| Also Known As: Blackfeet,Pikanii,Blackfoot,Blackfoot language
Description:
Blackfoot also known as Siksika (so called in ISO 639-3), Pikanii, and Blackfeet, 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 Plains Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is often said to have diverged a great deal from Proto-Algonquian. It is significantly different both phonologically and, especially, lexically from the other languages within the family.
Like the other Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is typologically polysynthetic. Benjamin Whorf hypothesized that Blackfoot is oligosynthetic, but later linguists have rejected this theory.
Blackfoot has ten consonants, of which all but /ʔ/ and /x/ can be phonemically long:
The velar consonants become palatals [ç] and [c] when preceded by front vowels.
Blackfoot has a vowel system with three monophthongs, /i o a/. Length is distinctive (áakokaawa, "s/he will rope" vs. áakookaawa, "s/he will sponsor a sundance"):
There are three additional vowels, called "diphthongs" in Frantz (1997). The first is pronounced [ɛ] before a long consonant, [ei] (or [ai], in the dialect of the Blackfoot Reserve) before /i/ or..... full article at Wikipedia |
