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Categories: Extinct languages | North Germanic languages | Russian language | Arctic | Pidgin languages
Russenorsk language
Russenorsk (or "Russonorsk") was a pidgin language combining elements of Russian and Norwegian, created by traders and whalers from the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago and the Russian Kola peninsula.
The presence of seamen, fishermen, and traders in close proximity with no common language necessitated the creation of some minimal form of communication. Like all pidgins, Russenorsk was not a complex system of communication. It had a rudimentary grammar and a restricted vocabulary mostly composed of words essential to Arctic fishing and trade (fish, weather, etc.) and did not particularly deal with "minutiae" irrelevant to the situation, e.g. existentialism, music, etc.
Some scholars do not classify Russenorsk as a pidgin. For example, Prof. Kortlandt [1] argues that Russenorsk was essentially a variant of Norwegian with Russian loan words.
The history of Russenorsk is limited to 18th and 19th centuries. It stopped being used after 1917.
Categories: Extinct languages | North Germanic languages | Russian language | Arctic | Pidgin languages