A Menominee language is an Algonquian language spoken on the Menominee (Menomini) Nation lands inside Northern Wisconsin in the United States.

Menominee occurs as extremely endangered language, with merely the handful of senior speakers left. Based on datthe from a 1997 report per Menominee Historic Preservation Professional, 39 population speak Menominee when their first language, 26 when their second language, and 65 others use learned a few of it for a purpose of understanding the language and/or teaching it to others.

A independent characteristics of Menominee, every bit in comparison more Algonquian languages, come its heavily utilize of the moo front vowel /æ/, its rich negation morphology, and its lexicon. A bit of scholars (notably Bloomfield and Sapir) have classified it as a Central Algonquian language base in its phonology.

A title of a tribe, & the language, OmÄ?Ä“qnomenew, comes from either the word for uncivilized rice, which was a staple of this tribe's diet for millennia. This designation for a two is besides utilized by their Algonquian neighbors northwards - the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa).

Permanently sources of info in each a Menominee & their language, a select few worthful resources include Leonard Bloomfield's 1928 bilingual text collection, his 1962 grammar (a landmark around its have perfect), & Skinner's sooner anthropological act.

Phonology

Judgment by [http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/showpages?ethnocode=MEZ&doctype=phon&scale=six&version=1&allpages=1 Bloomfield's 1962 grammar] & [http://web.archive.org/web/20010910115332/http://www.menominee.com/treaty/menomlge.html], a phonemics of Menominee is (by using a transcription of a bit of phonemes to their right; hanker vowels come typically written using the macron or diaresis):

! ! align="center"|Labial ! align="center"|Alveolar ! align="center"|Palatal ! align="center"|Velar ! align="center"|Glottal |- ! align="left"|Plosive | align="center"|p | align="center"|t | | align="center"|k | align="center"|— <q> |- ! align="left"|Affricate | | | align="center"|— <c> | | |- ! align="left"|Fricative | | align="center" colspan=2|— <s> | | align="center"|h |- ! align="left"|Nasal | align="center"|m | align="center"|n | | | |- ! align="left"|Semivowel | align="center"|w | | align="center"|j — <y> | | |}

! ! colspan="2" align="center"|Front ! colspan="2" align="center"|Central ! colspan="2" align="center"|Back |- ! ! align="center"|Short ! align="center"|Long ! align="center"|Short ! align="center"|Long ! align="center"|Short ! align="center"|Long |- ! align="left"|Close | align="center"|i | align="center"|| | | align="center"|u | align="center"||- ! align="left"|Close-Mid | align="center"|e | align="center"|| | | align="center"|o | align="center"||- ! align="left"|Near-open | align="center"|æ — <ae> | align="center"|— <Ä?Ä“> | | | | |- ! align="left"|Open | align="center"| | align="center"| | align="center"|a | align="center"|| | |}