CJ origin

[Mike Cleven]

Linda Fink wrote:
>
> Dave, how do you know this is true? "This language's origin lies, in point
> of fact, in the events resulting from the contact of indigenous with alien
> cultures in this region."
>
> How do you know that CJ didn't arise from the contact of various tribes,
> each with its own language, before "alien cultures" arrived?

I'm not Dave, and there's a few people who don't like what I have to say
(about nearly anything), but I've got to opine here to back up Dave's
comment, which is in fact a statement in support of my contention (and
that of others) that the Jargon "as we know it" was as much a part of
non-native culture and history in this region as it is/was of native
culture and history; and further that there was implicitly a _shared_
culture defined and enabled by the Jargon itself that resulted from this
linguistic bridge between peoples.  That non-natives may (or may not)
have been as fluent as (some) native speakers does not exclude the FACT
that non-natives used and popularized the Jargon as much as any native
or native people may have.

The oft-repeated idea that CJ arose before Contact is brought up as if
to dismiss the contributions of French and English to the Wawa, that
they aren't "real" Jargon (unless validated somehow by acceptance in
native usage, and not quite even then).  While there may have been a
"pre-Jargon" - more probably, several different local interlinguas, e.g.
the Haida Jargon and others as well as the Chinook-Nootka-Barclay Sound
terms; but were these exactly "languages" or rather collections of words
that could be shared in common.  It's clear from our discussions that
certain words passed to and from cultures in the region; I'd bet that
"mowitch" and "moolack" and other food/hunting/fishing words may have
been around; but it's the generation of trade and the
movement/disruption of peoples that created the Jargon in its "modern"
form.

To say that _CJ_ existed before Contact is a fallacy, as CJ "as we know
it" is the intercultural argot summed up in Shaw, Gibbs and the other
sources, and in the forms that have come down to us from surviving
speakers, be they in Grand Ronde or somewhere in the hills of British
Columbia; to say that whatever intercultural argot/jargon existed before
Contact is "the real CJ" or "the pure native CJ" is a non sequitur; and
to me, smacks somewhat of soft-pedalled racism (I'm not saying this
about your post, Linda, but it's clear from many on this topic that
that's what's in the back of people's mind when they postulate this).  I
think it's valid to say that there was _a_ Jargon, more likely several
different localized ones, but that _our_ Chinook Jargon was OBVIOUSLY a
product of the interaction of cultures and peoples.  What strikes me as
most odd about this "there must have been a pre-Contact CJ" argument is
that native historians themselves don't have any comment on it; and that
in a vast region of very similar languages (such as the
Straits-Fraser-Puget) there was no such "common tongue" that anyone
knows of, either now or back then.......

Quite frankly, I'm amazed that people are stubborn about this, or that
they want to argue about it at all.  I think the onus of proof is on
those proposing it, rather than on those who (as you are doing to Dave)
are called upon to provide evidence.  How can Dave provide evidence that
there _wasn't_ such a Jargon, when you can't provide evidence that there
_was_..........????????