muckefuck | M is for Mobilian Jargon (Reply)

Mobilian Jargon : linguistic and sociohistorical aspects of a Native American pidgin. Drechsel, Emanuel J. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1997)

No mystery to how and when I acquired this: I recorded the event of its purchase in a LiveJournal entry. I've made some effort to avoid covering titles that I've already mentioned here, but it's by no means a hard-fast rule (as evidenced by the fact that the same entry just linked to mentions the Japanese book I covered two weeks ago). Besides, I presently have only one other "M" titles and I've got other plans for that.

I was thrilled to pieces to discover Native American pidgins. In college and before, all the emphasis was on those based on European languages, like the eponymous original, Chinese Pidgin English. It was only upon reading Holms worldwide survey that I discovered the existence of pidginised varieties of Amerind languages. The first one I read up on was Chinook Jargon, because

princeofcairo had an AH project ("Reality Piebald") that required a few words of it. But, in the absence of really usable textbook, I never ended up learning much.

A central hypothesis of Drechsler's treatment was equally revelatory: Not only did use of Mobilian Jargon predate European colonisation, but it was the primary lingua franca of the Mississippian culture. Of course, absent time travel or the absolutely unprecedented discovery of writing in Mobilian Jargon from multiple Mississippian sites, we can never be sure this was true, but I think Drechsler builds a very convincing case.

Even if it's not, his discussion of the evidence provides some interesting insight into human nature. I'm quite accustomed to the idea of language being something freely shared with outsiders. Drechsler's contention that Natives of the Southeast were (and often still are) very protective of their languages and generally only shared them with outsiders who had thoroughly gained their trust was novel to me. The conventional wisdom is that pidgins only arise in situations of very limited contact which prevent more thoroughgoing language learning; these cultural traits provide an convincing explanation for why a lingua franca like Mobilian Jargon would be used even between peoples who had close and longstanding ties.

Drechsler reports that many non-Natives reported that they had learned a local language when, in actuality, all they had been taught was the pidgin. I immediately saw a parallel to the Elvish culture in my adolescent gaming setting. The main Elvish cultures had three forms of Elvish: Ancient Elvish (used in rituals or for communication between widely-separated groups and never taught to outsiders), Inner Elvish (used for everyday communication and taught to those well-integrated into Elvish society), and Outer Elvish (highly-modified versions of ancient Mannish languages used primarily for communication with Men and other outsiders). Thus, characters would similarly have the impression that they'd learned true "Elvish", when really they learned only the jargon Elves spoke to men. But the Elves were meant to be a non-human culture which was particularly linguistically gifted; the idea that actual human cultures might behave in a similar fashion had never occurred to me.

If I have any disappointments with this book, it's simply that it doesn't contain a full lexicon of Mobilian Jargon. There is a grammar sketch featuring a detailed treatment of derivational processes and substantial discussion of particular loans and what they reveal about historical relationships between speakers of the pidgin, but there's not nearly enough for you to teach yourself the language from this one volume alone. But that's asking rather a lot in any case, and Drechsler has anticipated my needs and announced that he intends to publish such a lexicon in an independent volume. Well, where is it? Not gettin' any younger here, am I?