Basque-Icelandic pidgin

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,cite book
last = Deen
first=Nicolaas Gerard Hendrik
title=Glossaria duo vasco-islandica
place=Amsterdam
Publisher=H.J. Paris
year=1937] cite book
last=Bakker
first=Peter
first2=Gidor
last2=Bilbao
last3=Deen
first3=Nicolaas Gerard Hendrik
last4=Hualde
first4=Jose Ignacio
year=1991
chapter=Basque Pidgins in Iceland and Canada Peter
title=Colección Miscelánea
volume=23
place=San Sebastian, Spain
publisher=Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa] probably in Vestfirðir. 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:cite web
last=Knörr
first=Henrike
year=2007
accessdate=2008-02-15
title=Basque Fishermen in Iceland Bilingual vocabularies in the 17th and 18th centuries
url=http://www.euskosare.org/euskara/basque_fishermen_iceland_bilingual_vocabularies_17_18_centuries] " [http://www.euskomedia.org/aunamendi/52804 islandés] " in the Spanish-language Auñamendi Encyclopedia, Mariano Estornés Lasa.] "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.Fact|date=September 2008

amples

*"for ju mala gissuna". "You are a bad man". "for ju" points to English "for you"; "mala" is "bad" in Spanish; "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".

References

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/athens/9479/kreole.html#3 Examples] .
* [http://www.snjafjallasetur.is/basque.html 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.