Basque-Icelandic pidgin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Basque-Icelandic pidgin was a pidgin spoken in Iceland in the 17th century. It developed due to the contact that Basque traders had with the Icelandic locals,[1][2] probably in Vestfirðir.[3] The vocabulary was heavily based upon the Labourdin Basque language, but also in an Atlantic pidgin with Romance and English influences.
It is documented in two glossaries found around 1905 by Jón Helgason in the Bibliotheca Arnamagnaeana of the University of Copenhagen:[3][4] Vocabula gallica ("French words") and Vocabula biſcaïca ("Biscayne words"). Helgason called the attention of Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck, an expert in Basque from the University of Leyden on them. His post-graduate student, N.G.H. Deen, traveled in 1927 to the Basque Country to collaborate with Julio de Urquijo on the research that Deen published as his doctorate thesis in 1937. The manuscripts were sent back to Iceland in 1986, but one of them was lost.
Another Basque pidgin arose from contact between Basque whalers and Aboriginal inhabitants in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Strait of Belle Isle.
[edit] Samples
- for ju mala gissuna. "You are a bad man". for ju points to English for you; mala is "bad" in Spanish and Portuguese; gizona is "the man" in modern Basque.
- normandia chave andia. "The French know a lot". normandia is Normandy, a part of France; forms similar to chave are present in Mediterranean Lingua Franca (Sabir) and other pidgins and creoles (see "savvy" for an English cognate); handia is modern Basque for "the big one".
[edit] References
- ^ Deen, Nicolaas Gerard Hendrik (1937). Glossaria duo vasco-islandica.
- ^ Bakker, Peter (1991). "Basque Pidgins in Iceland and Canada Peter", Colección Miscelánea 23. Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa.
- ^ a b Knörr, Henrike (2007). Basque Fishermen in Iceland Bilingual vocabularies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Retrieved on 2008-02-15.
- ^ islandés in the Spanish-language Auñamendi Encyclopedia, Mariano Estornés Lasa.
[edit] External links
- Examples.
- Slaying of Spaniards in the West fjords in 1615, an exhibition and a conference on 24th of June 2006 about a massacre of Basque castaways by the Icelandic locals.
