Editing Mobilian Jargon (section)

==History==

=== Origins ===
The accepted view of the origin is that it developed from contact with the French in the 18th century. But there is obscurity in that. It seems that there was a pre-European origin that is supported through its well-established use in diverse indigenous contexts, geographic overlapping with that of Southeastern Indian groups formerly associated in multilingual paramount chiefdoms of the pre-Columbian Mississippian complex, and its indigenous grammar. Mobilian Jargon has a recorded history of at least 250 years where the first reliable evidence dated 1700. For two centuries it was socially accepted to use as a lingua franca with the outsiders they interacted with, such as traders and settlers. It is presumed that fur traders spread the language to Choctaw and Chickasaw provinces. Though Indians spoke in Mobilian Jargon to outsiders, the outsiders did not have a full understanding of how special the nature and functions of Mobilian Jargon was. Because of this, the Indians created a cultural barrier, preserving their cultural integrity and privacy from non-Indian groups. The pervasiveness of Mobilian Jargon, as a result, created its longtime survival.

Mobilian Jargon is a pidginized or "corrupted"/"complex" form of [[Choctaw language|Choctaw]] and [[Chickasaw language|Chickasaw]] (both Western [[Muskogean]]) that also contains elements of Eastern Muskogean languages such as [[Alabama language|Alabama]] and [[Koasati]], colonial languages including [[Spanish language|Spanish]],  [[French language|French]], and [[English language|English]], and perhaps [[Algonquian languages|Algonquian]] and/or other languages. [[Pamela Munro]] has argued that Choctaw is the major contributing language (not both Choctaw and Chickasaw) although this has been challenged by Emanuel Drechsel. He has concluded that the presence of certain Algonquian words in Mobilian Jargon are the result of direct contact between the Mobilians of the Mississippi valley and [[Algonquians]] moving southward.  For the most part, these "loanwords" differ by only one or two letters.<ref>{{Cite journal |author=Drechsel, Emanuel |year=1985 |title=Algonquian Loanwords in Mobilian Jargon |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=51 |issue=4 |pages=393–396 |doi=10.1086/465906 |s2cid=144700073}}</ref>

=== Extinction ===
Mobilian has not survived as a functional language. There is documentary evidence of it in numerous historical records such as journals, diaries, reports and scholarly treatments. What was recorded, though, was very little, and it is safe to assume that Europeans did not have a full understanding of Mobilian. They believed that Mobilian was the mother of all other Indian languages, failing to notice that it was actually a hybrid of the Choctaw and Chickasaw languages.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |last=Drechsel |first=Emanuel |title=An Integrated Vocabulary of Mobilian Jargon, a Native American Pidgin of the Mississippi Valley |publisher=The Trustees of Indiana University |year=1996 |pages=248–354}}</ref>

=== Revival ===
When it was no longer needed as a spoken trade language, Mobilian was lost and eventually became extinct. It was first written about in the 1700s and was spoken until the 1950s. In the 1980s, elders in the Louisiana region could still recall a few words and phrases.<ref name=":0" />  In 2012, the [[Mezcal Jazz Unit]] of [[Montpellier]], France, collaborated by Internet with Grayhawk Perkins, a historian of the [[Muskogean languages|Muskogean nation]], to make a recording titled ''Thirteen Moons'', which features "the soulful chants of ancient folk tales and more modern stories told in Mobilian."<ref>{{Cite web |date=June 2012 |title=French, New Orleans musicians revive colonial language |url=http://www.france24.com/en/20120627-french-new-orleans-musicians-revive-colonial-language |access-date=2012-08-05 |work=FRANCE 24}}</ref>