Naskapi (also known as / in the Naskapi language) is an Algonquian language spoken by the

Naskapi The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical region St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our Clusivity, nclusiveland'), which was located in present day northern Qu ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

and

Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It is written in

Eastern Cree syllabics Eastern Cree syllabics are a variant of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write all the Cree language, Cree dialects from Moosonee, Ontario to Kawawachikamach, Quebec, Kawawachikamach on the Quebec–Labrador border in Canada that use syllabic ...

. The term Naskapi is chiefly used to refer to the language of the people living in the interior of

and

in or around

Kawawachikamach, Quebec Kawawachikamach () is a Naskapi/Iyiyiw First Nations reserve and community at the south end of Lake Matemace (where it joins Lake Peter), approximately northeast of Schefferville, Quebec, Canada. It belongs to the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachik ...

. Naskapi is a " y-dialect" that has many linguistic features in common with the Northern dialect of

East Cree East Cree, also known as James Bay (Eastern) Cree, and East Main Cree, is a group of Cree dialects spoken in Quebec, Canada on the east coast of lower Hudson Bay and James Bay, and inland southeastward from James Bay. Cree is one of the most s ...

, and also shares many lexical items with the

Innu language Innu-aimun or Montagnais is an Algonquian language spoken by over 10,000 Innu in Labrador and Quebec in Eastern Canada. It is a member of the Cree–Montagnais– Naskapi dialect continuum and is spoken in various dialects depending on the c ...

. Although there is a much closer linguistic and cultural relationship between Naskapi and Innu than between Naskapi and other Cree language communities, Naskapi remains unique and distinct from all other language varieties in the Quebec-Labrador peninsula.

Phonology

Each stop has voiced allophones as and pre-aspirated allophones as .MacKenzie, Marguerite. 1994. * Long vowels: , , * Short vowels: , ,

Orthography

There are two writing systems used for Naskapi language. One is Latin, similar to Innu Language (Montagnais), and the other is

Cree syllabics Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree language, Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe language, Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cre ...

, similar to James Bay Cree, as well as other dialects of Cree across Canada.

Latin

The Naskapi Latin alphabet consists of three vowels, , , and , in short form and in long form. The long form is either written with a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

accent, e.g. , or by simply writing the vowel twice, e.g. . In addition there are twelve

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...

s to represent the consonants, including the

digraph Digraph, often misspelled as diagraph, may refer to: * Digraph (orthography), a pair of characters used together to represent a single sound, such as "nq" in Hmong RPA * Ligature (writing), the joining of two letters as a single glyph, such as " ...

. * Ch, K, P, and T are also used to write the voiced

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

s. * L and R are only used in loanwords from other languages.

Syllabary

Naskapi Syllabics (, ) is derived from

Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian languages, Algonquian, Eskimo–Aleut languages, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan languages, A ...

, and while having its unique characteristics, shares many features with other Canadian Cree Syllabic systems. Unlike other Cree Syllabics, long and short vowels are not distinguished. The final forms in Naskapi Syllabics are similar to other varieties of

Notes

External links

Naskapi Lexicon

Naskapi LanguageOLAC resources in and about the Naskapi language
Central Algonquian languages Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands First Nations languages in Canada Naskapi {{Algonquian-lang-stub