Moose Cree is a dialect of the
Cree language
Cree (also known as Cree– Montagnais–Naskapi) is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador. If considered one language, it is th ...
spoken mainly in
Moose Factory
Moose Factory is a community in the Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, which is at the southern end of James Bay. It was the first English-speaking settlement in lands no ...
, Ontario.
Classification
As a dialect of the Cree language, Moose Cree is classified under the
Algonquian branch of the
Algic language family.
Name
The term ''Moose Cree'' is derived either from the toponym , meaning 'Moose Island' or , meaning 'Moose River'. The former is the historical name for the summering grounds of the speakers of this dialect, but has been appropriated by the modern municipality of
Moosonee, leaving the island with the official English name of
Moose Factory
Moose Factory is a community in the Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, which is at the southern end of James Bay. It was the first English-speaking settlement in lands no ...
, a name that recalls the historical presence of a
Hudson's Bay trading post, originally called 'factories'. The above-mentioned
hydronym
A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a ...
refers to the river where the said island is located.
[Kevin Brousseau, 2015. ''A Dictionary of Moose Cree. '' 2nd edition. Moose Factory: Moose Cree First Nation.] Speakers of the dialect refer to the language as .
Official status
In Ontario, the Cree language has no official status.
Orthography
Moose Cree is traditionally written in the
Eastern Syllabics, a variant of
syllabics used by Cree dialects spoken in communities where the
Anglican church
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...
once had a strong presence, namely
Fort Albany and
Moose Factory
Moose Factory is a community in the Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, which is at the southern end of James Bay. It was the first English-speaking settlement in lands no ...
in Ontario, as well as the Cree communities in Quebec. The Latin alphabet is also in use locally, as a phonetic and non-standard script in hymnals and various locally produced materials and as a standardized script in pedagogical materials.
The latter use is based on standardization efforts for the Cree language at large.
[David Pentland, 1977. ''Nêhiyawasinahikêwin: A Standard Orthography for the Cree Language'' Regina: Saskatchewan Indian Federated College.]
Phonology
*Preservation of the Proto-Algonquian *k as
*Preservation of the Proto-Algonquian *r as a distinctive consonant
*Preservation of historical distinction between and outside of consonant clusters
*Assimilation of to in presence of another intramorphemic
*Preservation of the phonological status of all eight Proto-Algonquian vowels, except for Proto-Algonquian *e on occasion. For this phoneme, an incomplete change is apparent whereby in certain words and morphemes it has shifted to , resulting in predictable morphophonological adjustments in the modern dialect.
References
{{Cree language
Cree language
Central Algonquian languages
Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands
First Nations languages in Canada