2 Algonquian languages in shorthand

[David Robertson]

I'm pretty sure the Montagnais in question is the Algonquian one (related
to Cree), not the Athapaskan Chipewyans (who sometimes used a syllabary
like the well-known Cree & Eskimo ones, didn't they?).

Another question is what variety of Cree is found in the shorthand bits
that I've found.  That's a major point because there are many very
divergent Cree dialects, some so different that it's probably quite hard
for certain speakers to understand others.

I don't know of any Cree- or Montagnais-speaking readers of Kamloops
Wawa.  Almost all Native readers of KW were in Salish-speaking communities
of southern interior British Columbia.  (An interesting exception are two
letters in shorthand Jargon that I've seen, both written by men from
Barkerville, BC.  That's Athapaskan country [Chilcotin or Carrier?--anyway
the personal names mentioned in the letters are non-Salish], and a
separate Native literacy had already gotten firmly established up there
using Father Morice's Carrier syllabics.)

The Algonquian texts I've found were collected by a priest and put into
shorthand by another priest.  That other priest was Le Jeune (who recalled
one of these Cree songs again 8 years later, singing it to priest A, as
recounted in an issue of KW), so the shorthand used is essentially
Kamloops Wawa script.  No priests I know of in actual Cree country used
shorthand to write Cree.  Let me put it another way--shorthand was
apparently used only for Salish languages and Chinook Jargon, among
Canada's Native languages.

Tangentially: There's a tantalizing discussion of the 'Rabits Skin lalang'
(Peaux de Lievre / Hare Athapaskan language) in the same KW where I found
the Cree stuff, but no sample of that language.  Shucks.

--Dave R.



On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 20:06:12 -0700, Leanne Riding <riding at TIMETEMPLE.COM>
wrote:

>I can help out there,
>There are two peoples that the francophones called Montagnais - the one
>you mention, and the one that anglophones called Chipewyan (not the same
>people as those called Chippewa) who lived closer to the Rockies.
>
>On Friday, July 9, 2004, at 03:47 , Ros' Haruo wrote:
>
>> And are they actually in "Kamloops wawa script" or simply in Duployan
>> shorthand, in other words were their orthographies descended from
>> Chinook
>> Duployan or were they cognate with it? The Cree country extends west
>> almost
>> to British Columbia, and there were a fair number of Cree (or Mitchif)
>> speakers among the pasisi, as I understand it, but I think of
>> Montagnais as
>> being fairly far east (basically in Quebec), and wonder how many
>> Montagnais-speaking CJ speakers (let alone KW readers) there were.
>
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