Native People, Languages - The Canadian Encyclopedia

As nearly as can be determined, 51 or 52 distinct indigenous languages are spoken in Canada. These languages fall into 11 separate families. Three of the families consist of only a single language, for which the term isolate is used. Of the remaining 8 families, some are groupings of languages as closely related as those comprising the Romance, Germanic or Slavic families of Indo-European, while others are more ramified groupings on the order of Indo-European as a whole. In a few cases the aboriginal language families of Canada and the rest of North America have been found to be distantly related, although many more proposals of relationship have been advanced than have actually been proven. In the light of present knowledge the majority of aboriginal language families in North America appear to be as independent from one another as Indo-European is from Uralic, Sino-Tibetan or Japanese. North America is unquestionably one of the most complex linguistic regions in the world.


	Keywords

	Native Peoples


	Related Resources

Gallery History - First Nations
Interactive Resources Canada's Native Peoples

Many of the aboriginal languages of Canada are spoken in several more or less mutually intelligible dialects, particularly when the language is distributed over a large area. Thus, CREE is a single language spoken in 6 recognized dialectal variants in dozens of communities and reserves from the Rockies well into Québec; and Ojibwa, with at least 7 dialectical variants, is found in many communities throughout central Canada (see CREE SYLLABICS). Such dialects grade into one another to form chains whose members may approach mutual unintelligibility at the geographic extremes, but the chains themselves are regarded as single languages for purposes of classification. Cree and OJIBWA are 2 of the 10 Algonquian family languages spoken in Canada; some of these and still others are spoken in the US.

Native Language Families

Condition of Canada's Aboriginal Languages

Statistics Canada estimated in the 1991 census that there were about 223 000 persons with a speaking knowledge of at least one aboriginal language. Assuming that most of these speakers were also persons who reported having at least some INDIAN, MÉTIS or INUIT ancestry, around 1 native person in 5 in Canada had a speaking knowledge of an aboriginal language at the time. In the late 20th century the majority of native people, particularly younger persons, did not speak an aboriginal language.

Cree
A Cree plaque at the Anglican church at Churchill, marking the Hudson Bay Railway excursion, 1946 (courtesy Canada Science and Technology Museum/CN Collection/CN005648).

Of the 51 or 52 aboriginal languages, only Cree, Ojibwa and the languages comprising the Inuit Inupiaq branch of the Eskimo-Aleut family have sufficient numbers of speakers to give them excellent chances of long-term survival. A few of the remaining languages have at least reasonable chances of surviving in the near future, but the majority are endangered, and at least 7 were approaching extinction in the mid-1990s, with only a handful of elderly speakers of these still living at the time. Undoubtedly, the number of aboriginal languages once spoken in Canada considerably exceeded the present number. Nicola (see NICOLA-SIMILKAMEEN) and TSETSAUT (Athapaskan), Pentlatch (Salishan) (see INTERIOR SALISH), and SENECA and Tuscarora (Iroquoian) (see IROQUOIS) were all spoken in Canada in relatively recent times but are now extinct there; some of these are still spoken by small numbers of elderly persons in the US. Other languages that disappeared during the early stages of European contact include: BEOTHUK (isolate), HURON, St. Lawrence Iroquoian, NEUTRAL, and PETUN (all Iroquoian).

Geographic Distribution of Canadian Aboriginal Language Families

Not one of Canada's aboriginal language families falls exclusively within Canada, and most straddle the US-Canadian border. Eskimo-Aleut extends not only into Alaska, but also into Siberia on the west and Greenland on the east. Within Canada, the aboriginal language families concentrate in the West. Except for Eskimo-Aleut, whose Inuit Inupiaq branch stretches across the entire Canadian Arctic, only 2 language families, Algonquian and Iroquoian, are found east of Lake Winnipeg, and only Iroquoian is found exclusively beyond this point. Siouan (see SIOUX), Algonquian and Athapaskan are present in the prairies, although the latter 2 belong primarily to the Boreal Forest (Subarctic) area; and Athapaskan and Tlingit (see INLAND TLINGIT) are spoken in a number of communities in the BC interior. Along the West Coast and its inland waterways are found large numbers of Salishan, TSIMSHIAN, Wakashan (see NOOTKA) and HAIDA communities. The isolate Kutenai (see KOOTENAY) is located in southeastern BC near the lake and river of that name (Kootenay). Eight of the 11 families are found in BC alone.

This concentration of families has suggested to students of aboriginal history that the West is a linguistically old area and the most likely staging area for successive migrations of speakers to the south and east, a view which accords quite well with archaeological and ethnological findings. By contrast, central and eastern Canada are dominated by the Algonquian family and particularly by the 2 languages Cree and Ojibwa. This situation suggests more recent language spreads relative to the West.

Classification of Canada's Aboriginal Languages

Linguistic classification involves both the question of the internal relationships among members of the same family and the question of the external links between families in still larger groupings, termed stocks or superstocks, depending on how comprehensive they are. The membership within families of all of the 50 aboriginal languages is well established, higher-order groupings far less so.

The high-water mark of aboriginal language classification for North America was achieved by Edward SAPIR in a famous paper published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1929, a paper which set the directions of aboriginal language research for decades afterwards and which still provokes lively debate. In this classification, the numerous families of North America were first grouped into 12 middle-level stocks considered reasonably assured, and then - far more speculatively - into 6 far-reaching superstocks, considered possible though unproven. All but one of the Canadian aboriginal families were subsumed under 4 superstock headings: Algonkin Wakashan (Algonquian, Kutenai, Wakashan, Salishan, plus 3 families in the US); Na-Dene (Athapaskan, Haida and Tlingit); Penutian (centered in California and Oregon, with Tsimshian the sole Canadian member); Hokan-Siouan (numerous families in the western US and some in Mexico, with the Siouan and Iroquoian families spilling over into Canada).

One family, Eskimo-Aleut, was regarded then, as it is today, as constituting a separate stock. In recent decades there has been a steady retreat among the majority of linguists from this and other massively integrative classificatory schemes, back at least to the middle-level stocks. In some cases, additional middle- and lower-level links have been proposed, even as the higher-order links have come undone through continuing research. Thus, Eyak, a language isolate in Alaska, has been joined to Athapaskan during the same period that saw the dismantling of the Na-Dene superstock as a whole; and the link between Siouan and Iroquoian, while problematic, is on firmer footing today than it was in 1929, although little remains of Sapir's Hokan-Siouan superstock, in which both families were originally placed.

Structural Diversity of Aboriginal Languages

Early descriptions of the aboriginal languages of North America tended to cast them all in the same mold as "polysynthetic" or "holophrastic," in order to capture a tendency found in a number of them toward great complexity of the word, particularly the verb. It was often found that the formal elements expressed in the familiar European languages by separate words or word endings were, in many aboriginal languages, combined in chains of prefixes or suffixes surrounding basic roots. Certainly there are families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian and Algonquian where the term polysynthesis fairly characterizes the verb, but such general typological labels leave a spurious impression of structural uniformity for the whole continent and obscure differences sometimes found even among languages of the same family. Moreover, there are Amerindian languages that are as "analytic" as English, and others that are as "inflective" as Latin and Greek, so that it is impossible to speak of all the aboriginal languages of the hemisphere as fitting a single structural type or set of types.

In addition, virtually every grammatical category known from the languages of the Old World (systems of person, case, number, gender, tense, mode, aspect, voice) is found among the languages of North America, and there are some unusual categories that have been the focus of considerable interest in aboriginal language research: verb stems that denote categories of shape and motion, sets of demonstratives that indicate whether an object mentioned by the speaker is visible to him, verb modes that indicate whether what the speaker is saying can be verified from immediate experience, even different sets of numerals to count different classes of objects. One particular line of research which has developed around the so-called world view problem has attempted to determine if, and how, such categories influence habitual thought patterns and modes of perception among speakers.

Aboriginal languages also exhibit great diversity in their sound systems. In some families, such as Iroquoian and Eskimo Aleut, the inventory of basic sounds is fairly limited; in others, particularly those located in the Plateau and on the West Coast, the inventories of basic sounds, especially in consonant series, are quite large.

Aboriginal Language Families of Canada

Algonquian
*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
150 000

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
10 languages in Canada: Blackfoot (2 dialects), Cree (Plains, Mitchif [Cree-French creole], Woods, Moose-Eastern Swampy, Western Swampy, and Attikarnek dialects) and closely related Montagnais and Naskapi, Delaware (Munsee dialect), Micmac, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, Ojibwa (Algonquin, Central, Eastern, Northwestern, Ottawa [Odawa], Saukeaux, and Sevem dialects), Potawatomi, ***Western Abenaki.

Athapaskan

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
27 500

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
13 languages in Canada: Babine, Beaver, Carrier, Chilcotin, Chipewyan, Dogrib, Gwich'in [Kutchin] (2 dialects), ***Han (Dawson dialect), ***Sarsi [Sarcee], Sekani, Slavey-Hare (Bearlake, Hare, Mountain, and Slavey dialects), ***Tahltan-Kaska-***Tagish (3 dialects of 1 language), Tutchone (Northern and Southern dialects).

Eskimo-Aleut

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
26 800

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
2 languages of the Inuit-lnupiaq branch in Canada: Eastern Canadian Inuit [Inuktitut] (Aivilik, South Baffin, Tarramiut, North Baffin-lglulik, Itivimmiut, and Labrador dialects), Western Canadian Inuit (Siglit, Copper, Caribou, and Netsilik dialects).

Haida

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
220

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
Language isolate (Skidegate and Masset dialects).

Iroquoian

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
730

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
4 languages in Canada: Cayuga (2 dialects), Mohawk (several dialects), Oneida, ***Onondaga.

Kutenai

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
170

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
Language isolate.

Salishan

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
3350

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
10 languages in Canada comprising the Coast and Interior divisions, each with further subdivisions: Bella Coola (3 dialects), Comox (Sliammon dialect), Halkomelem (3-4 dialects), Lillooet, Okanagan (several dialects), ***Sechelt, Shuswap (2 dialects), ***Squamish, ***Straits (several dialects), Thompson.

Siouan

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
4540

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
2 languages in Canada belonging to the Dakotan branch of the family: Assiniboine, Stoney.

Tlingit

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
160

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
Language isolate (Inland dialect spoken in Canada).

Tsimshian

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada:
500

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
2-3 languages in Canada: Coast Tsimshian (2 dialects, possibly languages), Nass-Gitksan (3 dialects).

Wakashan

*Approximate Number of Speakers in Canada
3840

**Languages Spoken in Canada:
4 languages in Canada belonging to the Kwakiutlan and Nootkan branches of the family: Haisla, Heiksuk-Oowokyala (2 dialects), Nootka (dialect chain).

Speakers of unidentified aboriginal languages:
5020

Total
222 830

*Data from the 1991 Canadian Census. The census resulted in different figures for the categories Mother Tongue (the language first learned at home and still understood), Home Language (the language spoken most often at home), and Knowledge of Languages (the language(s) spoken well enough to use in a conversation). The present figures, rounded off, are from the third category. While the figures are indicative of relative numbers of speakers, they cannot be taken as absolute, since a number of Indian reserves were incompletely enumerated. The figure for Iroquoian speakers, for instance, is too low, since other sources indicate between 1000-2000 speakers in Canada for Mohawk alone.

**Principal dialects are in parentheses and alternate names of languages and dialects in square brackets.

***Near extinction, or recently extinct, in the mid-1990s. Languages known to be extinct are not listed.

The Status of Proposed Distant Genetic Relationships of Canadian Aboriginal Language Families

Algonquian Family

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Algonquian-Ritwan (Algic)

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Algonquian + Ritwan (Wiyot and Yurok of NW California)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
Widely accepted as established. Wiyok and Yurok may not form a separate subgroup as the term Ritwan implies.

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Algonkin-Wakashan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Algic (as above) + Mosan (Wakashan, Salishan and, in the US, Chimaknan) + Kutenai + possibly Beothuk (the extinct language of Newfoundland)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
The overall hypothetical construct considered doubtful, some links (Kutenai with Salishan and/or Algonquian) considered possible. Link with Beothuk now discounted.

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Macro-Algonquian (Algonquian-Gulf)

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Algic + Gulf grouping in SE US (Muskogean, Natchez, Tunica, Chitimacha, Atakapa)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
The status of the Gulf grouping uncertain, that of the larger construct even more so.

Athapaskan Family

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Athapaskan-Eyak

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Athapaskan (Northern Pacific and Southern) + Eyak (Alaska)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
Widely accepted as established

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Na-Dene

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Athapaskan-Eyak + Haida + Tlingit

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
Tlingit possibly remotely related to Athapaskan-Eyak, Haida now thought not to be. No relationship yet found between Haida and Tlingit.

Eskimo-Aleut

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Eskimo-Aleut + Chukotan (Siberia)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
The connection with Chukotan, now generally accepted, makes Eskimo-Aleut the only aboriginal language family of North America with a proven Old World connection.

Haida

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Na-Dene

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Athapaskan.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Athapaskan.

Iroquoian

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Macro-Siouan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
Iroquoian + Siouan + Caddoan (central US)

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
The Iroquoian-Siouan link is firmer than the postulated Siouan-Caddoan and Iroquoian-Caddoan links.

Kutenai

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Algonkin-Wakashan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Algonquian.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Algonquian.

Salishan

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Mosan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Algonquian.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Algonquian.

Siouan

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Macro-Siouan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Iroquoian.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Iroquoian.

Tlingit

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Na-Dene

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Athapaskan.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Athapaskan.

Tsimshian

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Penutian

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
15 families and isolates mostly found in California and Oregon

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
Penutian grouping postulated but not proven. The relationship with outliers such as Tsimshian especially tenuous.

Wakashan

Proposed Larger Group Affiliations
Mosan

Stocks, Families or Isolates Included
See Algonquian.

Status of Groupings and Links in Current Research
See Algonquian.

Author MICHAEL K. FOSTER

Links to Other Sites

Aboriginal Canada Portal
The Aboriginal Canada Portal provides First Nations, Métis, and Inuit online resources and information about related government programs and services. A Government of Canada website.

Legends Project
Listen to dramatizations of oral histories, including ancient legends and myths, that Inuit and First Nations elders would have shared during family gatherings and activities in their communities. The series of recordings on this website were originally broadcast on the CBC Radio 1 program “Ideas.”

Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples
The website for the "Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples." Click on the links for feature articles about Canada's many multicultural communities, access to their extensive digital archives collection, learning modules, and much more. From "Multicultural Canada."

Languages of Canada
A comprehensive online database of languages currently in use in Canada. Also provides details about extinct languages. Check out the "language maps" for more information. Based on "Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition." From SIL International, a US website.

FirstVoices Language Archive
A website devoted to Canada's indigenous languages. Features program information, multimedia dictionaries, and related resources. Produced by The First Peoples' Cultural Foundation.

Raid on Deerfield
A narrated history of the 1704 Raid on Deerfield and its aftermath from Native and European perspectives. Also features fascinating stories about Native societies, cultures, trade practices, and traditions. This multimedia website is from the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Our Languages
An extensive website about the history and languages of First Nations peoples in Saskatchewan. Includes multimedia dictionaries for the Cree, Dene, Dakota, Algonquian languages. From the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre.

Yukon Native Language Centre
A superb multimedia site that offers an introduction to native languages in the Yukon. Features the Gwich'in, Hän, Kaska, Northern Tutchone, Southern Tutchone, Tagish, and Upper Tanana languages. Includes information about training programs for teachers and the public.

What is linguistics?
An excellent introduction to the field of linguistics. From the University of New Brunswick at Saint John.

Newfoundland and Labrador: Language
Learn about Newfoundland’s rich linguistic history. From the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site.

Dictionary of Indian Tongues
A facsimile of an 1862 publication about the "Tshimpsean, Hydah and Chinook" languages. Features definitions and English translations. From Library and Archives Canada.

Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth
This site offers information about the Inuktitut language, standardized writing systems, computer fonts, the Nunavut Literary Prize, related language rights legislation, and more. From the Government of Nunavut.

Aboriginal Place Names
Check out some of the Aboriginal place names found across Canada. From Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) is the national Inuit organization in Canada. Represents four Inuit regions – Nunatsiavut (Labrador), Nunavik (northern Quebec), Nunavut, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories. Their extensive website covers regional political, economic, cultural, and environmental issues. Also offers online articles from the magazine "Inuktitut" in Inuktitut, English, and French.

Love and Lonesome Songs of the Skeena River
An article about the role of traditional love songs created and sung by the Tsimshian people of British Columbia. From the "Canadian Journal for Traditional Music."

Four Directions Teachings
Elders and traditional teachers representing the Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwe, Mohawk, and Mi’kmaq share teachings about their culture. Animated graphics visualize each of the oral teachings. This website also provides biographies of participants, transcripts, and extensive learning resources for students and their teachers. In English with French subtitles.

Knowledge of non-official languages
This appendix presents the non-official language classifications used for the 2006, 2001 and 1996 Censuses. The classification, with the exception of English, French and non-verbal languages, is the same as the one used in establishing mother tongue, home language and language of work. From Statistics Canada.

Niitsitapiisini: Our Way of Life
This website presents the culture and history of the Blackfoot-speaking people as they know and understand it. It has been developed through a unique collaboration among the people of the Blackfoot First Nations and Glenbow Museum.

Ohwejagehka Hadegaenage
To learn more about the Iroquois languages and to hear Cayuga words and phrases, visit Ohwejagehka Hadegaenage.

Naskapi Lexicon
The "Naskapi Lexicon" database provides users with access to a trilingual dictionary, with translations of terms into Naskapi, English, and French. A Library and Archives Canada website.

East Cree
This site is intended as a resource for Cree language teachers, literacy instructors, translators, linguists, and anyone who has an interest in the nuts and bolts of the Cree language.

CBC Aboriginal
This website offers links to various CBC programs and features concerning Canada's aboriginal communities.

Glossary: Inuktitut Words
A glossary of Inuktitut words from the website for "Holman Forty Years of Graphic Art," the Virtual Museum of Canada.

Scripts and Literacy
A synopsis and excerpts from "Scripts and Literacy," a detailed examination of the nature of writing systems and literacy. Includes sections on "Cree Syllabary" and "The Athapaskan Languages of the Northwest Territories." From the Google.com website.

Canada’s First Nations
This extensive multimedia website profiles the history, culture, and language of Canada's First Nations peoples. Also examines the impact of European contact on First Nations communities. A joint project of the University of Calgary and Red Deer College.

Pepamuteiati nitassinat: As we walk across our land
Explore Innu history and culture in the vast landscape of Labrador and eastern Quebec through their place names and stories about the land.

Feature Articles

Charlottetown 1864: The Persuasive Power of Champagne

On Monday August 29, 1864 half the cabinet of the Canadian government boarded the steamer Queen Victoria at Quebec. They had heard that representatives of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI were meeting in Charlottetown to discuss Maritime union and they hoped to crash the party...