Chinook Jargon

Chinook Jargon (also known as chinuk wawa) originated as a pidgin trade language of the Pacific Northwest, and spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia and as far as Alaska and Yukon Territory, sometimes taking on characteristics of a creole language. It is related to, but not the same as, the aboriginal language of the Chinook people, upon which much of its vocabulary is based. As it was a native language to many children of mixed European and Native ancestry, it can be considered a Métis language.

Many words from Chinook Jargon remain in common use in the Western United States and British Columbia and the Yukon, in indigenous languages as well as regional English usage, to the point where most people are unaware the word was originally from the Jargon. The total number of Jargon words in published lexicons numbered only in the hundreds, and so it was easy to learn. It has its own grammatical system, but a very simple one that, like its word list, was easy to learn. The consonant 'r' is rare though existent in Chinook Jargon, and English and French loan words, such as 'rice' and 'merci', are vowel shifted in their adoption to the Jargon, as 'lice' and 'mahsie', respectively.