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Maliseet-Passamaquoddy (''skicinuwatu'') is an endangered Algonquian language spoken by the
Maliseet The Wəlastəkwewiyik, or Maliseet (, also spelled Malecite), are an Algonquian-speaking First Nation of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are the indigenous people of the Wolastoq ( Saint John River) valley and its tributaries. Their territory ...
and
Passamaquoddy The Passamaquoddy ( Maliseet-Passamaquoddy: ''Peskotomuhkati'') are a Native American/First Nations people who live in northeastern North America. Their traditional homeland, Peskotomuhkatik'','' straddles the Canadian province of New Brunswick ...
peoples along both sides of the border between
Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...
in 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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
, Canada. The language consists of two major dialects: Maliseet, which is mainly spoken in the Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick; and Passamaquoddy, spoken mostly in the St. Croix River Valley of eastern Maine. However, the two dialects differ only slightly, mainly in accent. The indigenous people widely spoke Maliseet-Passamaquoddy in these areas until around the post-
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
era when changes in the education system and increased marriage outside of the speech community caused a large decrease in the number of children who learned or regularly used the language.Leavitt, Robert M. ''Passamaquoddy-Maliseet''. 1996. Newcastle: Lincom Europa. As a result, in both Canada and the U.S. today, there are only 600 speakers of both dialects, and most speakers are older adults. Although the majority of younger people cannot speak the language (particularly the Passamaquoddy dialect), there is growing interest in teaching the language in community classes and in some schools.


Phonology and orthography

The Maliseet-Passamaquoddy standard
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
consists of 17 letters and an apostrophe. The following tables are based on the sound system described by Robert M. Leavitt in ''Passamaquoddy-Maliseet'' (1996). The bold letters are the spelling in the standard orthography, and the symbols between the slashes give the respective
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
pronunciation:


Consonants

Additionally, the standard orthography uses an apostrophe () to represent word-initial consonants that are no longer pronounced due to historical
sound change A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
s. It occurs only word-initially before ''p'', ''t'', ''k'', ''q'', ''s'', or ''c''. These "missing consonants" can appear in other forms of the word. For example, the stem ''ktomakéyu'' produces the word ''tomakéyu'' "s/he is poor" (where the apostrophe indicates that the initial ''k'' has been dropped) as well as the word ''nkótomakey'' "I am poor" (where the ''k'' remains pronounced because it occurs after the pronoun ''n-'').


Vowels

There are six
monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
s, five of which are spelled with a single letter and one which is spelled with the combination ''eh''. There are also five
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, which are spelled as a combination of a vowel and a
glide Glide may refer to: * Gliding flight, to fly without thrust Computing *Glide API, a 3D graphics interface *Glide OS, a web desktop *Glide (software), an instant video messenger *Glide, a molecular docking software by Schrödinger (company), Schrà ...
: (When ''o'' appears before ''w'', it is written as ''u'' to reflect the
rounding Rounding means replacing a number with an approximate value that has a shorter, simpler, or more explicit representation. For example, replacing $ with $, the fraction 312/937 with 1/3, or the expression with . Rounding is often done to obta ...
of the vowel due to the influence of the ''w''). (/e/ may also be pronounced as /É›/).


Phonological processes

Many phonological processes that occur in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, the most important of which are outlined below: * Several consonants have two
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s, which
alternate Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film * ''The Alternative ...
depending on where they appear in the word. When they appear adjacent to another consonant or following an apostrophe, they use the default
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
pronunciation given in the consonant chart above. When they appear only adjacent to vowels or the prefix ''n-'', they use the
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
equivalent of the same sound. For example, in the word ''peciye'' "he/she arrives", ''c'' is voiced: ed͡ʒije But the word ''pihce'' "far away" the ''c'' is unvoiced because it is adjacent to ''h'': it͡ʃe The following table summarizes these consonants and their voiced and unvoiced allophones: * Syncope of unstressed ''o'' is very common. This often occurs when ''o'' is in the first syllable of a verb stem used without a prefix. For example, in the word ''ktomakeyu'' "if s/he is poor" (from the verb stem ''-kotomakey-''), the first ''o'' drops out because it is unstressed. But in ''nkotomakey'' "I am poor," which is built off the same verb stem, the first syllable is stressed. Therefore, the first ''o'' is not dropped. There are many more environments where this occurs, but the syncope changes are usually entirely predictable. LeSourd describes many of the syncope rules in ''Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy'' (1993). * Verbs with ''o'' (or an underlying ''o'' that has undergone syncope) in the first syllable of their stem have an
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German ''Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
form in the Changed Conjunct mode, where the ''o'' changes to an ''e''. For example, the verb stem ''-wotom-'' ("smoke") becomes ''wetomat'' ("when he/she smoked"). * With verb stems that end in ''h'', the vowel preceding the ''h'' changes to match the first vowel in the inflectional ending that follows the stem. The vowel preceding the ''h'' is therefore left as a blank underscore when writing out the stem. In the following example, the verb stem is ''-nehp_h-'' "kill": :* ''nehpah·a'' "I kill him/her" :* ''nehpeh·eq'' "when you killed him/her" :* ''knehpih·i'' "you kill me" :* ''nehpoh·oq'' "he/she kills me" :* ''nehpuh·uku·k'' "they kill me" * The monophthongs (except "o") are lengthened when they occur in certain positions, although vowel length is not contrastive. One notable difference between the two dialects is that vowels are generally not as long in Passamaquoddy as in Maliseet, but the distribution of long and short vowels are similar. LeSourd describes the following generalizations about vowel lengthening: :* vowels are lengthened before a ''hC'' cluster but remain short before other consonant clusters :* vowels are lengthened in
open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...
penultimate syllables if that syllable is stressed or if the final syllable is stressed :* word final vowels are sometimes lengthened, especially when they occur before a pause


Distributional restrictions and syllable structure

Every phoneme except "o" and "h" can occur initially, medially, or finally; "o" and "h" are never word final. Clusters of two obstruents, geminate consonant pairs, and clusters of a sonorant followed by an obstruent are all common. Consonant clusters ending in a sonorant usually do not occur except in geminate pairs or when they occur initially with one of the personal pronoun prefixes. Clusters of three consonants can occur and are almost always of the form ''CsC''.LeSourd, Philip S
''Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy''
1993. New York: Garland Publishing.
The most basic and common syllable structures are ''CV'' and ''CVC''.


Stress and pitch accent

Stress is assigned based on a set of very complex rules, and a difference in stress and accent systems is one of the most prominent distinguishing features between Maliseet and Passamaquoddy. According to LeSourd, in Passamaquoddy, some vowels are considered stressable and ones that are considered unstressable. Stressable vowels are available to be acted on by stress rules, while unstressable vowels might undergo syncope. Stress is assigned (to stressable vowels only) to initial syllables and even-numbered syllables, counting from right to left. There is a simultaneous left to right process that reassigns some unstressable vowels as stressable. Unstressable vowels which do not become stressable based on the left to right process are subject to syncope based on five rules LeSourd outlines in ''Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy''. Maliseet has a similar approach, but the finer details of the stress assignment rules are different. In addition to stress rules, some rules assign pitch to some syllables based on their position in the words. As LeSourd describes, Passamaquoddy stressed syllables can be relatively high-pitched or low-pitched, and final unstressed syllables can be distinctively low-pitched. Maliseet has similar pitch assignments, but again, differs from Passamaquoddy in ways that serve to distinguish the two dialects.


Morphology

There are four categories of words in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy: nouns, pronouns, verbs, and
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...
; every type except particles are
inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
. Like other Algonquian languages, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy is
polysynthetic In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...
, often combining many
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
s into one-word unit. It is also fairly
agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
, with many morphemes generally corresponding to a single unit of meaning.


Nouns

A fundamental characteristic of Maliseet-Passamaquoddy is that all nouns and pronouns have
noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
es: Like other Algonquian languages, nouns are either animate or inanimate. All abstract nouns (such as "prayer", "happiness", "the past") are inanimate; people, personal names, animals, and trees are all animate. There is no perfect correspondence between the inherent "animateness" of a noun and its class for all words. However, the words for "fingernail" and "knee" are animate, but the words for "heart" and "tongue" are inanimate. Verbs impose restrictions on the noun class that one of their
arguments An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
must be. The easiest way to distinguish animate and inanimate nouns is by their plural forms. Animate plural nouns end in ''-k'', and inanimate plural nouns end in ''-l''. In addition to class and number, animate nouns and pronouns (except "I," "we," and "you") are marked in sentences as either proximate or
obviative Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person clusivity marking that distinguishes a non- salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse cont ...
. Inanimate nouns are never marked as obviative. Proximate nouns refer to something near the speaker or most central to the discourse, while obviative nouns refer to something that is distanced or more remote from consideration. When two nouns or pronouns are
conjoined Conjoined twins – sometimes popularly referred to as Siamese twins – are twins joined ''in utero''. A very rare phenomenon, the occurrence is estimated to range from 1 in 49,000 births to 1 in 189,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence ...
, they can both be proximate or both obviative. In all other cases, when two or more animate nouns or pronouns appear in the same clause, one will be proximate (the focus of the clause), and the others will be obviative. Proximate is the "default" noun ending; obviative forms use different endings. Additionally, nouns can also be inflected for the absentative,
locative In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
, and (with some nouns) vocative cases. The Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal includes
chart
showing all the possible declensions of nouns in various forms. Notably, the absentative case is marked not only with endings but also changes in pitch contour. Nouns can also be marked with
diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...
and/or feminine suffixes. When these are combined with case markings, the order of suffixes is as follows: # Noun stem # Feminine suffix # Diminutive suffix # Locative, absentative, or vocative ending # Number/gender/obviation ending Some nouns cannot appear in an unpossessed form—that is, they must appear with one of the personal pronoun prefixes. All body parts and kinship terms are in this class. For each of these words, there is a corresponding word that can appear unpossessed. For example,'' 'temisol'' "dog" must appear in a possessed form, but ''olomuss'' "dog" is usually never possessed. Nouns can be used in apposition with other nouns and function as adjectives (which do not exist as a separate class of words). Participles can be formed from the Changed Conjunct form of a verb and use the special plural endings ''-ik'' (animate) or ''-il'' (inanimate).


Pronouns

There are five types of pronouns:
personal Personal may refer to: Aspects of persons' respective individualities * Privacy * Personality * Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship Companies * Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...
,
demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
,
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
, the word "other", and a hesitator/ filler pronoun. Personal pronouns differ from nouns and other pronouns in that they do not use plural markers, but instead, each form is unique. The third person is
gender-neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...
, and there are both inclusive and exclusive forms of the second person plural pronoun. The first and second person singular also have longer emphatic forms: (In the above chart, acute accents show relatively high pitch, and grave accents show relatively low pitch. Pitch is usually not marked except in dictionaries to distinguish similar words.) There are three demonstrative pronouns, which have both animate and inanimate forms and are inflected for number, obviation, and absentativity: * ''wot-yut'' "this, near me" * ''not-nit'' "that, near the listener" * ''yat-yet'' "that, far from the speaker and listener but in sight" The interrogative pronouns are ''wen'' "who? (referring to animate noun)" and ''keq'' "what? (referring to inanimate noun)". They are also inflected for number, obviation, and absentativity. The word ''kotok'' "another, other" is a pronoun that also has animate and inanimate forms that can be inflected with various endings. One of the most interesting features is the pronoun that functions similarly to English "uh..." or "er...", but which is inflected to match the anticipated word. Compare the bolded pronoun in: * ''nkisi puna ntahtuwossomut ihik... tuwihputik'' "I put my cup on the uh... table." to: * ''nkisewestuwama iyey... Mali'' "I spoke to uh... Mary".


Verbs

Verbs are built from word stems, which consist of one or more roots. Roots can be initial, medial, or final, and can be combined to build rich levels of meaning into a verb: * Initial: usually adjectival or adverbial in meaning, such as color, quality, or state ** ''puskosone'' "he/she has wet shoes" (''pus-'' "wet") * Medial: can be nominal, adjectival, or adverbial; denote things such as body parts, geographic features, shapes, and arrangements; can be final if a verb is very "noun-like" ** ''tomiptinessu'' "he/she breaks his/her own arm" (''-ptine-'' "hand, arm") ** ''kiniptine'' "he/she has big hands" (''-ptine-'' "hand, arm") * Final: verbal meanings, denoting actions, emotions or states ** ''nmemihp'' "I have had enough to eat" (''-hp(i)-'' "eat") Verbs are classified by the final root in their stem, which marks them as transitive or
intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
. Some verbs that have a direct object when they are translated into English are, in reality, intransitive verbs where the noun has been incorporated into the verb: ''posonut•ehk•e'' (basket-do.AI-3.sg) "he/she makes baskets". Because Maliseet-Passamaquoddy is polysynthetic, a large amount of grammatical information is expressed in one verb through the use of various inflections and affixes: The possible modes and how they are used in sentences are: * Independent indicative: used in main clauses of statement and yes–no questions * Changed conjunct: usually used in adverbial clauses or in "who", "what", and "why" questions * Unchanged conjunct: used in "if" clauses and sentences beginning with ''nopal'' "if only" * Subordinative: used mainly in clauses to express subsequent or resulting action; can also be used alone as a "polite" imperative or as a second command following an imperative; also used in "how" questions * Imperative: used for direct commands * Conjunct imperative: used for indirect commands (third person subjects) The possible tenses are: * Present: actions in present time; also used as basic past tense or for future when combined with particles such as * Preterite: past completed action; used with Independent Indicative, Changed Conjunct, and Subordinative modes * Dubitative preterite: expresses doubt or uncertainty; used with Independent Indicative, Changed Conjunct, Unchanged Conjunct, and Subordinative modes; also marked for Preterite when in Independent Indicative or Unchanged Conjunct * Absentative: refers to an absentative noun; used with Independent Indicative or Subordinative modes The Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal also includes verb charts showing extensive conjugations of different classes of verb


Particles

Particles are all the words in the language that are not inflected. They include: *
Cardinal numbers In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. The ...
(
ordinal numbers In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
are nouns) * Negative and positive particles *
Interjections An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
* Conjunctions * Emphatic particles


Syntax

The verb system is ergative–absolutive, meaning that the subjects of intransitive verbs behave like the objects of transitive verbs. Because of this, transitive and intransitive verbs have subcategories based on which gender one of their arguments must be, so that there are four major verb types: AI intransitive verbs can only be used with animate subjects; TI verbs can only be used with inanimate objects, etc. Because verbs polysynthetic nature, subjects and objects are often not separate words, but affixes attached to the verbs; therefore, one word "sentences," are possible and even common.


Person hierarchy

Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, along with other Algonquian languages, is also a direct–inverse language, which means the subjects and objects of transitive verbs are marked differently in different contexts according to where they fall relative to each other on a "person hierarchy". The person hierarchy lays out which word is considered more salient or takes precedence over another form. Leavitt's grammar gives the following hierarchy: The hierarchy comes into play in sentences with transitive-animate (TA) verbs. When a TA verb's subject is higher on the person hierarchy than the object, the verb is conjugated in the direct form. If the subject is lower on the hierarchy than the object, the verb is conjugated in the inverse form. The direct form is considered
unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
, and the inverse is shown by theme markers. Because of the direct–inverse system, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy does not have a clear way of otherwise showing active–passive distinction on verbs. Another case for which the hierarchy is relevant is in reflexive and
reciprocal Reciprocal may refer to: In mathematics * Multiplicative inverse, in mathematics, the number 1/''x'', which multiplied by ''x'' gives the product 1, also known as a ''reciprocal'' * Reciprocal polynomial, a polynomial obtained from another pol ...
verb forms. For them, the action is considered "self-contained" because they occur on the same level of the hierarchy. Thus, reflexive and reciprocal verbs are no longer transitive but become intransitive, with only one argument being shown and a reflexive or reciprocal theme marker used. Some first- and second-person pronouns overlap in meaning; for example ''kilun'' "we (inclusive)" includes within its meaning ''nil'' "I". Overlapping pairs of this sort cannot be used as the subject-object pair of a transitive verb. Leavitt gives the following chart outlining the restrictions on how first- and second-person subject-object pairs can occur for transitive verbs: (R means that a form will be reflexive or reciprocal and intransitive; -- means a combination is not allowed.)


Building sentences

Because so much grammatical information is encoded in each word, word order is very free. There are few restrictions on the order words can appear, especially in simple one-verb sentences. One of the only restrictions is that the negative particle must precede the verb, but other words may intervene. There is no word for the verb "to be" in the language so identity sentences with no verb are possible. The word order is less free than in sentences with verbs and is fixed in negative identities. Complex and compound sentences with two or more verbs can be created in multiple ways, such as these: * the use of conjunctions; * a main clause plus an embedded clause in the changed conjunct mode; * a main clause plus a conditional clause in the changed or unchanged conjunct mode; * sequential commands, with the first verb in the imperative mode and the second in the subordinative mode.


Status and revitalization

Today Maliseet-Passamaquoddy has a ranking of 7 on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS); a 7 corresponds to "Shifting: The child-bearing generation can use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children." However, in spite of this bleak assessment, there are significant efforts to revitalize the language and teach both children and adults who did not learn the language natively. Since 2006, a project known a
Language Keepers
which attempts to document endangered languages and increase public group discourse in these languages, has worked with the Passamaquoddy and Maliseet communities and done extensive documentation of the language. In their first three years of work, they filmed over 50 hours of natural group conversation with 70 speakers, which led to eight DVDs in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy subtitled in English. According to the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal, this film "stimulated language revival programs for people who understand but cannot speak, and identified new sources of resiliency and leadership in the language-speaking community." Their approach to documentation is relatively novel and has garnered praise: "In contrast to 'elicitation,' in which linguists ask speakers questions to learn about a language, Language Keepers videos show how the language works in practice, and have provided many "new" words for the dictionary. They also document traditional Passamaquoddy culture activities, like canoe-building, and views of the world." In addition to the film, the Language Keepers project—along with other linguists and community activists—has helped compile th
Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary
This dictionary, which was started in the 1970s by linguist Philip S. LeSourd, today includes over 18,000 entries, many of which include audio and video files of native speaker pronunciations. Along with the various resources available online, recent revitalization efforts have included Maliseet-Passamaquoddy class teachings at the University of New Brunswick to increase inter-generational communication and transmission of knowledge and culture.


References


External links


Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language
at Native Languages
Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary
from the Mi'kmaq-Maliseet Institute, University of New Brunswick (includes sound files with the pronunciation of the entry words, videos of native speakers' conversations including the entry words, and detailed grammatical charts) * Chamberlin, Montague (1899).
Maliseet Vocabulary
'. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Cooperative Society). *
OLAC resources in and about the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language
* ELAR archive o
Passamaquoddy-Maliseet

Pronouncing Passamaquoddy-Maliseet
{{Authority control Eastern Algonquian languages Endangered Algic languages First Nations languages in Canada Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands Languages of the United States Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas Maliseet Passamaquoddy Severely endangered languages