MultiTree:

Name: Chinook Wawa Type: Language Alternate Names: Chinook Jargon; Chinook Pidgin Spoken in: USA, Canada Number of speakers: 83 in Canada (1962). Population total all countries: 100 (Ethnologue) Number of speakers: 100 (World Oral Literature Project) Code: chn Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Pidgins and Creoles Parent Subgroup: Amerindian Pidgin (ampg) Brief Description: "Chinook Jargon was the lingua franca of the Pacific Northwest, from the Alaska Panhandle to northwestern California in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Initially based on Nootka vocabulary diffused by European and American seafarers, the major basis for its vocabulary was the Chinook language of the lower Columbia River area, with further words added from Salishan languages. When speakers of French and English arrived in the area, vocabulary from those languages was also added. 'Jargon', as Chinook Jargon is often called in the area, may have been spoken as a second language by as many as 100,000 people at one time, and is still occasionally used by a few." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 26

Endangerment Status

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Linguist List Status: Nearly Extinct UNESCO Status: Critically endangered Ethnologue Status: Nearly Extinct Sutherland's Red List: Not listed