Menominee language
Algonquian language
Menominee ( mih-NOM-ih-nee), also spelled Menomini (endonym: omāēqnomenēweqnaesen) is a critically endangered Algonquian language spoken by the Menominee people of what is now northern Wisconsin in the United States. The federally recognized tribe has been working to encourage revival of use of the language by intensive classes locally and partnerships with universities. Most of the fluent speakers are elderly. Many of the people use English as their first language.
The name of the tribe, and the language, derived from Oma͞eqnomenew, comes from the word for 'wild rice'. The tribe has gathered and cultivated this native food as a staple for millennia. The Ojibwa, their neighbors to the north who are one of the Anishinaabe peoples and also speak an Algonquian language, also use this term for them.
The language is called omāēqnomenēweqnaesen but also omāēqnomenēweqnaesewen or omāēqnomenēw kīketwan
The main characteristics of Menominee, as compared to other Algonquian languages, are its extensive use of the low front vowel /æ/, 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.
Good sources of information on the Menominee tribe and their language include Leonard Bloomfield's 1928 bilingual text collection, his 1962 grammar (considered a landmark study), and Skinner's earlier anthropological work.
“Menominee language” enters the record as algonquian language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Menominee, language and Algonquian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13363. The Library of Congress control number is sh85083589. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1928 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Menominee language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.