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

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 ...

and

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, ...

in Eastern

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. It is a member of the

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 ...

–Montagnais– Naskapi

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

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 located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

due to the success of the rock music band Kashtin 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''. 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 (with the standard orthography equivalents in angle brackets, this section discusses the Sheshatshit dialect):

Consonants

The plosives are voiced to between vowels. frequently merges with in younger speakers ( ).

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 languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

. Its three basic parts of speech are

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

s, and particles. Nouns are grouped into two genders, animate and inanimate, and may carry

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

es indicating

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

ity, possession,

obviation Obviation may refer to: * A linguistic process involving the obviative (fourth person) * Bypass (disambiguation) {{Disambig ...

, 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 series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persua ...

), tense, mood, and inversion. Two different sets, or ''orders'', of verbal affixes are used depending on the verb's syntactic context. 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 ( – Northern/Coastal dialect and – Southern/Inland dialect) spoken by the James Bay Cree of the James Bay region of Quebec and

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

and the Atikamekw ( and ) of the Atikamekw (, ) in the upper Saint-Maurice River valley of

. Innu-aimun is divided into four dialects – Southern Montagnais (Mashteuiatsh, Betsiamites), Eastern Montagnais (Ekuanitshit, Nutashkuan, Unamen Shipu, Pakuashipi), Central Montagnais (Uashat 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 versus .

References

* * * *

Notes

External links

Online pan-Innu dictionary

Innu-aimun.ca
Information about the language.

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