Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 17:18:55 -0500

From: Beverly Flanigan FLANIGAN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: Re: Mobelian (sp?)



It's Mobilian Jargon, and it was not slang at all but rather a kind of

pidgin formed from several southern U.S. Indian languages and used for

intertribal trade. White traders and settlers picked it up and used it

to some extent, but it was primarily used intertribally. The linguist

who's worked on it extensively is Emmanuel Drechsel, who's now at the

U. of Hawaii. His dissertation has just been published, by Oxford UP.