List of endangered languages in Canada

• Critically Endangered

There is a "phonological process" in the Oneida language that has been passed down for generations. This process is described as the loss of voicing in the vowel of the last syllable of a word. It is vital to the preservation of the language, and has been changing among the speakers, such that some speakers have introduced a degree of voiced vowels in these final forms, which poses additional stress on the small population of speakers. The introduction of voicing the last syllable in words that typically are unvoiced changes the traditional morphology of the language, pushing the original dialect towards language death, especially since the majority of speakers are older in age. It is part of the Iroquoian language family.

• Definitely Endangered

The Blackfoot language features the loss of voicing in the last syllable of a word, which is typically inaudible. Certain inflections and the use of inaudible vowels has been identified as "old Blackfoot" (traditional), and are not in frequent use by younger speakers. Similarly, a minority of Blackfoot speakers use the "soundless" suffixes, which is pushing the traditional language towards more extreme language endangerment and potentially language death. It is part of the Algonquian language family.

• Definitely Endangered

The Chipewyan language exhibits morphological characteristics that are far more complex than the majority of European languages. This includes conditioning of tone and morphology of phonemes, as well as frequent contractions, elisions, metatheses, and consonantal substitutions. Chipewyan is mainly endangered due to its complex structure, which makes it difficult to decipher the morphological code, as well as the fact that the majority of the speakers are in their mid-late adulthood. It is part of the Athapaskan language family.

Also called Nakoda or Hohe

• Critically Endangered

Assinibone is one of the language divisions out of five main language divisions within the Dakotan group of the Siouan family. The sound of this language differs from the other languages in the group because it merges voiceless stops with voiced stops. There are reports that syllabaries have been used by Assinibone speakers. {{Citation needed|date=February 2025}} The Assiniboine language is spread over 2 communities in Canada, and is mainly used by older adults.

Also called Anishinaabemowin, Ojibway, and Chippewa

• Definitely Endangered

There are about 8,000 speakers of the Central Ojibwe language, and it is spread over 16 communities in Canada. The language is spoken from Ontario to Manitoba. It is also spoken in places from Michigan to Montana next to the Great Lakes which is the home of the Ojibwe people. The language today is spoken by people over the age of 70. The people of the Ojibwe language note that double vowels in their language are treated as standing for unit sounds, therefore they are alphabetized after corresponding single values. {{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}

• Critically Endangered

There are about 6,000 speakers in the Northern Plain States of North Dakota and South Dakota. Most native speakers are in their mid-50s.{{Cite web|title = Lakota: The Revitalization of Language and the Persistence of Spirit|url = http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/11971-lakota-the-revitalization-of-language-and-the-persistence-of-spirit|website = Truthout| date=October 8, 2012 |accessdate = October 29, 2015}} There is a growing interest to revitalize the language.{{cite thesis |last1=Henne |first1=Richard Brian |title=Tongue -Tied: Sociocultural Change, Language, and Language Ideology Among the Oglala Lakota (Pine Ridge Sioux) |date=2003 |id={{ProQuest|305329568}} |hdl=2142/79725 }} At the Red Cloud Indian school, there are immersion classes for children to teach the language. However, at the moment, there are no children on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that are fluent in the language. Within the next ten years, it is expected that there will be children fluent in Lakota. It is mutually intelligible with Dakota and part of the Siouan language family.

• Definitely Endangered

There are about 20,000 native speakers, primarily in the North Dakota and South Dakota area, and additionally a speaker community of about 4,000 in Minnesota.{{cite news |last1=Guntzel |first1=Jeff Severns |title=Dakota language a resurgence among Native youth |url=http://thecirclenews.org/reservation-news/dakota-language-a-resurgence-among-native-youth/ |work=The Circle News |date=September 10, 2011 |id={{ProQuest|893756015}} }} Dakota Wicohon is an after-school camp that helps children learn the language, since it is not taught in the government-run boarding schools for American Indian youth. To help preservation efforts, technology like phraselators come into play, allowing learners to type in the words they want or orally speak the word they want and the machine will find it for them.{{cite news |title=Recording and preserving the Dakota language |work=The Native Voice |date=July 12, 2007 |id={{ProQuest|368736984}} }} It is mutually intelligible with Lakota and part of the Siouan language family.

Also called Tlinchon

• Vulnerable

There are about 2,640 speakers of the language in the Canadian Northwest Territories from the Great Slave Lake to the Great Bear Lake. Dogrib phonology is rather intricate and is organized into 5 levels.{{cite thesis |last1=Jaker |first1=Alessandro Michelangelo |title=Prosodic reversal in Dogrib (Weledeh dialect) |date=2012 |id={{ProQuest|922660326}} }} The first person to write a book in Dogrib was Herb Zimmerman, who translated the Bible into the language in 1981.{{cite news |last1=Malcolm |first1=Andrew H. |title=A Dogrib Bible, 'Enitl'e-Cho,' Takes Shape in Canada |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/01/world/a-dogrib-bible-enitl-e-cho-takes-shape-in-canada.html |work=The New York Times |date=February 1, 1981 |id={{ProQuest|121496604}} }} Unlike many other Native American languages, there are children who are fluent in the language.{{cite thesis |last1=MacIntyre |first1=Joan Elaine |title=First language influences in the reading behaviors of a sample of grade six Dogrib-speaking children |date=1993 |id={{ProQuest|304122812}} }} It is part of the Northern Athabaskan language family.

• Severely Endangered

Kaska was typically a First Nations speaking language, and mainly lived in northern British Columbia and some from southeast Yukon in Canada.{{Cite journal|doi=10.1016/j.langcom.2014.05.004|title="She can do it in English too": Acts of intimacy and boundary-making in language revitalization|journal=Language & Communication|volume=38|pages=73–82|year=2014|last1=Meek|first1=Barbra A.}} People who speak Kaska today still live within the British Columbia and Yukon Territory area. The speakers are elders, such as grandparents, and their children and grandchildren would speak English. First Nations have started work to re-create and preserve their heritage language.{{cite journal |last1=Meek |first1=Barbra A. |last2=Messing |first2=Jacqueline |title=Framing Indigenous Languages as Secondary to Matrix Languages |journal=Anthropology & Education Quarterly |date=June 2007 |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=99–118 |doi=10.1525/aeq.2007.38.2.99 |id={{ProQuest|218126971}} |jstor=25166611 }} It is part of the Athabaskan language family.

Also called Odawa

• Severely Endangered

The number of people who speak the Ottawa dialect is unknown, though it is predicted to be around 13,000. Native communities received $5 million a year for 7 years (2007–2014) to help them in their efforts to preserve their languages and teach it to their children.{{cite news |last1=Burns |first1=Shannon |date=January 3, 2007 |title=Canada's language preservation funding cut strongly protested |work=Indian Country Today |id={{ProQuest|362648263}}}} The language is written with Latin letters and is a dialect of the Ojibwe language. Many descendants of migrants now live in Kansas and Oklahoma.{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Also called Nakoda or Alberta Assiniboine

• Vulnerable

There are roughly 3,200 people who speak Stoney in the Northern Plains and the Alberta province of Canada. Stoney uses the Latin alphabet. The stress is one of the harder aspects about the language.{{cite thesis |last1=Erdman |first1=Rhyasen |last2=Lee |first2=Corrie |title=Stress in Stoney |date=1997 |doi=10.11575/PRISM/15699 |id={{ProQuest|304340124}} |hdl=1880/26811 }} The Stoney Indian Language Project was created to help make a standard format of the Stoney language. The project created 6 books for adults and children, as well as a videotape for third graders.{{cite report |last1=Friesen |first1=John W. |last2=Kootenay |first2=Clarice |last3=Mark |first3=Duane |date=June 1989 |title=The Stoney Indian Language Project |id={{ERIC|ED354769}} }} Stoney is part of the Siouan language family.

• Critically Endangered

The Potawatomi Language is critically endangered because there are only 52 fluent speakers left surrounding the Great Lakes region in Michigan.{{cite journal |last1=Buszard-Welcher |first1=Laura |title=Language Use and Language Loss in the Potawatomi Community: A Report on the Potawatomi Language Institute |journal=The Algonquin Papers |date=1997 |volume=28 |url=https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/ALGQP/article/view/497 }} Within a decade, those who are fluent (the majority being the elderly) will soon be dead, causing the culture to die out with them, along with the knowledge of history that has been passed down from previous generations. English has become the predominant language spoken in homes due to the halt of parents speaking Potawatomi to children from 20 to more than 50 years ago.{{cite journal |last1=Wetzel |first1=Christopher |date=2006 |title=Neshnabemwen Renaissance: Local and National Potawatomi Language Revitalization Efforts |journal=The American Indian Quarterly |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=61–86 |doi=10.1353/aiq.2006.0012 |s2cid=162208517}} Currently there are no teachings of the language but there are revitalization efforts to bring back the language and the culture that could possibly be gone forever. Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian Language.

• Critically Endangered

Tuscarora entails complex morphology dealing with the copying of words, roots, stems, and affixes.{{cite journal |last1=Mithun |first1=Marianne |title=Challenges and Benefits of Contact among Relatives: Morphological Copying |journal=Journal of Language Contact |date=2013 |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=243–270 |doi=10.1163/19552629-00602003 |doi-access=free }} Historically, the language was situated in North Carolina{{cite book |last1=Burnaby |first1=Barbara |title=Indigenous Languages Across the Community |last2=Reyhner |first2=Jon Allan |date=2002 |publisher=Northern Arizona University |isbn=978-0-9670554-2-8 |id={{ERIC|ED462231}}}}{{page needed|date=July 2020}} There was a time where the Tuscarora language was spoken 'as the mother tongue,' used for all situations, (formal and informal) but now there are approximately only four to five remaining elders who are fluent in the language. All of the elders are around the ages of seventy to eighty years old, where a possible result is the extinction of the Tuscarora language. It is a Northern Iroquoian Language.

• Critically Endangered

The Native American Cayuga speaking people are located in Oklahoma and Ontario. With the splitting of the people into two geographical locations, they now begin to differ in terms of language usage, morphology and phonology. In the setting of Oklahoma, Cayuga has become influenced by other tribes and has, to a certain extent, lost its original vocabulary.{{cite book |last1=Dorian |first1=Nancy C. |title=Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death |date=1992 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-43757-8 }}{{page needed|date=July 2020}} Cayuga contains a pitch accent where the placement of it can be predicted by metrical structure and constraints on the structure of the syllables.{{cite journal |last1=Dyck |first1=Carrie |title=Cayuga Accent: A Synchronic Analysis |journal=Canadian Journal of Linguistics |date=June 27, 2016 |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=285–322 |doi=10.1017/S0008413100016959 |s2cid=147736886 }} It is a Northern Iroquoian Language.

• Critically Endangered

The Upper Tanana Language originally was spoken in only five villages, each with a different dialect. Those villages were Beaver Creek, Scottie Creek, Northway, Nabesna, and Tetlin. Today, the language is only spoken by about 95 people, above the age of 50, in eastern interior Alaska. Depending on the dialect, the Upper Tanana Language has about six to seven phonemic vowels. The primary difference between the dialects is the pitch of the tone. Also a major factor in the split of different dialects is that different dialects have different vowel inventories.{{Cite web|title = Web of Science [v.5.19] - Web of Science Core Collection Full Record|url = http://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=57&SID=1BtUsNFXmHGkDita1au&page=1&doc=2|website = apps.webofknowledge.com|accessdate = October 30, 2015}}

Also called Nuu-chah-nulth language.

• Severely Endangered

Despite misinterpretation of studies which describe the phonetic inventory of Nootka, these studies do not suggest that its phonemic inventory is the main reason why the Nootka language may be severely endangered. {{Citation needed|date=February 2025}} A process known as glottalization is a key factor in being able to articulate certain sounds in the language, called ejective consonants. Though these sounds are not found in English, they are not linguistically rare. Many languages with large speaker communities, including Arabic and Amharic, contain these sounds, an observation which discredits this theory. It is clear that Nootka, like all Canadian aboriginal languages, is endangered due to social factors alone.{{Cite journal|title = Glottal stop, glottalized resonants, and pharyngeals: A reinterpretation with evidence from a laryngoscopic study of Nuuchahnulth (Nootka)|journal = Journal of Phonetics|date = October 1, 2005|pages = 383–410|volume = 33|issue = 4|doi = 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.01.003|first1 = John H.|last1 = Esling|first2 = Katherine E.|last2 = Fraser|first3 = Jimmy G.|last3 = Harris}}

{{reflist}}

*

Canada

Canada