Métis French () is one of the traditional languages of the

Métis people The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They hav ...

along with

Michif Michif (also Mitchif, Mechif, Michif-Cree, Métif, Métchif, French Cree) is one of the languages of the Métis people of Canada and the United States, who are the descendants of First Nations (mainly Cree, Nakota, and Ojibwe) and fur trade wo ...

and Bungi, and is the French-dialect source of Michif.

Features

Métis French is a variety of

Canadian French Canadian French (, ) is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent of which is Québécois (Quebec French). Formerly ''Canadian French'' referred solely to Quebec French and the closely re ...

with some added characters such as Ññ, Áá, Óó, and Ææ (from older French spellings) (example, English: "there is no birthmark on this boy") and words loaned from indigenous languages such as

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

Beaver Beavers (genus ''Castor'') are large, semiaquatic rodents of the Northern Hemisphere. There are two existing species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers are the second-large ...

and

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

. Like Michif, Métis French is spoken in Manitoba and North Dakota and adjacent provinces or states. As a general rule, Métis individuals speak one or the other, rarely both. Métis French and Michif share a common

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

and

morphosyntax In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, wh ...

for the

noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

but differ as to their sources for the

verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntax, syntactic unit composed of a verb and its argument (linguistics), arguments except the subject (grammar), subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quic ...

which is

based in Michif, French-based in Métis French. Examples of this loaning can be found in words such as '' '', from the Cree word ''kakwe'', meaning "to try/attempt", which maintains its Cree meaning with the additional colloquial use of "to wander" as in (English: "he wandered there"), which suggests that the subject wandered with little control of his own feet; in the word '' '', meaning "wolf" or "loyal" (in a pack-like sense) when used as an adjective, from the word for "wolf" in Beaver, ''ch'one''; in the word '' '', meaning "white/non-Métis" person, from the Ojibwe word ''zhaganash''; and in the word '' '', from the Cree word for "good person", ''miyo-nâpêw'', though in Métis French it is closer to the word ''mec ("guy") and implies that the word refers to someone that the speaker knows personally.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Metis French Canadian French Languages of Canada French Métis languages