Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language

Peskotomuhkati-Wolastoqey (Malecite-Passamaquoddy pronunciation: [peskətəmuhkati wəlastəkʷeɪ] or Maliseet-Passamaquoddy (/ˈmælɪsiːt ˌpæsəməˈkwɒdiː/ MAL-ih-seet PAS-ə-mə-KWOD-ee; skicinuwatuwewakon or skicinuwi-latuwewakon) is an endangered Algonquian language spoken by the Wolastoqey and Passamaquoddy peoples along both sides of the border between Maine in the United States and New Brunswick, Canada. The language consists of two major dialects: Maliseet, which is mainly spoken in the Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick; and Passamaquoddy, spoken mostly in the St. Croix River Valley of eastern Maine. However, the two dialects differ only slightly, mainly in their phonology. The indigenous people widely spoke Maliseet-Passamaquoddy in these areas until around the post–World War II era when changes in the education system and increased marriage outside of the speech community caused a large decrease in the number of children who learned or regularly used the language. As a result, in both Canada and the U.S. today, there are only 600 speakers of both dialects, and most speakers are older adults. Although the majority of younger people cannot speak the language (particularly the Passamaquoddy dialect), there is growing interest in teaching the language in community classes and in some schools.

The Maliseet-Passamaquoddy standard orthography consists of 17 letters and an apostrophe. The following tables are based on the sound system described by Robert M. Leavitt in Passamaquoddy-Maliseet (1996). The bold letters are the spelling in the standard orthography, and the symbols between the slashes give the respective IPA pronunciation:

Additionally, the standard orthography uses an apostrophe (') to represent word-initial consonants that are no longer pronounced due to historical sound changes. It occurs only word-initially before p, t, k, q, s, or c. These "missing consonants" can appear in other forms of the word. For example, the stem ktomakéyu produces the word 'tomakéyu 's/he is poor' (where the apostrophe indicates that the initial k has been dropped) as well as the word nkótomakey 'I am poor' (where the k remains pronounced because it occurs after the pronoun n-).

There are six monophthongs, five of which are spelled with a single letter and one which is spelled with the combination eh. There are also five diphthongs, which are spelled as a combination of a vowel and a glide:

When o appears before w, it is written as u to reflect the rounding of the vowel due to the influence of the w. /e/ may also be pronounced as [ɛ].

Many phonological processes that occur in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, the most important of which are outlined below:

Every phoneme except "o" and "h" can occur initially, medially, or finally; "o" and "h" are never word final. Clusters of two obstruents, geminate consonant pairs, and clusters of a sonorant followed by an obstruent are all common. Consonant clusters ending in a sonorant usually do not occur except in geminate pairs or when they occur initially with one of the personal pronoun prefixes. Clusters of three consonants can occur and are almost always of the form CsC.

The most basic and common syllable structures are CV and CVC.