Borgarmålet: A Sámi-Swedish pidgin from the beginning of the 18th century

Abstract

Borgarmalet ‘language of the townspeople’ was a trade idiom used by the Swedish townspeople and the Sami during periods of seasonal trade in Swedish Lule Lappmark at the beginning of the 18th century. The analysis of the five sentences in this trade language provided by P. Hogstrom (in a book published in 1747 ) allows us to suggest that Borgarmalet was a typical pidgin characterized by a vocabulary derived mostly from the superstrate language (Swedish), by a stable simplified grammatical structure without synthetic forms and by direct or transformed grammatical interference from the substrate language (Sami). Borgarmalet was also characterised by innovations of its own in word-formation as well as in grammar, a feature typical of pidgins. A special feature to differentiate Borgarmalet from other pidgins is a transfer of aspectuality – expressed in Sami by different suffixes but in Borgarmalet with the help of lexical means from Swedish.