Blackfoot language
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|
| Blackfoot (Siksiká) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States, Canada |
| Region: | Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and in southern Alberta |
| Total speakers: | 5,100 |
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Algic
Algonquian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | - |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | - |
| ISO 639-2 | bla |
| SIL | BLA |
| See also: Language – List of languages | |
Blackfoot is the name of any of the Algonquian languages spoken by the Blackfeet tribe of Native Americans, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America.
The language is of particular significance to linguists because of its unique linguistic typology, which some have claimed to be oligosynthetic. Since the 1950s, this notion has been generally dismissed by the linguistic community. However, since linguist and computer scientist Ernst Herrera Legorreta put forward new evidence of Nahuatl's oligosynthetic nature in 2004, the Blackfoot language has experienced a resurgence of scholarly interest.
| Contents |
Sounds
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | [ p ] | [ t ] | [ k ] | ||||
| Fricative | [ s ] | [ x ] | |||||
| Nasal | [ m ] | [ n ] | |||||
| Semivowel | [ w ] | [ j ] | |||||
Blackfoot also has two coarticulated consonants, and . The velar consonants become palatals and [c] when preceded by front vowels.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | [ i ] | |||||
| Close-Mid | [ o ] | |||||
| Open-Mid | ||||||
| Open | [ a ] | |||||
Some allophonic changes among the vowels: /a/ is raised to when followed by a long consonant, /i/ becomes in closed syllables, /ĉ/ becomes [e] when followed by and in closed syllables, and /o/ becomes when followed by a long consonant. Blackfoot is pitch accent based, meaning every word has at least one high-pitched vowel, and high pitch is contrastive with non-high pitch. At the end of a word, non-high pitched vowels are devoiced.
External links
- Ethnologue report for Blackfoot (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bla)
- Blackfoot - English Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Blackfoot-english/): from Webster's Online Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org) - the Rosetta Edition.
- Blackfoot language (http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/blackfoot/)
- Don Franz's page on the Blackfoot language (http://people.uleth.ca/%7Efrantz/blkft.htm)