Pidgin Delaware (also Delaware Jargon or Trader's Jargon)Goddard, Ives, 1997Thomason, Sarah, 1980, p. 167 was a pidgin language that developed between speakers of Unami Delaware and Dutch traders and settlers on the Delaware River in the 1620s. The fur trade in the Middle Atlantic region led Europeans to interact with local native groups, and hence provided an impetus for the development of Pidgin Delaware.Goddard, Ives, 1978a, p. 221 The Dutch were active in the fur trade beginning early in the seventeenth century, establishing trading posts in New Netherland, the name for the Dutch territory of the Middle Atlantic and exchanging trade goods for furs.Feister, Lois,1973, p. 30
Pidgin languages characteristically arise from interactions between speakers of two or more languages who are not bilingual in the other group's language. Pidgin languages typically have greatly simplified syntax, a limited vocabulary, and are not learned as a first language by its speakers. Words typically have very general meanings but do not carry more than one meaning concept, and do not have the type of structural complexity commonly found in many languages.
History Knowledge of Pidgin Delaware subsequently spread to speakers of Swedish, and later from Swedes to Englishmen, and was used beyond the immediate area where the pidgin originated.Goddard, Ives, 1974, p. 105; Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 82 It is most likely that Swedes learned Pidgin Delaware from Dutch speakers; for examples, one of the early Swedish expeditions to the Delaware area had a Dutch interpreter. Similarly, succeeding English groups learned Pidgin from Swedes; Pennsylvania founder William Penn's interpreter Lars Petersson Crock was Swedish.Goddard, Ives, 1995, p. 38; Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 82
Pidgin Delaware was used by both Munsee and Unami Delawares in interactions with speakers of Dutch, Swedish, and English.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 76 Some non-Delaware users of the pidgin were under the impression that they were speaking true Delaware.Goddard, Ives, 1978a, pp. 221; Goddard, Ives, 1971, p. 15 Material cited by William Penn as being from a Delaware language is in fact from Delaware Pidgin, and he was apparently unaware of the difference between real Delaware and Pidgin Delaware.Goddard, Ives, 1971, p. 15; Goddard, Ives, 1978a, pp. 221; Goddard, Ives, 1999, p. 66
Patterns of usage, involving both Munsee and Unami Delaware, as well as separate groups of Europeans, attests to a widespread and persistent use of Delaware Pidgin as a medium of communication for speakers of Dutch, Swedish, and English, as well as Unami- and Munsee-speaking Delawares.Goddard, Ives, 1995, p. 138; Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 83
Derivation Recordings of Pidgin Delaware suggest that Pidgin words originated from both Northern and Southern Unami.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 43 Although the best-known early Dutch settlement was New Netherland, on Manhattan Island, which is in Munsee Delaware territory, Pidgin Delaware has Unami vocabulary almost exclusively, with no terms that can be ascribed solely to Munsee. Even recordings of Pidgin Delaware that were clearly made in Munsee territory have Unami characteristics.Goddard, Ives, 1995, p. 139 The first permanent Dutch settlement in New Jersey was Fort Nassau (on the site of modern Gloucester City). Settlers to an earlier and short-lived factorij at Fort Wilhelmus arrived there in 1624 were subsequently removed to Manhattan between November 1626 and October 1628.Apparently referring to the erection of a fort on Verhulsten Island, near the present site of Trenton, N. J., which was recommended to Verhulst in 1625. (See Document C.) Another fort, called Fort Nassau, was erected near Gloucester, N. J., as early as 1624. Wassenaer, under date of April 1624, says: "They also placed a fort which they named 'Wilhelmus' on Prince's Island, heretofore called Murderer's Island; it is open in front, and has a curtain in the rear and is garrisoned by sixteen men for the defence of the river below." The location of this fort has not been definitely ascertained. Brodhead suggests that it may have been on Pollepel's Island, just above the Highlands, in the Hudson River, but more likely it was on the South or Delaware River, which on the Buchelius chart is called the "Wilhelmus river." (See J. F. Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, frontispiece, and pp. 76, 84, 271, and J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New York, 1:758.) Bert van Steeg,Walen in de Wildernis : Bij aankomst in de kolonie werden de kolonisten opgesplitst in vier groepen en werden er op een aantal plaatsen kleine vestigingen gesticht, vooral in de buurt van de al bestaande handelsposten. Een aantal families werden gevestigd aan de Delaware. Hier werd fort Wilhelmus gesticht. Twee families en zes mannen werden naar de Connecticut rivier gestuurd. Ook op Governors’ eiland werden een aantal kolonisten geplaatst om een fort te bouwen. Het grootste aantal kolonisten, onder wie Catalina Rapalje, werd echter net ten zuiden van het huidige Albany geplaatst. May liet hier een klein fort bouwen dat de naam Fort Orange kreeg. Hier verbleven ongeveer achttien families.Brodhead, J.R., History of the state of New York (New York 1871), 150–191Goddard, Ives, 1997, pp. 81–82 Both of these locations are in traditional Unami Delaware territory. The origins of Delaware Pidgin must originate in the earliest contacts between Dutch settlers and Unami Delaware speakers at those locations.
Sources The first recorded mention of Pidgin Delaware dates from 1628,Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 81 while the final recorded mention is from 1785.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 82 There are two main sources of Pidgin Delaware material. Swedish Lutheran minister Johan Campanius, who served in New Sweden from 1642 to 1648, prepared a vocabulary list and translated into Delaware Pidgin a version of Martin Luther's Little Catechism, which was published after Campanius returned to Sweden.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 44 As well, an anonymous vocabulary list of some 260 words entitled "The Indian Interpreter" compiled in the late seventeenth century in West Jersey (an early British colony), and found in a book of land records from Salem County, New Jersey, also contains words in Delaware Jargon. There are also small amounts of material in several other sources, including a 1633 vocabulary collected by Joannis deLaet (de Laet's first name is often spelled inconsistently). Gabriel Thomas collected some Delaware Pidgin materials that were published in 1698. Another vocabulary collected by Ebenezer Denny in 1785 from Delawares who had migrated to western Pennsylvania has features of Pidgin Delaware.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 44; Thomason, Sarah, 1980.
Although Thomason has suggested on theoretical grounds that Pidgin Delaware predated the arrival of Europeans and was used for communication with speakers of Iroquoian languages,Thomason, Sarah, 1980 there is no attestation of its existence prior to European contact.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 83 Against this suggestion are references to the difficulty of communication between Delawares and Iroquoian speakers. Similarly, while Dutch recordings in this early period contain words in the Iroquoian language Mohawk, and Swedish documents contain words in Susquehannock, another Iroquoian language, the primary Dutch and Swedish recordings of interactions with Delawares reflect Pidgin Delaware, suggesting that these Europeans were not using Pidgin Delaware to communicate with Iroquoian speakers.
The recordings of Delaware Pidgin reflect the background of the recorder. Campanius was consistent in mostly using Swedish spelling conventions to reflect phonetic details of Delaware Pidgin words, while the orthography used by deLaet shows Dutch influence, but is rendered less consistent by his attempts to using spelling conventions of other European languages to capture Delaware Pidgin characteristics.Goddard, Ives, 1997, pp. 50–51 The writing used in the "Indian Interpreter" reflects both English and non-English features; some of the latter can be explained by assuming that its author learned the Pidgin from an individual or individuals with a Swedish or Dutch background.Goddard, Ives, 1997, pp. 54–55
The following table gives a sample of Pidgin Delaware recordings of the words for 'one' through 'ten' from four different sources, with the corresponding terms from Munsee Delaware and Unami Delaware.Goddard, Ives, 1995, p. 139; Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 51 In cases where the Munsee and Unami terms differ, the Pidgin term corresponds to its Unami congener, confirming the position that Unami is the source language for Pidgin vocabulary.
+ Pidgin Delaware numbers from 'one' to 'ten'EnglishMunsee DelawareUnami DelawareDe Laet (1633)Campanius (ca. 1645)Interpreter (1684?)Thomas (1698) one nkwə́ti kwə́t·i cotté ciútte Cutte Kooty two ní·ša ní·š·a nyssé nissa Nisha nisha three nxá naxá nacha náha Necca nacha four né·wa né·wa wywePresumably a typographical error for nywe; see Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 51 næwo Neuwa neo five ná·lan palé·naxk parenagh parenach Palenah pelenach six nkwə́ta·š kwə́t·a·š cottash ciuttas Cuttas Kootashseven ní·ša·š ní·š·a·š nyssas nissas Neshas nishash eight (n)xá·š xá·š gechas haas Haas choesh nine nó·li· pé·škunk pescon paéschun Pescunk peskonk ten wí·mpat télən terren thæræn Tellen telen
Many Pidgin Delaware words are clearly of Unami origin, even though they were recorded in traditional Munsee territory in the greater New York area. For example, the Pidgin word cacheus 'crazy, drunk' was recorded from an Esopus sachem on the Hudson River in 1658; this word is from Unami kí·wsu 'he is drunk'. The corresponding Munsee word is the completely different waní·sə̆məwGoddard, Ives, 1995, p. 140 Similarly, the Pidgin expression rancontyn marinit, also recorded as rancontyn marenit 'make peace' was recalled by David de Vries as having been used by Delawares near Lewes, Delaware in 1632, and also near Rockaway, Long Island in 1643, the latter being in Munsee territory. The Pidgin verb marinit or marenit is based upon a Unami verb *maləni·to-· 'to make' that does not occur in Munsee.
Grammar Pidgin Delaware is characterized by its extreme simplification of the intricate grammatical features of Unami nouns and verbs, with no use of the complex inflectional morphology that Unami uses to convey grammatical information.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 57 Morphologically complex words are replaced by sequences of separate words.Goddard, Ives, 1999, p. 66 In cases where a Pidgin word is based on a Unami word that contains more than one morpheme, it can be argued in all cases that the word is treated in the Pidgin as a single unanalysable unit.Goddard, Ives, 1997, p. 58
The Unami distinction between singular and plural inflection of nouns and verbs is eliminated.
The pronominal categories, which are extensively marked in Unami with prefixes on nouns and verbs, as well as through the system of demonstrative pronouns, are indicated instead with separate words, and distinctions of gender and number (i.e. singular and plural) are eliminated. Separate pronouns that are normally used only for emphasis are used in the Pidgin for first, second, and third person. Pronominal reference is made by using the separate Unami emphatic pronouns for first person singular, second person singular, and an emphatic form of the inanimate singular demonstrative pronoun ('this'). In the following examples, "C" = Campanius, "II" = Indian Interpreter, "T" = Thomas; Pidgin words are enclosed in angled brackets, and items separated by commas are orthographic variants.
(a) First person: C nijr, nijre, II ne, T nee; Unami ni· 'I'
(b) Second person: C chijr, chijre, II ke, T kee; Unami ki· 'you (singular)'
(c) Third person / demonstrative 'this, that': C jɷ̃ni, II une 'that, this'; Unami yó·ni 'this (emphatic)'