Bungee language

Bungee
Bungi
Spoken in	Red River Colony and Assiniboia, Manitoba, Canada
Language extinction	nearly extinct
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic Bungee
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	gem
ISO 639-3	–
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Bungee (also Bungi, Bungie, Bungay, or The Red River Dialect) is a dialect of English influenced by Orkney English, Scottish English, Cree, Ojibwe, and Scottish Gaelic.^[1] It was spoken until the mid-twentieth century in western Canada in places connected with the Red River Colony (Saint Andrews Parish) by Métis descended from families of Scottish fathers (voyageurs) and Cree or Ojibwa mothers and their descendants. Only a few speakers of Bungee remain.

Name

Their name is derived from either the Anishinaabe word "bangii" or the Cree word "pahkī", meaning "little bit" in both languages.

Bungee speakers report that the name Bungee means "Native" although one speaker reported that it meant "half-Native and half-(European)-non-Native".

Description

The main linguistic documentation of this dialect lies within Blain (1987, 1989) and Walter (1969-1970).

The lexicon is mostly English with words from Cree and Ojibwa and interspersed throughout.

Many speakers in Blain's studies were ashamed to speak the dialect as the speech community members were discriminated against by other social groups.

The major difference with other dialects is in the phonology (sound system & pronunciation). Voice quality differences are noticeably apparent.

See also

Aboriginal peoples in Canada portal

• Anishinaabe language
• Cree language
• Red River Colony
• Michif
• Métis
• Anglo-Métis
• Métis National Council
• Scottish Gaelic
• Scottish Gaelic in Canada
• Chinook Jargon
• Beurla-reagaird

Notes

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Bibliography

• Barkwell, Lawrence J., Dorion, Leah; & Hourie, Audreen. (2006). Metis legacy: Michif culture, heritage, and folkways. Metis legacy series (Vol. 2). Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute. ISBN 0920915809
• Barkwell, Lawrence; Dorion, Leah; & Préfontaine, Darren R. (n.d.). Annotated bibliography and references in Metis legacy.
• Blain, Eleanor M. (1987). Speech of the lower Red River settlement. In W. Cowan (Ed.), Papers of the eighteenth Algonquian Conference (pp. 7–16). Ottawa: Carleton University.
• Blain, Eleanor M. (1989). The Bungee dialect of the Red River settlement. (MA thesis, University of Manitoba).
• Blain, Eleanor M. (1994). The Red River dialect. Winnipeg: Wuerz Publishing.
• Bungee (Canadian Encyclopedia)
• Cansino, Barbara. (1980, March 26). Bungi in Petersfield: An 81 year old writes about the Red River dialect. Winnipeg Free Press.
• Scott, S. Osborne; & Mulligan, D. A. (1951, December). The Red River dialect. The Beaver, 42-45.
• Scott, S. Osborne; & Mulligan, D. A. (1951). The Red River dialect. In J. K. Chambers (Ed.), Canadian English: Origins and structures (pp. 61–63). Toronto: Methuen.
• Pentland, David H. (1985, March 9). Métchif and Bungee: Languages of the fur trade. (Paper presented in the series Voices of Rupert's Land: Public Lectures on Language and Culture in Early Manitoba.
• Swan, Ruth Ellen. (1991). Ethnicity and the Canadianization of Red River politics (p. 133). (MA thesis, Winnipeg, University of Manitoba).
• Stobie, Margaret. (1967-1968). Backgrounds of the dialect called Bungi. Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba, 3 (24), 65-67. (Online: www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/bungidialect.shtml).
• Stobie, Margaret. (1971). The dialect called Bungi. Canadian Antiques Collector, 6 (8), 20.
• Walters, Frank J. (1969-1970). Bungee as she is spoke. Red River Valley Historian and History News. The Quarterly Journal of the Red River Valley Historical Society, 3 (4), 68-70.
• Wurm, Stephen A.; Mühlhäuser, Peter; & Tryon, Darrell H. (Eds.). (1996). Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (Vol. II.2). Trends in linguistics: Documentation (No. 13). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.