for Chinook Jargon by
adapting the French DuPloyer shorthand system. This writing system, referred
to as wawa writing, was also used for
English, Latin, and Shuswap. In Kamloops, a newspaper called the Kamloops
Wawa was published in Chinook Jargon using
the wawa writing.

For a very nice book about Chinook Jargon in British Columbia, see Lillard
and Glavin (1998). Howay (1942), Thomas
(1935), Thomason (1983), and Thomason & Kaufmann (1988) discuss the origins
of Chinook Jargon.

Howay, F. W. (1942)
    "The Origin of the Chinook Jargon," British Columbia Historical
Quarterly 6.4.225-250.

Lillard, Charles and Terry Glavin (1998)
    A Voice Great Within Us: The Story of Chinook, B.C.'s Lost Language,
with a Chinook Lexicon, Examples of Its
    Use, a Map and Gazetteer of Chinook Place Names, Chinook Poetry, and a
Discussion of its Origin and Legacy.
    Vancouver: New Star Books.

Thomas, Edward Harper (1935)
    Chinook: A History and Dictionary of the Northwest Coast Trade Jargon.
Portland, Oregon: Metropolitan Press.
    Reprinted 1970 at Portland, Oregon by Binfords & Mort.

Thomason, Sarah Grey (1983)
    "Chinook Jargon in areal and historical context," Language 59.4.820-870.

Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kauffman (1988)
    Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

For more information on Chinook Jargon, try the following links:

    Jake's Chinook Jargon Page
    Tenas Wawa

[Dave's note:  The link to "Jake's page" is dead.]
[Dave's 2nd note:  Those interested in First Nations languages written in
syllabics will find http://cstc.bc.ca/yinkadene/dulktop.htm to be an
absolutely superb presentation!]