Michif (also Mitchif, Mechif, Michif-Cree, Métif, Métchif, French Cree) is one of the

languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

of the Métis people of Canada and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, who are the descendants of

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: ** First Nat ...

(mainly Cree,

Nakota Nakota (or Nakoda or Nakona) is the endonym used by those '' Assiniboine'' Indigenous people in the US, and by the Stoney People, in Canada. The Assiniboine branched off from the Great Sioux Nation (aka the ''Oceti Sakowin'') long ago and mo ...

, and

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

) and

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the mo ...

workers of white ancestry (mainly

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and

Scottish Canadians Scottish Canadians are people of Scottish descent or heritage living in Canada. As the third-largest ethnic group in Canada and amongst the first Europeans to settle in the country, Scottish people have made a large impact on Canadian culture s ...

). Michif emerged in the early 19th century as a

mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgi ...

and adopted a consistent character between about 1820 and 1840. The word Michif is from a variant pronunciation of the French word "Métis". Some Métis people prefer this word (Michif) to describe their nationality when speaking English and use it for anything related to Métis people, including any languages they happen to speak. According to the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI), the word "Michif", when used for a language, is used to describe at least three distinct types of speech. "Northern Michif" (in Saskatchewan) is essentially a variety of Cree with a small number of French

loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

. " Michif French" is a variety of Canadian French with some Cree loanwords and syntax (word order). "Michif" used without any qualification can also describe the

which borrows heavily from both Cree and French. According to theories of

self-determination The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a '' jus cogens'' rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. It st ...

and

self-identification In the psychology of self, one's self-concept (also called self-construction, self-identity, self-perspective or self-structure) is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question ''"Who am I? ...

, the GDI refers to ''all'' of these speech varieties as "Michif" because many Métis community members use the term that way, even though these varieties are widely different in their linguistic details. The remainder of this article deals primarily with the mixed language that has many features from both French and Cree. The number of Michif speakers is estimated at fewer than 1,000; it was probably double or triple this number at the close of the 19th century, but never much higher. Currently, Michif is spoken in scattered Métis communities in the provinces of

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North ...

and

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Win ...

in Canada and in

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, S ...

in the U.S., with about 50 speakers in

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, all over age 60. There are some 230 speakers of Michif in the United States (down from 390 at the 1990 census), most of whom live in North Dakota, particularly in the

Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation (Ojibwe language: ''Mikinaakwajiwing'') is a reservation located in northern North Dakota, United States. It is the land base for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The population of the Turtle Mount ...

. There are around 300 Michif speakers in the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

, northern

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. Michif combines Cree and Métis French (Rhodes 1977, Bakker 1997:85), a variety of Canadian French, with some additional borrowing from English and

indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large num ...

such as

and

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

. In general, Michif

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently o ...

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, lexicon, morphology, and syntax are derived from Métis French, while

verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''qu ...

phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax are from a southern variety of

Plains Cree Plains Cree may refer to: * Plains Cree language * Plains Cree people Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically liv ...

(a western dialect of Cree). Articles and adjectives are also of Métis French origin but demonstratives are from Plains Cree. The Michif language is unusual among mixed languages, in that rather than forming a simplified grammar, it developed by incorporating complex elements of the chief languages from which it was born. French-origin noun phrases retain lexical

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

and adjective agreement; Cree-origin verbs retain much of their polysynthetic structure. This suggests that instead of haltingly using words from another's tongue, the people who gradually came to speak Michif were fully fluent in both French and Cree. The Michif language was first brought to scholarly attention in 1976 by John Crawford at the

University of North Dakota The University of North Dakota (also known as UND or North Dakota) is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of N ...

. Much of the subsequent research on Michif was also related to UND, including four more pieces by Crawford, plus work by Evans, Rhodes, and Weaver.

Orthography

Michif lacks a unified spelling standard. Some systems are phonetic, with each letter having only one sound (often based on English standards), while other are etymological, with French-derived words spelled by French standards, and Cree-derived words spelled using the "Standard Roman Orthography" system. In 2004, Robert Papen proposed a new system that was mostly phonetic. The government of Manitoba published a translation of its annual report on ''The Path to Reconciliation Act'' in Michif in June 2017. Its choice of spelling system can be seen in this extract: Here, as in Papen's system, different vowel qualities are marked by writing the character doubled ("a" vs. "aa") instead of using

diacritical mark A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s as usual for Cree. For consistency, this system is also extended to the French-derived words so that French "les blancs" (whites) becomes "lii blaan" but "les autochtones" (the indigenous) becomes "lii atoktonn".

Phonology

Michif as recorded starting in the 1970s combined two separate phonological systems: one for French origin elements, and one for Cree origin elements (Rhodes 1977, 1986). For instance, /y/, /l/, /r/ and /f/ exist only in French words, whereas

preaspirated In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstru ...

stops such as and exist only in Cree words. In this variety of Michif, the French elements were pronounced in ways that have distinctively Canadian French values for the vowels, while the Cree elements have distinctively Cree values for vowels. Nonetheless, there is some Cree influence on French words in the stress system (Rosen 2006). But by the year 2000 there were Michif speakers who had collapsed the two systems into a single system (Rosen 2007).

Consonants

Vowels

Michif has eleven oral vowels and four nasalized vowels.

Oral vowels

Nasalized vowels

The following four vowels are nasalized in Michif: * * * *

Schwa-deletion

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English ...

/ə/ appearing between two

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

s in French-origin words is dropped in Michif. Examples of this process are listed in the table below.

Elision in Michif

Rosen (2007) states that since all French-derived vowel-initial nouns in Michif have been lexicalized as consonant-initial, the French rule of elision, which deletes certain vowels (particularly schwa) before vowel-initial words, for ex., le copain ‘the friend’ but l’ami ‘the friend’), cannot apply in Michif. Curiously, she admits that elision is potentially still active since vowel-initial English loanwords allow elision, as in un bol d’oatmeal ‘a bowl of oatmeal’. Papen (2014) has countered that elision is, in fact, just as active in French-derived words as is liaison. For example, he examines Noun + di + Noun constructions (as in mwaa di zhanvjii vs mwaa d’oktob ‘month of January vs month of October) and finds that 100% of /i/ (from French schwa) are deleted before French-derived vowel-initial nouns. However, elision does not occur before Cree vowel-initial nouns. This strongly suggests that French phonological rules, such as liaison and elision still function in Michif, but that they apply only to French-derived words and not to Cree-derived ones, implying that Michif phonology is at least partially stratified, contrary to what Rosen (2007) proposes.

Liaison consonants

In French, a liaison is used to bridge the gap between word-final and word-initial vowel sounds. Whether liaison still exists in Michif is a much discussed theoretical issue. Scholars such as Bakker (1997), Rhodes (1986), and Rosen (2007) have suggested that liaison no longer exists in Michif and that all words that etymologically began with a vowel in French now begin with a consonant, the latter resulting from a variety of sources, including a liaison consonant. Their arguments are based on the fact that the expected liaison consonant (for example, /n/) will not show up and instead, the consonant will be /z/, as in ''in zur'' 'a bear' The above authors cite over a dozen words with an unexpected initial consonant. Papen (2003, 2014) has countered this argument by showing that, statistically, the vast majority of so-called initial consonants in Michif reflect the expected liaison consonant and that only about 13% of so-called initial consonants are unexpected. Moreover, Papen points out that one of the so-called initial consonant is /l/, which in nearly all cases, represents the elided definite article ''l'' (from ''li''), in which case it cannot be a liaison consonant, since liaison consonants may not have grammatical or semantic meaning. Thus in a sequence such as ''larb'' the meaning is not simply 'tree' but 'the tree', where initial ''l'' has the meaning of 'the', and /l/ is initial only in a phonetic sense, but not in a phonological one, since it represents a distinct morpheme from 'arb', and thus ''arb'' must be considered as phonologically vowel-initial.

Palatalization

The voiced alveolar stop /d/ in French-origin words is palatalized to /dʒ/ in Michif, as in

Acadian French Acadian French (french: français acadien, acadjonne) is a variety of French spoken by Acadians, mostly in the region of Acadia, Canada. Acadian French has 7 regional accents, including chiac and brayon. Phonology Since there was relatively lit ...

. This may occur word-initially or word-internally before front vowels.

Vocabulary

A comparison of some common words in English, French, Michif, and Cree:

Syntax

Noun phrase

Nouns are almost always accompanied by a French-origin determiner or a possessive. Cree-origin demonstratives can be added to noun phrases, in which case the Cree gender (animate or inanimate) is that of the corresponding Cree noun. Adjectives are French-origin (Cree has no adjectives), and as in French they are either pre- or postnominal. Prenominal adjectives agree in gender (like French), however, postnominal adjectives do not agree in gender (unlike French).

Verb phrase

The verb phrase is that of Plains Cree-origin with little reduction (there are no dubitative or preterit verb forms).

Word order

Michif word order is basically that of Cree (relatively free). However, the more French-origin elements are used, the closer the syntax seems to conform to norms of spoken French.

Lexicon

Nouns: 83-94% French-origin; others are mostly Cree-origin, Ojibwe-origin, or English-origin
Verbs: 88-99% Cree-origin
Question words: Cree-origin
Personal pronouns: Cree
Postpositions: Cree-origin
Prepositions: French-origin
Conjunctions: 55% Cree-origin; 40% French-origin
Numerals: French-origin
Demonstratives: Cree-origin The Lord's Prayer in English, French, and Michif:

Language genesis

Engraving at Batoche Cemetery (Michif version)

In languages of mixed ethnicities, the language of the mother usually provides the grammatical system, while the language of the father provides the lexicon. The reasons are as follows: children tend to know their mother's language better; in the case of the Métis, the men were often immigrants, whereas the women were native to the region. If the bilingual children need to use either of their parents’ languages to converse with outsiders, it is most likely to be the language of their mothers. Thus, the model of language-mixing predicts that Michif should have a Cree grammatical system and French lexicon. Michif, however, has Cree verb phrases and French noun phrases. The explanation for this unusual distribution of Cree and French elements in Michif lies in the polysynthetic nature of Cree morphology. In Cree, verbs can be very complex with up to twenty morphemes, incorporated nouns and unclear boundaries between morphemes. In other words, in Cree verbs it is very difficult to separate grammar from lexicon. As a result, in Michif the grammatical and bound elements are almost all Cree, and the lexical and free elements are almost all French; verbs are almost totally Cree, because the verb consists of grammatical and bound elements. Seen in this way, it can be argued that Michif is fundamentally Cree, but with heavy French borrowing (somewhat like

Maltese Maltese may refer to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to Malta * Maltese alphabet * Maltese cuisine * Maltese culture * Maltese language, the Semitic language spoken by Maltese people * Maltese people, people from Malta or of Malte ...

, a mixed Arabic-Italian language classified as fundamentally Arabic). The Métis in addition have their own variety of French with Cree borrowings -- Métis French.

Language revitalization

Métis cultural centres such as the Michif Cultural and Métis Resource Institute in

St. Albert, Alberta St. Albert is a city in Alberta on the Sturgeon River northwest of the City of Edmonton. It was originally settled as a Métis community, and is now the second-largest city in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. St. Albert first received its town ...

, the Métis Culture and Heritage Resource Centre in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749 ...

, and the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research are attempting to revive the language through public outreach. As of 2013, the '' Northern Journal'' reports that "Aboriginal language and culture is becoming increasingly visible" in Alberta, as Alberta's Northland School Division, "serving mostly First Nations and Métis students in the northern part of the province" has expanded its community partnerships and culture camps.

Notes

Bibliography

* Barkwell, Lawrence J., Leah Dorion, and Audreen Hourie. Métis legacy Michif culture, heritage, and folkways. Métis legacy series, v. 2. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2006. * Barkwell, L.J., (Editor). 2004. La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin, The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis, Volume One, Language Practice Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications. * Barkwell, L.J., (Editor). 2004. La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin, The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis, Volume Two, Language Theory. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications. * Barkwell, Lawrence J., Leah Dorion and Darren Prefontaine. "Metis Legacy: A Historiography and Annotated Bibliography". Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications Inc. and Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2001. * Bakker, Peter: Spelling systems for Michif: an overview. In: ''La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Vol 2: Language Theory.'' Barkwell, Lawrence (Ed.). Pemmican Publications/Manitoba Métis Federation Michif Language Program, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: pp. 11‑28, 2004. * Bakker, Peter: The Michif language of the Métis. In: ''La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Vol 2: Language Theory.'' Barkwell, Lawrence (Ed.). Pemmican Publications/Manitoba Métis Federation Michif Language Program, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: pp. 5‑9, 2004. * Bakker, Peter: The verb in Michif. In: ''La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Vol 2: Language Theory.'' Barkwell, Lawrence (Ed.). Pemmican Publications/Manitoba Métis Federation Michif Language Program, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: pp. 63‑80, 2004. * Bakker, Peter: What is Michif? In: ''La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Vol 1: Language Practice.'' Barkwell, Lawrence (Ed.). Pemmican Publications/Manitoba Métis Federation Michif Language Program, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: pp. 5‑7, 2004. * Bakker, Peter; Barkwell, Lawrence: Storytelling and Mythology. In: ''La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin. The Heritage Language of the Canadian Metis. Vol 2: Language Theory.'' Barkwell, Lawrence (Ed.). Pemmican Publications/Manitoba Métis Federation Michif Language Program, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: pp. 83‑96, 2004. * Bakker, Peter. 1997. ''A language of our own: The genesis of Michif, the mixed Cree-French language of the Canadian Métis''. New York, Oxford University Press. * Bakker, Peter and Robert Papen. 1997. Michif: A mixed language based on Cree and French. In S. Thomason (ed.) ''Contact languages: A wider perspective.'' Philadelphia: John Benjamins, p. 295-363. * Bloomfield, Leonard (1984) ''Cree-English Lexicon'' Human Area Relations Files, New Haven, CT. * Crawford, John. "Speaking Michif in four Métis communities." ''Canadian Journal of Native Studies'' 3.1 (1983): 47–55. * Crawford, John. "What is Michif? Language in the Metis tradition." Jennifer S.H. Brown and Jacqueline Peterson, eds. ''The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America'' (1985): 231–241. * Crawford, John. "Linguistic and sociolinguistic relationships in the Michif language." ''Proceedings of the Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota'' 3 (1973): 8-22. * Evans, Donna. 1982. "On coexistence and convergence of two phonological systems in Michif." Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session, 26, p. 158-173. * Fleury, N. and L. J. Barkwell. 2000. La Lawng: Michif Peekishkwewin: The Canadian Michif Language Dictionary. Winnipeg: Metis Resource Centre. * Gillon, Carrie and Nicole Rosen. 2016. Critical mass in Michif. ''Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages'' 31: 113–140. * Papen, Robert. 2003. "Michif: One phonology or two?" In Y. Chung, C. Gillon and R. Wokdak (eds) University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 12, Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Language of the Americas, p. 47-58. * Papen, Robert. 2004. "Michif spelling conventions: Proposal for a unified Michif writing system. In L. Barkwell (ed.) L''a lawng: Michif peekishkwewin.'' Winnipeg, MB: Pemmican Publications, p. 29-53. * Rhodes, Richard A. 1977. French Cree—a case of borrowing. ''Actes du Huitième Congrès des Algonquinistes.'' Wm. Cowan (ed.), Ottawa: Carleton University. p. 6-25. * Rhodes, Richard A. 1986. Métif—a second look. ''Actes du Septième Congrès des Algonquinistes.'' Wm. Cowan (ed.), Ottawa: Carleton University. p. 287-296. * Rhodes, Richard A. 1987. Les Contes Metif—Metif Myths. ''Papers of the Eighteenth Algonquian Conference.'' Wm. Cowan (ed.), Ottawa: Carleton University. p. 297-301. * Rhodes, Richard A. 1992. Language Shift in Algonquian. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language.'' 93:87-92. * Rhodes, Richard A. 2001. Text Strategies in Métchif. Papers of the Thirty-second Algonquian Conference. H. C. Wolfart (ed.), Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. p. 455-469. * Rosen, Nicole. 2006. Language Contact and Stress Assignment. ''Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung.'' 59:170-190. * Rosen, Nicole. 2007. Domains in Michif Phonology. Ph.D. Thesis. Department of Linguistics. University of Toronto. * Papen, Robert. 2005. Le mitchif: langue franco-crie des Plaines. In A. Valdman, J. Auger & D. Piston-Hatlen (eds). Saint-François, QC: Presses de l'Université Laval, p. 327-347. * Weaver, Deborah. 1982. Obviation in Michif. ''Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session'', 26, p. 174-262. * Weaver, Deborah. 1983. The effect of language change and death on obviation in Michif. In W. Cowan (ed.) ''Actes du Quatorzième Congrès des Algonquinistes.'' Ottawa: Carleton University Press, p. 261-268. *Zoldy, Grace. 2003. The Lord's Prayer. I
''Li Liivr Oche Michif Ayamiiawina - The Book of Michif Prayers''
Camperville Michif Cree Ritual Language Project.

External links

Michif Language LessonsLearnMichif.comMichif DictionaryAudio and video of Michif speakers, with French and English translations
* ttp://www.language-archives.org/language/crg OLAC resources in and about the Michif language*ELAR Archive o
Documenting Michif Variation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Michif Language Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Languages of Canada Endangered Algic languages Mixed languages Métis culture Métis in the United States Canadian French Cree language Endangered Romance languages Languages of the United States Culture of the Canadian Prairies North Dakota culture