{"id":438,"date":"2009-10-11T10:19:41","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T10:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=438"},"modified":"2009-10-16T10:41:23","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T10:41:23","slug":"native-languages-of-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/11\/native-languages-of-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Native languages of Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Assembly-of-First-Nations-255x300.GIF\" alt=\"Assembly of First Nations\" title=\"Assembly of First Nations\" width=\"255\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-439\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Assembly-of-First-Nations-255x300.GIF 255w, http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Assembly-of-First-Nations.GIF 581w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 255px) 100vw, 255px\" \/>After graduating from university, I had the opportunity to live in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/\">Canada<\/a> for a year.<\/p>\n<p>My knowledge of the country was pretty limited, to the extent that I didn\u2019t know it is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocol-clo.gc.ca\/html\/act_loi_e.php\">officially bilingual<\/a> (French and English). I found an article discussing efforts to preserve <a href=\"http:\/\/atlas.nrcan.gc.ca\/site\/english\/maps\/peopleandsociety\/lang\/aboriginallanguages\/1\">indigenous Canadian<\/a> languages interesting. The two official languages are supplemented by a range of indigenous languages, which do not get as much attention as French. (Note: &#8220;First Nations&#8221; refers only to the Indian aboriginal people of Canada. For more information, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/background\/aboriginals\/faqs.html\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nBy official count, there are more than 50 First Nations languages across Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Some are thriving.<\/p>\n<p>The Cree, for example, have as many as 80,000 everyday speakers. Dozens others, though, are in danger of disappearing. In 1998, the Assembly of First Nations declared a state of language emergency.<\/p>\n<p>First Nations people aren&#8217;t the only ones concerned about the vanishing words. Linguists frantic to preserve the historical tongues are furiously collecting and recording data before all those speak them pass away.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a sense of desperation, of our data disappearing before our eyes, &#8221; laments aboriginal language expert Darin Flynn from the University of Calgary.<\/p>\n<p>Southern Alberta provides an example of the dangers facing First Nation languages across the country.<\/p>\n<p>The Treaty 7 languages &#8211; Tsuu T&#8217;ina, Stoney Nakoda and Blackfoot &#8211; are each at different stages of decline. (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/Native+communities+fighting+keep+traditional+languages+alive\/2092006\/story.html\">Canada.com<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s hope that all the effort put in to bilingualism in Canada will also recognise these indigenous languages. Read the full article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/Native+communities+fighting+keep+traditional+languages+alive\/2092006\/story.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After graduating from university, I had the opportunity to live in Canada for a year. My knowledge of the country was pretty limited, to the extent that I didn\u2019t know it is officially bilingual (French and English). I found an article discussing efforts to preserve indigenous Canadian languages interesting. The two official languages are supplemented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,3,4,99],"tags":[319,321,326,239,318,99,108,320,325,322,323,324],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-english","category-french","category-indigenous-languages","tag-aboriginals","tag-bilingualism","tag-blackfoot","tag-canada","tag-first-nations","tag-indigenous-languages","tag-linguistics","tag-native-canadians","tag-stoney-nakoda","tag-the-cree","tag-treaty-7","tag-tsuu-tina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}