Native to Canada ISO 639-3 None (mis) | Language family English Creole
Bungi Glottolog None | |
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Region Red River Colony and Assiniboia, present-day Manitoba Native speakers < 500 likely extinct (date missing) | ||
Bungi (also Bungee, Bungie, Bungay, or the Red River Dialect) is a creole language of English (Scottish dialect), Scots (Orcadian dialect), Scottish Gaelic, Cree and Ojibwe, and spoken by the Red River Métis in present-day Manitoba, Canada.
Contents
Bungi has been categorized as a post-creole, with the distinctive features of the language gradually abandoned by successive generations of speakers in favour of standard Canadian English. Today, the creole mostly survives in the speech of a few elders, and the use of non-standard pronunciations and terminology by a wider population.
Name
The name derives from either Ojibwe: bangii, or Cree: pahkī, both words meaning “a little bit”. In addition to describing the language, Bungi can refer to First Nations persons generally, or those with mixed European and First Nations ancestry (regardless of perceived cultural affiliation). In these colloquial uses the term may have mildly pejorative connotations, even when used by speakers to describe themselves.
Description
The lexicon is mostly English with words from Cree and Ojibwa interspersed throughout.
Social context
Many speakers in Blain’s studies were ashamed to speak the dialect as the speech community members were discriminated against by other groups. In many cases, children were forbidden from speaking their mother tongue in the Canadian Indian residential school system.
The major difference with other dialects is in the phonology (sound system and pronunciation). Voice quality differences are noticeably apparent.
Scholarship
The main linguistic documentation of this dialect lies within Blain (1987, 1989) and Walter (1969–1970).