Michif

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Michif
Michif
Michif engraving at Batoche, Saskatchewan
Native to	Canada
Region	Métis communities in the Prairies; mostly Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan Northeastern British Columbia and Northwestern Ontario, Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota
Native speakers	1,800 (2021 census)[1]
Language family	Mixed Plains Cree–Métis French
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	crg
Glottolog	mich1243
ELP	Michif
Michif is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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Michif (also Mitchif, Mechif, Michif-Cree, Métif, Métchif, French Cree) is one of the languages of the Métis people of Canada and the United States, who are the descendants of First Nations (mainly Cree, Nakota, and Ojibwe) and fur trade workers of white ancestry (mainly French). Michif emerged in the early 19th century as a mixed language^[2] and adopted a consistent character between about 1820 and 1840.

Michif combines Cree and Métis French (Rhodes 1977, Bakker 1997:85), a variety of Canadian French, with some additional borrowing from English and indigenous languages of the Americas such as Ojibwe and Assiniboine. In general, Michif noun phrase phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax are derived from Métis French, while verb phrase phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax are from a southern variety of Plains Cree (a western dialect of Cree). Articles and adjectives are also of Métis French origin but demonstratives are from Plains Cree.

The Michif language is unusual among mixed languages, in that rather than forming a simplified grammar, it developed by incorporating complex elements of the chief languages from which it was born. French-origin noun phrases retain lexical gender and adjective agreement; Cree-origin verbs retain much of their polysynthetic structure. This suggests that instead of haltingly using words from another's tongue, the people who gradually came to speak Michif were fully fluent in both French and Cree.

The Michif language was first brought to scholarly attention in 1976 by John Crawford at the University of North Dakota.^[3] Much of the subsequent research on Michif was also related to UND, including four more pieces by Crawford, plus work by Evans, Rhodes, and Weaver.