Chinook Jargon or Chinuk Wawa, not to be confused with Chinook proper, is a creole language which developed from north-west coast Native languages. In addition to words taken from local languages, it includes vocabulary from English, French, and other immigrant languages which were spoken in the area. The language was written in a variety of Latin orthographies: typically using English or French spelling rules. A completely different orthography was developed using the Duployé shorthand in the B.C. interior for a variant of the language called Kamloops Wawa.

It's difficult to describe a consistent phonology of the language during its time as a trade language (pigin), as speakers would speak Chinook Jargon with an accent based on their own native language. Once creolized, meaning there were speakers of Chinuk Wawa who grew up speaking it as their first language, one can start to look at the sound-system of the language. The charts below are for the revitalized Chinuk Wawa creole spoken in Grande Ronde.

Note: There are several Roman Orthography conventions on this site that may require further explanation. On the charts below, there is lots of phonetic terminology that may not be familiar to everyone.