ABSTRACT
This is the major language of the Algonquian family in North America. It is spoken by probably at least 100,000 people over a vast territory extending from Hudson’s Bay in the East, across Ontario and Manitoba to Saskatchewan and Alberta, and from the grain belt northwards to Mackenzie and Kewatin; it is easily the most spoken Native American language in Canada, and second only to Navajo in the whole of North America. The ethnonym is nehiyawak ‘the Cree people’. There are four main dialects: Plains Cree (L-dialect), Swampy Cree (N-dialect), Woodland Cree in the Churchill River area, and Moose Cree, an L-dialect spoken in the Hudson’s Bay country; the dialects are very largely mutually intelligible – for example, the language is variously referred to as nehiyawewin (Plains), nehinawewin (Swampy) or nihiőawiwin (Woodland).
