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BROUGHT TO YOU BY UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
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tansi cuzzins!
It's Friday, September 29th. Tomorrow is "Canada's" National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. As we mourn the children who did not come home from these "schools," we continue to listen to the stories of the Elders who were forced to
attend them. We give thanks that they survived those institutions to be here with us today.
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It's thanks to them that our languages have survived.
We have now reached week thirty-two of our journey into studying the Y dialect of the Cree language together!
You can find past lessons on the website here. Not all lessons are up yet on the website – my apologies! We're working on a new system of organizing them, which I hope to reveal to you soon.
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Each week, readers follow along with me as I learn more about my language using a sacred type of alphabet called Spirit Markers (some folks call them syllabics). The Spirit Marker chart we're using is called a Star Chart and it is below. It's oriented opposite of how "western" maps are – North goes on
the bottom for us, and South is at the top.
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Last week we looked at the second Spirit Marker from the bottom of the northern limb, ᑌ.
We won't be looking at the last Spirit Marker on this limb, as it is not a sound that exists in the Y dialect of Cree. Y dialect nehiyawewin doesn't contain the sounds 'r' or 'l'.
So that brings us to the last limb of the Star Chart, the northeastern limb! How exciting. We've only got five more lessons after today's and we'll have gone through the entire Star Chart.
Our Spirit Marker this week is ᒪ, which is pronounced 'ma.'
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If we lengthen the vowel, we write the Spirit Marker ᒫ, with a dot over top of it. This is pronounced 'maa.'
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Our word of the week is a fun one: ᒫᒪᐢᑳᐨ (mâmaskâc). It's used to connote astonishment or amazement. You can hear how it is pronounced here.
This word uses both forms of the Spirit Marker ᒪ and you can hear it in the pronunciation. It's subtle, but the first syllable does contain a longer vowel than the second.
This word also uses two diminutive Spirit Markers, which appear across the bottom of the Star Chart above. Diminutive Spirit Markers are helper Spirit Markers that cannot be used on their own. In the case of this word, the one that looks like a tiny letter n is providing the 's' sound at the end of ᒪ.
So ᒪ would be pronounced 'ma' and ᒪᐢ would be pronounced, 'mas.'
The ᐨ at the end of ᑳᐨ adds a 'ts' sound to that Spirit Marker.
ᒫ = mâ – pronounced "maa"
ᒪᐢ = mas – pronounced "mas"
ᑳᐨ = kâc – pronounced "gahts"
It might look counterintuitive to break the syllables down like that, since we would write them differently in English. In English, we'd have the 's' and the 'k' together for the 'skots' sound. Not so in nehiyawewin Spirit Markers.
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ᒫᒪᐢᑳᐨ (mâmaskâc)! I can't believe we've been doing these Cree lessons for so long now.
ᒫᒪᐢᑳᐨ (mâmaskâc)! We've now completed thirty-two lessons!
This concludes our Cree lesson of the week. hiy hiy for walking alongside me on my language journey. As we move forward towards healing from our painful pasts, I continue to give thanks for being born Cree, for my beautiful language and all the teachings it has provided me.
a special hiy hiy to all the folks who have donated to IndigiNews' reciprocal fundraising campaign we're running this month. We're already at 38% of our goal! I raise my hands to you – we couldn't do this work without you.
Aunty Eden
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Eden Fineday is a nehiyaw iskwew and the publisher of IndigiNews. She is a also a mom, writer and student of nehiyawewin. She lives with gratitude as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), səl̓ ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Peoples.
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