The Algonquian Language Family
A more appealing title for this post might have been “Cree and all its Cuzzins”. It was precipitated by a conversation with Knowledge Keeper Wes Fineday about sister languages, and it seemed like the kind of information that Cree language learners might also like to know!
The following summary is closely based on materials produced in 2020 and 2023 by University of Manitoba linguist Will Oxford. They are presented here with his permission. Details of both publications are cited with links below.
Groups:
The Algonquian language family is often divided into three groups:
- Central,
- Eastern, and
- Plains.
The Central Algonquian languages, spoken in a large area centered on the Great Lakes, fall into six groups:
- Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo,
- Miami-Illinois
- Shawnee,
- Menominee,
- Ojibwe-Potawatomi
- Potawatomi
- Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin) varieties
- Southwestern Ojibwe,
- Saulteaux,
- Oji-Cree,
- Nishnaabemwin (includes Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe)
- Algonquin
- Cree-Innu-Naskapi (a language continuum from west to east):
- Plains Cree,
- Woods Cree,
- Swampy Cree,
- Moose Cree,
- Atikamekw,
- East Cree,
- Innu,
- Naskapi,
- Michif (Mixed Cree/French in several variant forms)
Current Speaker Numbers:
- In the tens of thousands for Ojibwe and Cree-Innu-Naskapi
- in the hundreds for Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Michif.
- Only a handful of native speakers of Menominee and Potawatomi remain.
- Miami-Illinois was without native speakers from the 1960s, but there have been recent efforts to revive the language.
Eastern Algonquian languages were historically spoken along much of the eastern seaboard.
- Mi’gmaq (Micmac);
- Maliseet-Passamaquoddy;
- Abenaki, consistinÐ of Western and Eastern branches;
- Southern New England Algonquian (a language continuum)
- Massachusett (Wampanoag),
- Narragansett,
- Mohegan-Pequot-Montauk,
- Quiripi;
- Mahican; and
- the Delaware (Lenape) languages include Munsee and Unami.
Several other poorly attested Eastern languages existed:
- Etchemin,
- Nanticoke,
- Powhatan, and
- Pamlico.
Current speaker numbers:
- in the thousands for Mi’gmaq,
- in the hundreds for Maliseet-Passamaquoddy.
- There are no remaining speakers of other Eastern languages. This has happened recently in some cases (Delaware) and centuries ago in others (Powhatan).
Plains Algonquian language groups are:
- Blackfoot,
- Cheyenne,
- Arapahoan
- Arapaho,
- Gros Ventre (Atsina),
- Nawathinehena.
Current speaker numbers:
- in the low thousands for Blackfoot and Cheyenne.
Historical Locations:
The following map (Oxford 2023) gives an overview of historical locations of Algonquian language groups (based on Goddard 1999).
The following map (Oxford 2023) shows Eastern Algonquian Languages in greater detail.
References
Oxford, Will. 2020. “Algonquian Languages” in The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages, Edited By Daniel Siddiqi, Michael Barrie, Carrie Gillon, Jason Haugen, Eric Mathieu. https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~oxfordwr/papers/Oxford_Algonquian_Routledge.pdf
Oxford, Will. 2023. Algonquian language maps. Manuscript, University of Manitoba. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~oxfordwr/algling/maps.html.
3 Responses
Reposted here by request: Very cool!! For Michif though, you say that the number of speakers is in the hundreds; I would say it depends what you mean when you say ‘Michif’. You’re probably already familiar with all of this that I’m about to say, but I figure it bears repeating because a lot of people have misconceptions about Michif and how endangered it is.
Michif is used to refer to three very different ways of speaking- all they have in common is being distinct to the Métis. There’s Northern Michif, spoken in parts of northern Sask and AB, which is a distinctly Métis variety of Northern y-dialect Cree, sometimes also called Métis Cree or Michif Cree- it sometimes uses as many as a few hundred French loanwords, but is still basically fundamentally Cree in its grammar and the vast majority of its vocabulary. There are at least hundreds of speakers of this. Linguists apparently consider it a dialect or sociolect of Cree with occasional loanwords borrowed from French.
Then there’s Michif French- a distinctly Métis dialect of French spoken in certain prairie Métis communities. Very noticeably different from other kinds of French. Hard to get a count on numbers because like Northern Michif it forms a bit of a spectrum or a continuum with the larger language it’s a part of.
Finally there’s what they call Southern Michif or Heritage Michif. This is the mixed language oughly half and half from Michif French and southern Plains Cree, combining the grammar from both, with a strong additional influence from Saulteaux/Ojibwe on various aspects. This is the mixed language that linguists mean when they just say ‘Michif’. There are at most *maybe* 50 fluent mothertongue speakers of this alive today between both sides of the border, only about a dozen or so who are healthy/willing/able to do language revitalization work.
I just say this to add context to the ‘somewhere in the hundreds’!
Thanks for this, Allison. Linguists do tend to picture Heritage Michif as the “real thing”, disregarding the continuum that goes from fundamentally Cree to fundamentally French.
Bless you for this information! I’m of Metis-Cree descent and I can’t wait to share this with my cousins!