Siksika language

The Blackfoot language, also called Siksiká' (ᓱᖽᐧᖿ, its denomination in ISO 639-3), (English pronunciation: /siːkˈsiːkʌ/; Siksiká [siksiká], syllabics ᓱᖽᐧᖿ), often anglicised as Siksika, is an Algonquian language spoken by the Niitsitapi people, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. There are four dialects, three of which are spoken in Alberta, Canada, and one of which is spoken in the United States: Siksiká (Blackfoot), to the southeast of Calgary, Alberta; Kainai (Blood, Many Chiefs), spoken in Alberta between Cardston and Lethbridge; Aapátohsipikani (Northern Piegan), to the west of Fort MacLeod; and Aamsskáápipikani (Southern Piegan), in northwestern Montana. The name Blackfoot probably comes from the blackened soles of the leather shoes that the people wore.

There is a distinct difference between Old Blackfoot (also called High Blackfoot), the dialect spoken by many older speakers, and New Blackfoot (also called Modern Blackfoot), the dialect spoken by younger speakers. Among the Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is relatively divergent in phonology and lexicon. The language has a fairly small phoneme inventory; consisting of 11 basic consonants and three basic vowels that have contrastive length counterparts. Blackfoot is a pitch accent language. Blackfoot language has been declining in the number of native speakers and is classified as either a threatened or endangered language.

Like the other Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is considered to be a polysynthetic language due to its large morpheme inventory and word internal complexity. A majority of Blackfoot morphemes have a one to one correspondence between form and meaning, a defining feature of agglutinative languages. However, Blackfoot does display some fusional characteristics as there are morphemes that are polysemous. Both noun and verb stems cannot be used bare but must be inflected. Due to its morphological complexity Blackfoot has a flexible word order.