Wikibooks: WikiLang/Mi'kmaq
RFD WikiLang pages Mi kmaq or Mi gmaq also called Micmac is a language spoken by the Aboriginal nation of the same name in Eastern Canada and United States. The language status is threatened with approximately 8 000 speakers. The majority language in Mi kmaq s communities is English or French (in Qu...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WikiLang/Mi%27kmaq |
| Summary: | RFD WikiLang pages Mi kmaq or Mi gmaq also called Micmac is a language spoken by the Aboriginal nation of the same name in Eastern Canada and United States. The language status is threatened with approximately 8 000 speakers. The majority language in Mi kmaq s communities is English or French (in Quebec). The population of actual Mi kmaq speakers is decreasing most speakers being the elders of the communities. There is no monolingual Mi kmaq speaker and Mi kmaq is not the first language of the younger generations that speak Mi kmaq. = Technical info = Language family Algic languages/Algonquian languages Regions Eastern Canada (Quebec New Brunswick Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador) and United States (Maine and Massachusetts) Number of speakers approx. 8 100 Script(s) Latin alphabet (LTR) Majority language(s) English (mostly) and French (some) = Writing systems = See detailed page [[Mi kmaq Orthographies]] Today Mi kmaq is written with the latin alphabet. However a Mi kmaq hieroglyph writing system has been used in the past. Those hieroglyphs are partially from Native creation making Mi kmaq one of the few American languages to have a writing system pre contact with the Europeans. However those hieroglyphs were more pictographs used as visual memory aids than a real writing system. Different orthographies exist to write in Mi kmaq (see the table below). The most widely used is the Francis Smith orthography developed in 1974. It is used in Nova Scotia and it s the orthography used by the Mi kmaq Grand Council. The Listuguj orthography is used in Quebec and is the same as the Francis Smith except the k is replaced by g . The Pacifique orthography has been developed in early 20th century by Father Pacifique but it omits couple vowels. The Rand orthography developed in late 19th century by Reverand Silas Tertius Rand is not used anymore and is more complex (even more complex than the table below suggests as far as the number of vowels is concerned). The main orthographies used to write Mi ... |
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