Blackfoot language

From Freepedia

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   Blackfoot
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 Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America.

Like the other Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is typologically polysynthetic. Whorf hypothesized that it was oligosynthetic, but mainstream linguistics has rejected this.

Of all the Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is often said to have diverged most drastically from Proto-Algonquian. It is significantly different both phonologically and, especially, grammatically from the other languages in the family.

Contents 1 Sounds 1.1 Consonants 1.2 Vowels 2 External links

Sounds

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Consonants

	Labial		Alveolar		Velar		Glottal
Stop	[ p ]	[ pː ]	[ t ]	[ tː ]	[ k ]	[ kː ]	[ ʔ ]
Fricative			[ s ]	[ sː ]	[ x ]
Nasal	[ m ]	[ mː ]	[ n ]	[ nː ]
Semivowel	[ w ]		[ j ]

Blackfoot also has two coarticulated consonants, /ts͡/ and /ks͡/. The velar consonants become palatals [ç] and [c] when preceded by front vowels.

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
Close	[ i ]	[ iː ]
Close-Mid					[ o ]	[ oː ]
Open-Mid					[ ɔ ]	[ ɔː ]
Open	[ æ ]	[ æː ]	[ a ]	[ aː ]

Some allophonic changes among the vowels: /a/ is raised to [a̝] when followed by a long consonant, /i/ becomes [ɪ] in closed syllables, /æ/ becomes [e] when followed by /ʔ/ and [ɛ] in closed syllables, and /o/ becomes [ʊ] 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
• Blackfoot - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
• Blackfoot language
• Don Frantz's page on the Blackfoot language