
English and French aren’t the only languages spoken in Canada—not by a long shot. It goes without saying that Canada welcomes immigrants from around the world who bring a diverse array of languages to the North American nation, but in fact, many of the multilingual country’s languages are indigenous. Although only spoken by minority communities, dozens of indigenous languages can be found all across Canada even today, and one of them—one of the bigger ones—is Swampy Cree.
Swampy Cree—which may also be called Maskekon, Maskegon, Omaškêkowak, or Omushkego—is spoken natively by around 1,800 people, according to the 2016 Canadian census, but many Cree speakers don’t indicate on the census which variety of Cree they speak, making it difficult to ascertain a precise number of native speakers. Like other variants of Cree, Swampy Cree is endangered, classified as “vulnerable” by UNESCO. It’s largely mutually intelligible with other western varieties of Cree, such as Plains Cree and Woods Cree, and being packaged together with other Cree varieties makes it harder for Swampy Cree to thrive as an individual language. We at TranslationServices.com are serious about safeguarding linguistic diversity, so we’re proud to present our new Swampy Cree translation services.
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Diving deeper into Swampy Cree
Swampy Cree is a western variety of Cree primarily spoken in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Though often considered a variety within the dialect continuum of Cree, Swampy Cree is sometimes further broken into two subdialects: West Swampy Cree and East Swampy Cree. The western dialect is spoken mostly in Manitoba, areas such as The Pas, Chemawawin Cree Nation, and Shamattawa, whereas the eastern dialect is entirely contained within Ontario, in towns such as Weenusk, Attawapiskat, Kashechewan, and Fort Albany.
Swampy Cree belongs to the Algonquian language family, itself part of the larger Algic family. In addition to being related to other Cree varieties, it’s related to other major indigenous Canadian languages, such as Ojibwe and Mi’kmaq. The language is incredibly grammatically complex and worlds apart from English, even just in its pronouns. Swampy Cree not only makes a distinction between “inclusive we,” which includes the listener, and “exclusive we,” which excludes them, but also a fourth person, which is used to distinguish multiple third-person referents. Both the subject and object are marked on the verb. With a grammatical structure this complex, Swampy Cree is a tricky language to translate, so relying on native-speaking translators like ours is a good idea.
Flexibility and accuracy in every Swampy Cree translation
We’re dedicated to providing the best Swampy Cree translation services we can, which is why we’ve hired as robust a team of translators as possible. Our team members are native speakers of different varieties of Swampy Cree, hailing from various locales in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. They’re skilled at translating both to and from Swampy Cree, so whatever you need for your translation project, we’d love to help.
If you’re looking for specialty translation services for your Swampy Cree project, we’ll do our best to accommodate your requests. Of course, we’re inherently limited by the small size of the Swampy Cree community, but our translators hail from various backgrounds and have worked on a wide range of projects, so we may just have the right Swampy Cree translator for you. This applies whether you’re looking for academic translation services, business translation services, literary translation services, localization services, or any other type of Swampy Cree translation services. We also work with both the Latin alphabet and Cree syllabics, so you can specify the writing system you prefer. And if your text contains esoteric material, just notify us—we’ll try to find the best match for you on our Swampy Cree translation team!
Let us help you with your Swampy Cree translation project—contact us today to get started!