Chinook Jargon

Chinook Jargon (also known as chinuk wawa, or chinook wawa) is a revived American indigenous language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest, and spreading 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.

Many words from Chinook Jargon remain in common use in the Western United States, 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', have changed in their adoption to the Jargon, to 'lice' and 'mahsie', respectively.

The Jargon was originally constructed from a great variety of Amerind words of the Pacific Northwest, arising as an intra-indigenous contact language in a region marked by divisive geography and intense linguistic diversity. The participating peoples came from a number of very distinct language families, speaking dozens of individual languages. It peaked in usage from approximately 1858 to 1900, and declined as a result of the Spanish Flu, World War I and residential schools.