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Menominee (also spelled Menomini) is an Algonquian language originally spoken by the Menominee people of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. It is still spoken on the Menominee Nation lands in northern Wisconsin in the United States. The name of the tribe, and the language, ''Omāēqnomenew'', comes from the word for wild rice, which was a staple of this tribe's diet for millennia. This designation for them (as ''Omanoominii'') is also used by the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa), their Algonquian neighbors to the north. The main characteristics of Menominee, as compared to other Algonquian languages, are its heavy use of the low front vowel , its rich negation morphology, and its lexicon. Some scholars (notably Bloomfield and Sapir) have classified it as a Central Algonquian language based on its phonology. For good sources of information on both the Menominee and their language, some valuable resources include Leonard Bloomfield's 1928 bilingual text collection, his 1962 grammar (a landmark in its own right), and Skinner's earlier anthropological work. == Usage and revitalization efforts == Menominee is a highly endangered language, with only a handful of fluent speakers left. According to a 1997 report by the Menominee Historic Preservation Office, 39 people spoke Menominee as their first language, all of whom were elderly; 26 spoke it as their second language; and 65 others had learned some of it for the purpose of understanding the language and/or teaching it to others. The Menominee Language & Culture Commission has been established by the Menominee Nation to promote the continued use of the language. Residents of the Menominee reservation at Keshena have held intensive classes for adult learners, and have worked with linguists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to document the language and to develop curriculum and learning materials. In 1977, Menominee High School, founded when "the Indians of the Menominee Reservation separated from the Shawano-Gresham School District to open their own district," began to offer Menominee language, drumming, and tribal dance in addition to its academic program. Classes in the Menominee language are available locally at the pre-school, high-school, and adult levels, and at the College of Menominee Nation and University of Wisconsin Green Bay. In 2012, the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay issued an apology to "a seventh-grader who was punished after using her native Menominee language in the classroom" in Shawano, Wisconsin. As of 2013, there are "six or seven people ... able to be conversational in the language," according to an article on the Menominee Place Names Map, a collaborative project at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Menominee language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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