Indigenous English in Canada

Last updated

Indigenous English, also known as First Nations English (FNE), refers to varieties of English used by the Indigenous peoples of Canada. These many varieties are a result of the many Indigenous languages present in Canada and reflect the linguistic diversity of the country.

Some identified trends of FNE dialects are ‘irregular’ pronoun use, differences in verbal inflection, and differences in rhythmic patterning. Differences in FNE dialects can be largely attributed to the influence of the structure and traits of different Indigenous languages. For example, Plains Cree has fewer phonological contrasts than the English language, has no voicing contrast, and does not contain liquids or several fricatives that are found in English. Consequently, a smaller phonetic inventory tends to be present in speakers of Plains Cree English than those who speak with a Standard Canadian English dialect. On another hand, the language of Dene Suline has more phonological contrast than English, which may influence the use of linguistic features in Dene Suline English which are not present in standard Canadian English, two features in particular being “creaky voice” and “lateralization of sibilants”. [1] While more research is necessary to clarify the connections between FN languages, English, and FNE dialects, there is a clear relationship between the FN languages and the FNE dialects. Influences from other languages, mainly French, are also present in shaping pidgin, creole, and FNE dialects in Canada.

While diverse, many FNE dialects come from similar language families and these may be cross referenced once they are identified. Additionally, there is a suggestion that FNE dialects reveal a shared cultural history, in ways which differ from that of the English and Indigenous languages present in Canada. Based on the current research of English dialects used by First Nations, it appears that there are many features shared by FNE dialects, a connection which may reflect a shared social history of periods of time in which peoples of different languages and English dialects lived together while these dialects were formed and refined, with residential schools being one such example of this. [1] The literature reveals that there are also traits present across many FNE dialects which are not attributable to transfer from any heritage language (Indigenous, English, French, or other), further confirming roles that a collective social history may have played in the formation of these dialects.

Some analyses have concluded that contemporary Indigenous Canadian English may represent the late stages of a decreolization process among peoples who historically spoke more creolized or pidginized forms of English. [1] Since the 1990s, the use of the "non-standard" dialects has been poorly perceived by the non-Aboriginal majority, as evidenced by mockery and discrimination. [1] Some features of the dialects, for example, may have led aboriginal children to be wrongly diagnosed as having a speech impairment or a learning disability. [1] Academics have begun to recommend that Canadian schools accept Indigenous varieties of English as valid English and as a part of Indigenous culture. [2] [3] Recognition of FNE dialects helps highlight and celebrate Indigenous identity in the Canadian context.

There are relatively few written works appear in Indigenous English dialects. One account is Maria Campbell's book Stories of the Road Allowance People , a collection of Métis folktales. An example from that work illustrates the type of speech used by Elders in rural Métis communities during her research, with some stories being collected in Cree or other languages and translated into dialectical English by Campbell:

Dere wasen very much he can steal from dah table anyways
'cept da knives and forks.
An Margareet he knowed he wouldn dare take dem
cause dat woman you know
hees gots a hell of a repetation for being a hardheaded woman
when he gets mad.

Dat man he have to be a damn fool to steal from hees table. - Dah Teef [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

Michif is one of the languages of the Métis people of Canada and the United States, who are the descendants of First Nations and fur trade workers of white ancestry. Michif emerged in the early 19th century as a mixed language and adopted a consistent character between about 1820 and 1840.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cree language</span> Aboriginal language continuum

CreeKREE is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador. If considered one language, it is the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. The only region where Cree has any official status is in the Northwest Territories, alongside eight other aboriginal languages. There, Cree is spoken mainly in Fort Smith and Hay River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous languages of the Americas</span>

The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other, instead they are classified into a hundred or so language families, as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavey</span> First Nations aboriginal people of Canada

The Slavey are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern Alberta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Athabaskan languages</span> Group of indigenous languages of North America

Athabaskan is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern. Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 4,022,000 square kilometres (1,553,000 sq mi).

Caribbean English is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and most countries on the Caribbean coasts of Central America and South America. Caribbean English is influenced by but is distinct to the English-based creole languages spoken in the region. Though dialects of Caribbean English vary structurally and phonetically across the region, all are primarily derived from British English and West African languages. In countries with a plurality Indian population, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, Caribbean English has further been influenced by Hindustani and other South Asian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chipewyan</span> Indigenous people of northwestern Canada

The Chipewyan are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified with the Taltheilei Shale archaeological tradition. They are part of the Northern Athabascan group of peoples, and come from what is now Western Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiac</span> Acadian French variety of southeast New Brunswick, Canada

Chiac, is a patois of Acadian French spoken mostly in southeastern New Brunswick, Canada. Chiac is often characterized and distinguished from other forms of Acadian French by its borrowings from English, and is thus often mistakenly considered a form of Franglais.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ojibwe language</span> Central Algonquian language of North America

Ojibwe, also known as Ojibwa, Ojibway, Otchipwe, Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian language family. The language is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems. There is no single dialect that is considered the most prestigious or most prominent, and no standard writing system that covers all dialects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of Canada</span> Overview of the languages spoken in Canada

A multitude of languages have always been spoken in Canada. Prior to Confederation, the territories that would become Canada were home to over 70 distinct languages across 12 or so language families. Today, a majority of those indigenous languages are still spoken; however, most are endangered and only about 0.6% of the Canadian population report an Indigenous language as their mother tongue. Since the establishment of the Canadian state, English and French have been the co-official languages and are, by far, the most-spoken languages in the country.

Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamaican Patois</span> English-based creole language spoken in Jamaica

Jamaican Patois is an English-based creole language with West African, Taino, Irish, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese and German influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois will be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom and Toronto, Canada. The majority of non-English words in Patois derived from the West African Akan language. It is spoken by the majority of Jamaicans as a native language.

A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgins arise where speakers of many languages acquire a common language, a mixed language typically arises in a population that is fluent in both of the source languages.

First Nations in Alberta are a group of people who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The First Nations are peoples recognized as Indigenous peoples or Plains Indians in Canada excluding the Inuit and the Métis. According to the 2011 Census, a population of 116,670 Albertans self-identified as First Nations. Specifically there were 96,730 First Nations people with registered Indian Status and 19,945 First Nations people without registered Indian Status. Alberta has the third largest First Nations population among the provinces and territories. From this total population, 47.3% of the population lives on an Indian reserve and the other 52.7% live in urban centres. According to the 2011 Census, the First Nations population in Edmonton totalled at 31,780, which is the second highest for any city in Canada. The First Nations population in Calgary, in reference to the 2011 Census, totalled at 17,040. There are 48 First Nations or "bands" in Alberta, belonging to nine different ethnic groups or "tribes" based on their ancestral languages.

A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late with that of wait or eight. Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait with that of eight. This non-overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late, a second diaphoneme for words like wait, and a third diaphoneme for words like eight.

Métis French, along with Michif and Bungi, is one of the traditional languages of the Métis people, and the French-dialect source of Michif.

Nativization is the process through which in the virtual absence of native speakers, a language undergoes new phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and stylistic changes, and gains new native speakers. This happens necessarily when a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children. Nativization has been of particular interest to linguists, and to creolists more specifically, where the second language concerned is a pidgin.

Slavey Jargon was a trade language used by Indigenous peoples and newcomers in the Yukon area in the 19th century.

Port Jackson Pidgin English or New South Wales Pidgin English is an English-based pidgin that originated in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales in the early days of colonisation. Stockmen carried it west and north as they expanded across Australia. It subsequently died out in most of the country, but was creolised in the Northern Territory at the Roper River Mission (Ngukurr), where missionaries provided a safe place for Indigenous Australians from the surrounding areas to escape deprivation at the hands of European settlers. As the Indigenous Australians who came to seek refuge at Roper River came from different language backgrounds, there grew a need for a shared communication system to develop, and it was this that created the conditions for Port Jackson Pidgin English to become fleshed out into a full language, Kriol, based on English language and the eight different Australian language groups spoken by those at the mission.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Jessica Ball and B. May Bernhardt, "First Nations English dialects in Canada: Implications for speech-language pathology". Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, August 2008; 22(8): 570–588
  2. "Jessica Ball | Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnerships". www.ecdip.org. Archived from the original on 2013-09-07. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
  3. "Recognizing Aboriginal English as a Dialect in Curriculum: Advancing Aboriginal Students' Academic Successes" (PDF). December 25, 2010. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-12-25.
  4. Maria Campbell, Stories of the Road Allowance People, Theytus Books (1995), p. 4