Eskimo Trade Jargon

Eskimo Trade Jargon
Native to	Western Canadian Arctic, northern Alaska
Ethnicity	Inuit, whalers
Native speakers	Some rememberers may remain
Language family	North Alaskan Iñupiaq-based pidgin
Dialects	Herschel Island Eskimo Pidgin Point Barrow Pidgin Kotzebue Pidgin Point Hope Pidgin
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	eski1266

Eskimo Trade Jargon was an Inuit pidgin used by the Mackenzie River Inuit as a trade language with the Athabaskan peoples to their south, such as the Gwich'in (Loucheux). It was reported by Stefánsson (1909), and was apparently distinct from the Athabaskan-based Loucheux Jargon of the same general area.^[1]

A reduced form of the pidgin was used for ships' trade at Herschel Island off the Arctic coast near Alaska.^[2]

History

Eskimo Trade Jargon formed from one the two "pidgin traditions" formed between Inuit peoples and foreign whalers as they interacted, likely helped by the difficulty europeans had learning Inuit languages. The pidgin is recorded to have been used during the 19th and 20th centuries as American ships with international crews traveled to The North American Artctic. Because the international crews often spoke several different languages, but they all had to interact with the Inuit, the Inuit's language ended up the becoming the main lexifier of Eskimo Trade Jargon. The pidgin went extinct sometime in the 20th century though some rememberers may remain.^[3][4]

Social and Political Factors

In the development of many contact languages, the language of the dominant group forms the basis of the language (ie. the lexicon).^[5] These dominant groups are typically seen as being European-based groups as they held more economical and political power.^[5] In the case of Eskimo Trade Jargon, the local language of the Inuit people formed the basis of Eskimo Trade Jargon, despite them not being seen as the dominant group in this contact language relationship. There are several explanations as to why this may have occurred. First, the Inuit people may have had larger populations and held more cultural power than their European counterparts in this relationship, as the European whalers and traders would have needed to rely on the Inuit people for knowledge and resources to survive the Arctic conditions.^[5] Another reason why the Eskimo language may have become the lexifier, is that many of the European ships were multi-ethnic, with many different languages being present on any given ship. This would have made the Eskimo language the main variant in these contact situations.^[6]

Dialects

As Eskimo Trade Pidgin emerged in several locations simultaneously the various areas it emerged in had different dialects of the pidgin. These dialects included: Herschel Island Pidgin, Point Barrow Pidgin, Kotzebue Pidgin, and Point Hope pidgin. While Eskimo Trade Jargon was similar to Slavey Jargon it was different enough that there wasn't enough mutual intelligibility to allow for communication between the two pidgins.^[3]

Phonology

Consonants^[4]

		Bilabial	Labio-Dental	Labio-Velar	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	Unvoiced	p			t	c	k	q
	Voiced	b			d		g
Nasal		m			n		ŋ
Trill					r
Fricative	Voiceless				s	Ç
	Voiced		v	ɣ				ɦ
Lateral	Voiceless				ɬ
	Voiced				l
Approximant						j

Vowels^[4]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-Mid	e		o
Open		a

Grammar

In Eskimo Trade Jargon verbs and nouns cannot be distinguished via morphology, and they can sometimes not even semantically. An example being the word kaukau which means both ‘to eat’ and ‘food’. In Eskimo Trade Jargon the meaning of phrases is extremely context dependant and vague. Often times subjects are not expressed expressly, and the translation of the statement depends on the context.^[4]

Phrasal vagueness in ETJ^[4]

ETJ	Literal Translation	Interpretive Translation 1	Interpretive Translation 2
innitin picuktu	Sit want	I want to sit down	He want to sit down
kapi suli pĭcuktu awoña	coffee more want I	I want coffee also	I want some more coffee
tuktu tautuk picuktu awoña	caribou see want I	I am hunting caribou	I want to see caribou
kaukau pītcūk owoxña	eat not I	I have no food	I have not eaten

Pronouns^[4]

1sg	awoña
2sg	ĭllĭpsī
3sg	ī'la
1pl	Undocumented
2pl	illuit
3pl	Undocumented

Lexicon

The Lexicon of ETJ is very diverse, while most words are from either an Inuit language or English words from other languages are found. Of all the Inuit languages the one with the most vocabulary in ETJ is North Slope dialect of Iñupiaq. Other contributing languages include Hawaiian Pidgin, Chinook Jargon, Danish, Portuguese, and possibly Old Icelandic.^[4]

Words would often undergo significant changes after being loaned into Eskimo Trade Jargon, making them unrecognizable from their original forms. Examples being the words u' ra and pau' from the English words Rice and powder respectively.^[3]

Sample Text

Eskimo Trade Jargon[4]	English[4]
nanako opinera malo tereva awoña kaili suli picuktu	After two summers are finished I want to come again.
ō-mī-ak-pûk a-lak’-tok pĭ-cū’k-tok a-woñ-a	I want to go on shipboard.
wai’hinni artegi annahanna pûgmûmmi	The woman is sewing a coat now.

Sources

Drechsel, Emanuel J., and T. Haunani Makuakāne. 1982. “Hawaiian Loanwords in Two Native American Pidgins.” International Journal of American Linguistics 48 (4): 460–67.

Roberts, Sarah. 2020. "North America and Hawai'i." In The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages, edited by Umberto Ansaldo and Miriam Meyerhoff. Routledge.

Van der Voort, Hein. 1997. "New Light on Eskimo Pidgins." In The Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles, edited by Arthur K. Spears and Donald Winford. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Versteegh, Kees. 2008. "Non-Indo-European Pidigns and Creoles." In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, edited by Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler. Blackwell Publishing.

References

1. Stefánsson, V. (Apr–Jun 1909). "The Eskimo Trade Jargon of Herschel Island". American Anthropologist. 11 (2): 217–232. doi:10.1525/aa.1909.11.2.02a00050. hdl:2027/hvd.32044086537768. JSTOR 659464.
2. Schuhmacher, W. W. (July 1977). "Eskimo Trade Jargon: Of Danish or German Origin?". International Journal of American Linguistics. 43 (3). The University of Chicago Press: 226–227. doi:10.1086/465485.
3. Stefánsson, V. (1909). "The Eskimo Trade Jargon of Herschel Island". American Anthropologist. 41 (2): 217–227. ISSN 0002-7294.
4. "APiCS Online - Survey chapter: Eskimo Pidgin". apics-online.info. Retrieved 2024-10-02.
5. Bakker, Peter (2008), "Pidgins versus Creoles and Pidgincreoles", The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 130–157, doi:10.1002/9781444305982.ch6, ISBN 978-1-4443-0598-2, retrieved 2025-11-22
6. Arends, Jacques; Muysken, Pieter; Smith, Norval, eds. (2008). Pidgins and creoles: an introduction. Creole language library (Reprint with corrections ed.). Amsterdam Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-9950-5.