Stories

In the stories section, you can hear the language and in the texts subsection you can also read it in syllabics. We are restoring old tapes of Cree stories as well as collecting new ones. The stories database contains hundreds of stories and other oral material. Some of these are being transcribed and used for literacy training, others will also be translated and made available for language documentation, dictionary examples and teaching Cree.

Reference Grammar and Linguistic Atlas

The reference grammar focuses on the way the East Cree language has organized itself. Much like each biological species has its own genetic encoding, each language has its own way of realizing the creative possibilities of the human mind. A particular understanding of the world is encoded or grammaticalised in each language.For example, Cree divides most of its words into alive things and not-alive things. While you often worry in English or French about speaking in a sexist way, by saying he or she, in Cree you do not have that problem, since there is only a s/he. Members of a community are perceived as very important in Cree, so there are two ways of translating we, one meaning you and us, (chiiyaanuu) and another meaning us only, but not you (niiyaan). Often where in English you would have a noun, Cree will have a verb instead, indicating that the world is perceived more as made up of processes, than of static things. You will learn much more about these things in this site, and hopefully, if you are a Cree speaker, you will contribute more examples to our understanding and appreciation of the Cree language. The reference grammar will contain a database for the many Cree verb forms, complete with sounds, that will be active by the end of 2006.

A Multimedia Linguistic Atlas of the Cree languages and dialects is currently under development. You can see a prototype involving family words.

Forum

The Terminology Forum is for creating new Cree words. Editors are Cree language specialists, teachers, linguists, translators. Areas of word creation include medical terminology, justice, information technology.

A list of over 2000 first names in usage in James Bay are given with their spelling in Cree syllabics.

Lessons

The lessons offer hundreds of on-line exercises for learning syllabics orthography for the two dialects. Using image and sound, lessons and game-like exercizes allow a playful and progressive approach to mastering the basics of Cree syllabic orthography.

Dictionary

The Eastern James Bay Cree dictionary is available as a downloadable electronic version (Northern and Southern dialects) for PC-compatible computers. The web dictionary, first published in the Fall of 2004, is compatible with all platforms. It is being constantly updated by the editorial team. Missing words or errors can be reported to the editorial team at ayimuwin.eastcree.org.

Resource Section

The resource section contains many goodies developed within this project: check the Cree conversation manual, the talking syllabic chart, and many downloadable documents prepared by Cree Programs. There is also a catalogue of all Cree Programs publications, and techninical information about Cree and Information Technology. There are also many links to other web, radio and printed resources