Talk:Mi'kmaq language

message: Hello folks.  I am in the process of contacting Dr Murdena Marshall, an elder and member of the Eskesoni Board of Directors, who is a respected linguist and expert on living culture of the Micmac.  Oh, by the way.  Did I mention my office is on Gottingen Street?  In Halifax?  Across from the "Mic mac Native Frendship Centre?"  Next door to the "Mi'kmaq Child Care Centre?"  I just went over to both places to talk about this to actual Mi'kmaw.  Here is the deal...  based on non-academic real world, these people say that Micmac is still used but is being replaced.  The friendship centre has yet to change its name, its not "offensive" its just out of date.  Christine, a fluent Mi'kmaq speaker, who runs the Children's Centre, gave me Professor Marshall's contact info, so I could speak with her about this.  She had been in town YESTERDAY for Treaty Day at the Legislature, and she said it was too bad I missed her, I could have come to the big turkey dinner yesterday... so sad!  But the big thing I learned from Christine today was that the spellings are often different in English and French...  though she felt Dr Marshall would be able to provide an actual list of common spellings in English, she kinda poo poo'ed the Francis orthography... heh.  Anyway, I will report back with the results from a creditable source as to what teh actual field conditions are and we can move this out of academic ridiculousness and into usable encyclopedia building. WayeMason 14:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Great I am glad to hear this!  Give my regards to Dr. Marshall, Christine and everyone else there!  By the way, this probably isn't relevant, but the spelling "micmac" does have a negative meaning in French, which I believe is totally unrelated to the people... Nemultisap, ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I reiterate my support for the orthography with acute accents adopted by the Grand Council. If that is not accepted, then we have to argue over left-quote vs. apostrophe, which will not be much fun. And Codex, I find your constant shrillness to be impolite and hostile, and I wish you would desist. Words like "foist" and "travesty" are just inappropriate. Languagegeek and I know rather a lot about the orthographies of minority languages, and have been trying to deal with this soberly. As far as I can see, YOU are the only one who does not like the proposal to move to the official Francis-Smith orthography; everyone else here has indicated that it would be acceptable. -- Evertype·✆ 16:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't put it in those terms... As near as I can tell, F-S orthography was originally designed by Francis and Smith to use the apostrophe... So as I have been saying all along, I won't say I object to Francis Smith, just the accent...  And no, I don't see why we would have to argue about the apostrophe, again as I have been saying all along, the current location of the article ain't broke, no need to fix it, it isn't causing any problem whatsooever, if you think it does you can make redirects to here from the other apostrophes that aren't on anybody's keyboard and that should solve it.  The whole apostrophe issue seems contrived solely for the purpose of derailing the title to the accent version, like some kind of card trick where you end up being forced to pick the one YOU want... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:45, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I beg to differ. The question of apostrophe vs. curly quote is not "irrelevant" and good typography matters. The issue at hand is which orthography shall we use for all articles dealing with this subject; the spelling of the title of this article is but one example. A good deal of the Míkmaq words in various articles uses the acute accent. A number of external sites using one of the apostrophe choices explicitly state that they are doing so as a fallback for the real acute. As Languagegeek says above, we can do no wrong if we use the acute, if that is what the Grand Council chose. -- Evertype·✆ 19:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: End this now

message: Sorry, Evertype, I reverted your edit to match the title in the paragraph to the article's name. I did it for consistancy, not for any other reason. But if we're going to use the FS orthography, we'd better move the page. Since Codex has objected to the move previously, I'd suggest taking it to requested moves so we can get the opinion of others.--Cúchullain t/c 23:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article title

message: Is this dispute still active or can I close the case?  --Ideogram 08:07, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the issue is clearly unresolved, but the dispute seems to have died down.--Cúchullain t/c 07:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll close it for now.  If it needs to be reopened leave a note on my talk page.  --Ideogram 13:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I continue to support the move. -- Evertype·✆ 06:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I also support the move to Míkmaq instead of the typewriter shortcut Mi'kmaq; I don't know enough to say whether we should use this orthography vs. the English Micmac. This is, of course, the same for all Míkmaq pages.--Cúchullain t/c 20:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see my comment in the section above. It seems that the tick-mark was the original way to mark a long vowel and not a typewriter shortcut. languagegeek (talk) 04:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-01-25 Mi'kmaq language]] 

message: So far, this article, in my opinion, looks good so far.  However, like any other language, I would assume that Mi'kmaq would have a grammar.  Can someone write a brief summary of the grammar in the article, followed by a page in its own right that gives the average reader a detailed summary of the grammar, please?  --Daniel Blanchette (talk) 23:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mi'kmaq grammar, please? 

message: After the series of discussions, page moves, and Languagegeek's edifying comments above, I have moved the page to Mi'kmaq language. This does not imply that I think this spelling is the most correct or favorable. However, the spelling needs to be consistent with the main Mi'kmaq article, and especially within the article itself; any future discussions need to adress this issue of consistency.--Cúchullain t/c 16:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, Mi'kmaq (with a straight quote) is preferable for this article. languagegeek (talk) 20:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the input. I defer to those who have a fuller knowledge of the subject than myself, but consistency is always key.--Cúchullain t/c 21:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Page moved

message: A Mi'kmaq language Wikipedia project has been created in the incubator. You are welcome to come help developing it. It can be access at this link : . Please pass the message around if you know potential interested people who speak micmac. Thanks you, Amqui (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mi'kmaq Wikipedia 

message: L'nui'sin ki'l Mi'kmaq ? Nikma'jtut apoqnmatultinej ! Mikmaq Wikipedia Wela'lin Amqui (talk) 03:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mígmewei Wikipedia 

message: The article states that Abenaki is extinct although there are probably still a handful of elderly speakers of Western Abenaki. OTOH there are no 'traditional' native speakers of Wampanoag, which became extinct early last century (at the latest). The language is however being revived and there are reported to be one or two young children who have learnt it from 2nd lang. adults. 91.85.49.50 (talk) 11:07, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related Languages 

message: According to the content of the "Phonology" section, toqju'pilaweg should read /toxtʃuːbilawek/, gesigawweg — /kezigawwek/, mgumi — /əmgumi/. There is something wrong either with the current transcription of these words or with the 1st paragraph of the "Consonants" section.
Also, the "Writing system" section should be either before or at least immediately after "Phonology"—they're closely related. 176.221.120.207 (talk) 02:31, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious transcriptions 

message: I posted a similar concern response on the Mi'kma'ki talk page
I understand that the apostrophe is part of Mi'kmawi'simk's orthography, and I understand different orthographies are quite distinct one from another. But, most non-Wikipedia online sources such as this, this, this, this, this, this, and this all use apostrophes distinct from the – selon my perspective – awkwardly spaced apostrophe used here? Indeed, I am hard-pressed to find a source outside of Wikipedia that uses the aaaꞌbbb convention.
It seems there is variation between this: "aaa'bbb" and this: "aaa’bbb" (and of course, this: aaábbb / aaa:bbb) with no online (to my knowledge) use of this: "aaaꞌbbb"
In terms of readability, I am proposing rendering the page entirely in this (aaa'bbb) convention instead of this (aaaꞌbbb)
Danachos (talk) 01:17, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apostrophe 1'1, 2’2, or 3ꞌ3 

message: Soooo, the intro says there are 20,000 Mi'kmaq people but the infobox says there are 168,000+? Which is it? The big number sounds suspicious to me, but I could be wrong. It'sOnlyMakeBelieve (talk) 16:39, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many Mi'kmaqs?!? 

message: I came here to try to understand the pronunciation difference between "Mi'kmaq" and "Mi'kmaw", if there is one. But what I found instead is that in the lead sentence, "Mi'kmaq" is pronounced /ˈmɪɡmɑː/, and in a chart partway down the page, it's pronounced /miːkmax/.
On the off chance that someone else reading the talk page knows definitively which of those is correct, could they update either the lead or the chart? — mendel ☎ _ * _ 22:58, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of "Mi'kmaq"