Innu-aimun or Montagnais is an Algonquian language spoken by over 10,000 Innu in

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

and

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

in Eastern

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 tot ...

. It is a member of the Cree–Montagnais–

Naskapi The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical country St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our nclusiveland'), which is located in northern Quebec and Labrador, neighb ...

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

and is spoken in various dialects depending on the community.

Literature

Since the 1980s, Innu-aimun has had considerable exposure in the popular culture of

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

due to the success of the rock music band

Kashtin Kashtin were a Canadian folk rock duo in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the most commercially successful and famous musical groups in First Nations history. Career The band was formed in 1984 by Claude McKenzie and Florent Vollant, two Innu music ...

and the later solo careers of its founders Claude McKenzie and Florent Vollant. Widely heard hit songs with Innu-language lyrics have included "" ("Girl"), "" ("My Childhood"), "" ("Story") and in particular "" ("Take care of yourself"), which appeared on soundtrack compilations for the television series '' Due South'' and the documentary ''

Music for The Native Americans ''Music for'' The Native Americans is a 1994 album by Robbie Robertson, compiling music written by Robertson and other colleagues (billed as the ''Red Road Ensemble'') for the television documentary film ''The Native Americans''. The album was Ro ...

''. The lyrics of Akua Tuta are featured on over 50 websites, making this one of the most broadly accessible pieces of text written in any native North American language. Florent Vollant has also rendered several well-known Christmas carols into Innu in his 1999 album . In 2013, "a comprehensive pan-Innu dictionary, covering all the Innu dialects spoken in Quebec and Labrador aspublished in Innu, English and French."

Phonology

Innu-aimun has the following phonemes (written in IPA, with the standard orthography equivalents in angle brackets):

Consonants

The plosives are voiced to between vowels.

Vowels

There are three pairs of so-called "long" and "short" vowels, and one long vowel with no short counterpart, though the length distinction is giving way to a place distinction. The column titles here refer chiefly to the place of articulation of the long vowel. Macron accent marks over the long vowels are omitted in general writing. e is not written with a macron because there is no contrasting short e.

Grammar

Innu-aimun is a polysynthetic, head-marking language with relatively free

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

. Its three basic parts of speech are

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s, 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 s ...

. Nouns are grouped into two genders, animate and inanimate, and may carry affixes indicating

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

ity, possession, obviation, and location. Verbs are divided into four classes based on their transitivity: animate intransitive (AI), inanimate intransitive (II), transitive inanimate (TI), and transitive animate (TA). Verbs may carry affixes indicating agreement (with both subject and object

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 ...

), tense, mood, and inversion. Two different sets, or ''orders'', of verbal affixes are used depending on the verb's

syntactic context In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a ''focal event'', in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event a ...

. In simple main clauses, the verb is marked using affixes of the ''independent order'', whereas in subordinate clauses and content-word questions, affixes of the ''conjunct order'' are used.

Dialects

Innu-aimun is related to

East Cree East Cree, also known as (Eastern) James Bay 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 spok ...

(''Īyiyū Ayimūn'' - Northern/Coastal dialect and ''Īnū Ayimūn'' - Southern/Inland dialect) spoken by the James Bay Cree of the James Bay region of Quebec and

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

and the Atikamekw (''Nēhinawēwin'' and ''Nehirâmowin'') of the Atikamekw (‘Nehiraw’, ‘Nehirowisiw’) in the upper Saint-Maurice River valley of

. Innu-aimun is divided into four dialects - Southern Montagnais (Mashteuiatsh and Betsiamites), Eastern Montagnais (Mingan, Natashquan, La Romaine, Pakuashipi), Central Montagnais (Sept-Îles and Maliotenam, Matimekosh) and Labrador -Montagnais (Sheshatshit). The speakers of the different dialects can communicate well with each other. The Naskapi language and culture are quite different from those of the Montagnais, in which the dialect changes from y to n as in "Iiyuu" versus "Innu".

References

* Clarke, Sandra. 1982. North-West River (Sheshatshit) Montagnais: A grammatical sketch. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, 80. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. * Clarke, Sandra, and Marguerite MacKenzie. 2005. Montagnais/Innu-aimun (Algonquian). In Geert Booij et al. (eds.), ''Morphology: An international handbook on inflection and word formation'', vol. 2, 1411–1421. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter. * Clarke, Sandra, and Marguerite MacKenzie. 2006. ''Labrador Innu-aimun: An introduction to the Sheshatshiu dialect''. St. John's, Newfoundland: Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland. * Drapeau, Lynn (1991) Dictionnaire montagnais-français. Québec: Presses de l'Université du Québec. 940 p.

Notes

External links

Online pan-Innu dictionary

Innu-aimun.ca
Information about the language.

OLAC resources in and about the Montagnais language
{{Languages of Canada + Central Algonquian languages Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands First Nations languages in Canada