Yupik and English: Borrowing of the Word “Mukluk”
Alexandria Harder
At the beginning of the semester, before I had an artifact, I came across a piece of research about the word “mukluk”. I had always assumed it was an Alaska Native word. I came to learn that it is, in fact, an English word. The word “mukluk”, the word used for seal skin boots, is the English derivative of the Yupik work maklak, meaning bearded seal. English speakers have taken this word, changed the meaning, pronunciation, and spelling. My artifact is a page from one of Paul Silook’s journals written in 1917. The second paragraph of the journal entry contains the phrase, “when a seal or mukluk is killed”.
The artifact is historically situated in the early twentieth century. Paul Silook was a Siberian Yupik Eskimo who lived on St. Lawrence Island where Siberian Yupik is spoken. Silook learned English from the missionaries who came to plant schools on the island. Very few people were bilingual at the time. He wrote in both Yupik and English. He worked as a substitute teacher and a translator for a church, and helped early archeologists excavate on the island in the 30’s and 40’s. The missionaries who came also helped the Siberian Yupik People develop their writing system to translate the Bible into their language.
I also investigated what was happening in Alaska in a broader sense. In the early 1900’s, many non-Native people came to Alaska due to the Gold Rush and development of fishing and timber industries. Also in 1900, the US Army built the Trans-Alaska Military road and telegraph system. From 1915 to 1923, the US government built the Alaska Railroad. All these are instances of non-Natives having more contact with Natives in Alaska. These events also allowed for ease of communication throughout Alaska, which spread language more easily.
The biggest piece of this project was my linguistic analysis of the word “mukluk”. Through my research, I discovered that Yupik has five sub-dialects. Siberian Yupik is one of them. “Mukluk”, which refers to boots often made from seal skin, comes from the Yupik word maklak. Many sounds are present in both Yupik and English, however there are sounds in each language that the other one lacks. When an English speaker is learning Yupik, and tries to say a word that contains a sound not existent in English, they will replace that sound with the closest available sound. Because English speakers cannot articulate the sounds in mukluk, we changed the pronunciation slightly which also changed the spelling.
This artifact is important because it demonstrates a key element in the history of the English language in Alaska. Borrowing of words from one language to another is a result of contact with new phenomena and is very common when different languages are introduced to each other. The borrowing of the word “mukluk” is one small instance of a larger occurrence of loan words and has a significant impact on English in Alaska.
The artifact is historically situated in the early twentieth century. Paul Silook was a Siberian Yupik Eskimo who lived on St. Lawrence Island where Siberian Yupik is spoken. Silook learned English from the missionaries who came to plant schools on the island. Very few people were bilingual at the time. He wrote in both Yupik and English. He worked as a substitute teacher and a translator for a church, and helped early archeologists excavate on the island in the 30’s and 40’s. The missionaries who came also helped the Siberian Yupik People develop their writing system to translate the Bible into their language.
I also investigated what was happening in Alaska in a broader sense. In the early 1900’s, many non-Native people came to Alaska due to the Gold Rush and development of fishing and timber industries. Also in 1900, the US Army built the Trans-Alaska Military road and telegraph system. From 1915 to 1923, the US government built the Alaska Railroad. All these are instances of non-Natives having more contact with Natives in Alaska. These events also allowed for ease of communication throughout Alaska, which spread language more easily.
The biggest piece of this project was my linguistic analysis of the word “mukluk”. Through my research, I discovered that Yupik has five sub-dialects. Siberian Yupik is one of them. “Mukluk”, which refers to boots often made from seal skin, comes from the Yupik word maklak. Many sounds are present in both Yupik and English, however there are sounds in each language that the other one lacks. When an English speaker is learning Yupik, and tries to say a word that contains a sound not existent in English, they will replace that sound with the closest available sound. Because English speakers cannot articulate the sounds in mukluk, we changed the pronunciation slightly which also changed the spelling.
This artifact is important because it demonstrates a key element in the history of the English language in Alaska. Borrowing of words from one language to another is a result of contact with new phenomena and is very common when different languages are introduced to each other. The borrowing of the word “mukluk” is one small instance of a larger occurrence of loan words and has a significant impact on English in Alaska.