Chinook Jargon
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Chinook Chinuk Tsinúk Jargon La Lang Wawa is a "language" (more of an incoherent amalgamation of Chinook, Nootka, Baguettese, English and Gibberish into one language) that is so ridiculously simple that anyone can pick it up in about a week. It was apparently all over the west coast of 'Murica and Canadia in the nineteenth century before vanishing without a trace, leading many people to not know it even existed. A bunch of morons who were too lazy to learn a real language like Kwakwakwak or Portuñol began to learn it and make a pathetic "attempt" to revive the language. However, of course, all rational individuals know that English does its job much better than Chinook Jargon ever did, no fucking need to bring this zombie, I mean Frankenstein's monster of broken languages, back from its grave. Chinook Jargon is called a "pidgin language", since it is only fit for people whose brains are the size of that of a pigeon, and thus are unable to spell words like "pigeon" correctly.
Like business jargon, or musical jargon, Chinook jargon is highly esoteric and a great way to deter the average fellow.
History[edit | edit source]
Chinook Jargon was accidentally created by Sir Francis Drake in the 1500's when he spilled his alphabet soup somewhere in Oregon and the locals picked it up. A little bit of saliva of horribly mispronounced French and English mixed into the local Chinook language, dissolving the grammar of all three, and making a massive mess all around. Due to a lack of trash cans at the time, the people, in order to get rid of this issue, ingested the mess, and they enjoyed it surprisingly much since they were hungry and desperate. Thus, a new dish was born, the Chinook Fusion Alphabet Soup, which when swallowed, allowed people to speak a gibberish language. This language would become extremely popular in the 1800's, resulting in place names like "Skookumchuck Rapids" (epic ultra-badass water), Kanaka Creek (Hawaii but colder), and Siskiyou County.
Grammar[edit | edit source]
Chinook Jargon has basically no grammar at all, or at least that is what most guides will tell you. There is no word for "is" "are", no past tense and no endings on words whatsoever. The word "kopa" can mean about a million different things, and might as well represent half the different words in the language. A phrase like "The sky is blue." is "Spo'oh kosagh" in Chinook Jargon, literally "blue sky."
Spelling[edit | edit source]
ĆINUK ĆOX̱ḴEN TESIND CIX̱ E X̱EK EPUD HU YU SPAL WEX̱Z, W̱IJ ḴEN ḴOS E MESIW̱ EMUND EX̱ ḴENW̱YUŚEN X̱OX̱ ANIWEN HU WONȾ TU LEX̱N ŦE LAṈȻIĆ. (Yes, the above text is English, but spelled very strangely. If you could not read every word it, you are not worthy.) This text gives you an idea of how flexible your brain must be to understand every way that Chinook Jargon is written.
The Grand Ronde reservation, a small dot you just might be able to see on a map of Oregon, has invented a needlessly complicated spelling system for the language that might as well have been specifically designed to use every single letter that is NOT on your keyboard. Why? They claim it represented all 40-something sounds in the language, even though everyone knows that the amount of different sounds in Chinook Jargon is 40-something. "Am I telling the truth?", you may ask. No, it's actually infinite. You know what, who gives a fuck about counting the exact number of sounds in a language anyway? We all know the alphabet has 26 letters. Why should we care about anything else?
Chinook Jargon can even be written in a strange squiggly kind of alphabet, called Duployan Shorthand or "Chinook Paper", that claims to be easy to learn. Maybe it would be easy to learn, for fucking aliens. Besides, what kind of name is "Duployan"? Definitely ALIENS. Or French people, so basically still aliens anyway. This writing system also pretends to be compatible with Unicode, although it usually renders as blank rectangles or disconnected lumps that do not resemble the squiggly lines you see in the pictures at all. For example, if you try to type "" which supposedly transliterates as "Stenographie Duployé", or "fucking garbage" in French, it appears as 𛰜𛰃𛱉𛰚𛱁𛰊𛱁𛰄𛱆 𛰈𛱑𛰂𛰆𛱄𛱆𛱇. What, were they trying to censor it or something? In fact, the shitty Chinook Jargon version of Wikimedia Incubator (a place where all the obscure languages of the world to await the dark day that versions of Wikipedia will be written in them), the page about this alien artifact had to be subtitled in ordinary, everyday letters.
Vocabulary[edit | edit source]
English phrase (mostly) | Chinook Jargon phrase | Alien Gobbledegook phrase | Pronunciation |
---|---|---|---|
Welcome to hell! | Klahowya kopa kikwillie-illahee! | ɬaxawyam kʰapa kikwǝli-iliʔi! | klah-HOW-yah KO-pa KICK-wil-lee IL-la-hee! |
If you are reading this, then
you're reading this. Nothing else. |
(S)(up)pose mika nanitch okoke, mika nanitch okoke. Pee wake huloima iktah. | pus mayka nanich ukuk, mayka nanich ukuk. pi wik x̣luyma ikta. | (S)POSE MYE-kah nan-ITCH OKE-oke, MYE-kah nan-ITCH OKE-oke. Pee wake huh-LOY-mah ik-tah. |
I want to die. | Nika tikegh chako memaloost. | nayka tiki chaku mimǝlust. | NYE-kah tee-KEHHH CHAH-ko MEM-uh-loost. |
Clams (apparently) | The large kind | The Gargantuan Variety | SME-tocks |
The Chinook Jargon word for "worthless" is "cultus", which shows both that Chinook Jargon is useless, and that its speakers are basically just a cult.
Modern usage[edit | edit source]
Chinook Jargon speakers think they can bring it back somehow, but the rest of all know for sure it's dead. A handful of delusional websites that continue to use the language include:
Kaltash Wawa, an attempt at a Chinook newspaper that turned out so bad that it was turned into a "humor" site. It mostly consists of a beginner's guide to the "language", some shitty memes, and a couple of stories that are... actually worth reading. Nah, never mind. Fuck Kaltash Wawa.
chinookjargon.com, the glorified diary of some guy from British Columbia who doesn't have a life.
Even the Chinooks themselves would rather not speak about it.
Chinook Jargon Wikipedia[edit | edit source]
which is so shitty that they had to put it in the Wiki Dogshit Zone. The majority of pages say things that everybody already knows, and are only about a page long. When this article was created, there were exactly 69 pages, but that's only funny to twelve-year-olds. You hear it all the time. BAHAHA LOL SIXTY NINE AMIRITE?!! EPIC FNUUY SECXZ NUMBER!!!1
There are now over two hundred pages of bullshit upon bullshit, all written in an obsolete trade jargon. The wiki is in a complete state of anarchy, just as we like it. There are only three main contributors, none of which live in the Pacific Northwest itself (one borderline-insane Californian who edits Uncyclopedia, an ex-Vancouverite who moved to Munich, Germany and grudgingly returned to the website after several months, and a Catalan-German wikitext-master who does not speak a word of Jargon but is absolutely obsessed with linguistics and artificial international languages). The wiki is heavily centered on content related to the Pacific Northwest, and spelling is extremely inconsistent. Chinook Jargon still manages to be the third-most-active and ninth-largest Wikipedia to be written in a Native American or Canadian Aboriginal language (with all six of those last words outside the parentheses defined loosely, including "or"). Speakers wait day by day like Essenes for the wiki-admins to deliver the Wiki to Wikipedia itself, since this would likely bring a large amount of recognition to the wiki, but also it would likely make Chinook Jargon Wikipedia an Orwellian nightmare akin to the English Wikipedia.