Plains Cree

Plains Cree (native name: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ nēhiyawēwin) is a dialect of the Algonquian language, Cree, which is the most populous Canadian indigenous language. Plains Cree is sometimes considered a dialect of the Cree-Montagnais language, or sometimes a dialect of the Cree language, distinct from the Montagnais language. Plains Cree is one of five main dialects of Cree in this second sense, along with Woods Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Atikamekw. Although no single dialect of Cree is favored over another, Plains Cree is the most widely used. Out of the 80 thousand speakers of the Cree language, the Plains Cree dialect is spoken by about 34,000 people primarily in Saskatchewan and Alberta but also in Manitoba and Montana. This number is diminishing as social pressures increase to use English, leaving many Cree children without a fluent command of Cree. Monolingual Plains Cree speakers are still found, however, in the more rural Cree-speaking areas, such as the northern river communities in the Cree territories. These populations, nevertheless, are primarily composed of elders and are continuously shrinking in size.