Broken Slavey

Broken Slavey (also Broken Slavé, Broken Slave, Slavey Jargon, Broken Slavee, Le jargon esclave) is a trade language used between Indians and whites in the Yukon area (for example, in around Liard River and in the MacKenzie River district) in the 19th century.

Broken Slavey is based primarily on the Slavey language with elements from French, Cree, and perhaps to a lesser extent English. However, there is some disagreement among sources: Petitot (1889) states that it lacks English, Dene Suline (Chipewyan), or Gwich’in (Kutchin) elements in contrast to the neighboring Loucheux Pidgin (a nearby trade language) while Dall (1870) states that it includes English elements and McClellan (1981) states that it contained Dene Suline influences. Later sources have ignored the earlier accounts and assumed that "Broken Slavey" is merely French vocabulary (loanwords) used in northern Athabascan languages. Michael Krauss has suggested that French loanwords in Athabascan languages may have been borrowed via Broken Slavey.

A further difference among sources is that Petitot distinguishes the Broken Slavey trade language spoken along the MacKenzie River from a different trade language called Loucheux Pidgin that was spoken along the Peel and Yukon rivers (both of which are tributaries of the MacKenzie). Other contemporary sources as well as later sources do not make a distinction between Broken Slavey and Loucheux Pidgin, which may explain their inclusion of English, Dene Suline, and Gwich’in as influences on Broken Slavey.

The native languages of speakers who used Broken Slavey were Dene Suline, French, Gwich’in, Inuit, Slavey. The Gwich’in stopped speaking Broken Slavey around the 1930s.

Broken Slavey is very scarcely documented with only a few vocabulary items and phrases are known (collected in Petitot's work) and virtually nothing of its grammar or the general nature of the lexicon. However, more information may be discovered in archives that remain to be searched through.

Bibliography

* Bakker, Peter. (1996). Broken Slavey and Jargon Loucheux: A first exploration. In I. Broch & E. H. Jahr (Eds.), "Language contact in the Arctic: Northern pidgins and contact languages" (pp. 317-320). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
* Bakker, Peter; & Grant, Anthony P. (1996). Interethnic communication in Canada, Alaska, and adjacent areas. In S. A. Wurm. P. Mühlhäuser, & D. H. Tryon (Eds.), "Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas" (Vol. II.2, pp. ). Trends in linguistics: Documentation (No. 13). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). "American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America". New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
* Dall, William H. (1870). "Alaska and its resources". Boston: Lee and Shepard.
* McClellan, Catherin. (1981). Intercultural relations and cultural exchange in the Cordillera. In J. Helm (Ed.), "Handbook of North American Indians: Subarctic" (Vol. 6, pp. 378-401). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* Petitot, Émile. (1889). "Quize ans sous le Cercle Polaire: Mackenzie, Anderson, Youkon". Paris: E. Dentu.
* Slobodin, Richard. (1981). Kutchin. In J. Helm (Ed.), "Handbook of North American Indians: Subarctic" (Vol. 6, pp. 514-532). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.