Western Abnaki is one of the World's most endangered languages. In 1991 it was spoken by 20 individuals along the St. Lawrence River between Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 and Quebec City

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

, who lived mostly at Odanak, the site of the former mission village of St. Francis and about 50 individuals living throughout New York state and Connecticut. It is now considered nearly extinct. However, a new generation of speakers are actively preserving and revitalizing the language. Fluent speakers Joseph Elie Joubert from the Odanak reservation and fluent speaker Jesse Bowman Bruchac lead partial immersion classes in the language across the northeast. They have also created several new books in and about the language as well as audio, video and web-based media to help others learn the language.

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Near-Close Near-close vowel A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully close vowels...	[ɪ]		[ʊ]
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...		[ə]
Open mid nasal			[ɔ̃]
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		[a]

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Plosive	[p]  [b]	[t]  [d]		[k]  [ɡ]
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...		[ts]  [dz]
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		[s]  [z]			[h]
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	[m]	[n]
Lateral approximant Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....		[l]
Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...	[w]		[j]

Writing systems

Several different writing systems have been developed by various authors for writing the sounds of Abenaki: Pial Pol Wzokihlain, Sozap Lolô, Henry Lorne Masta, and Gordon Day (author of the Western Abenaki Dictionary) each use a slightly different system. Common to all four are the characters A, B, D, E, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, S, T, U, W, and Z. Wzokihlain, Lolô, and Masta all have an additional digraph CH, which corresponds to Day's C. Lolô writes I for /j/ and /i/; where confusion could result, he writes Ï for /i/.

Lolô and Masta use both W and U for the semivowel /w/. Day consistently writes lax stops using voiced symbols: B, D, G, J, Z; the other three write lax consonants using P, T, K, Ch, S word-initially and word-finally. Day also consistently writes the schwa

Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...

 /ə/ with E, while the others leave it unwritten when not stressed. Lolô and Day write the nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ as Ô, while Wzokihlain writes O and Masta writes .

IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...	Wzokihlain	Lolô	Masta	Day
[p]	p	p	p	p
[b]	b/p	b/p	b/p	b
[t]	t	t	t	t
[d]	d/t	d/t	d/t	d
[k]	k	k	k	k
[ɡ]	g/k	g/k	g/k	g
[ts]	ch	ch	ch	c
[dz]	j/ch	j/ch	j/ch	j
[s]	s	s	s	s
[z]	z/s	z/s	z/s	z
[h]	h	h	h	h
[m]	m	m	m	m
[n]	n	n	n	n
[l]	l	l	l	l
[w]	w	w/u	w/u	w
[j]	y	i	y	y
[ɪ]	i	i/ï	i	i
[ʊ]	o	o	o	o
[ə]	e/∅	e/∅	e/∅	e
[ɔ̃]	o	ô		ô
[a]	a	a	a	a

External links

• Western Abenaki Online Dictionary and Radio
• Abenaki orthography and phonology
• Native Languages page for Abenaki