Encyclopedia > Cree language

  Article Content

Cree language

Cree is an Algonquian language spoken in the northern Great Plains of Canada. It is also the basis for the Chinook Jargon trade language used until some point after contact with Europeans.

Like many Native American languages, it features a complex agglutinative morphology, and several sounds not found in European languages, particularly lateral fricatives, affricates, and affricate ejectives (see phonology). It uses the Cree syllabary[?] for writing; the same syllabary is also used in writing the various Inuit dialects of northern Canada, although it appears that the Latin-based orthographies for these languages are supplanting the various forms of the syllabary.

The word "Cree" is short for Keristenoag, which is their name for themselves (-ag is the animate[?] plural ending). The 'r' can also be pronounced as 'l' or 'n' depending on dialect.

A unique kind of creole of Cree and Canadian French, called Michif, is spoken by some Canadian Métis.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Bullying

... is a term for someone with absolute governmental power, from the Greek language turannos. In Classical Antiquity[?] it did not always have inherently negative ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 21.6 ms