Bungi dialect
[4][5][6] It was spoken by the Scottish Red River Métis in present-day Manitoba, Canada, and formerly in areas of Ontario and Minnesota, United States.Bungi has been categorized as a post-creole,[7][8] with the distinctive features of the language gradually abandoned by successive generations of speakers in favour of standard Canadian English.[14] In addition to the being the name of a dialect, the word Bungi might have referred to a specific group of Métis of Scottish ancestry.The earliest records report that the name "Bungee" was used by the British, and especially Hudson's Bay Company employees to refer to the Saulteaux.[10] Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, the word Bungi began to be used to refer to people of Scottish and First Nations ancestry.[3][16] Blain conducted one of the most thorough academic studies of Bungi in her thesis and other publications, The Bungee Dialect of the Red River Settlement (1989).The study records the dialect in its final phase, when considerable levelling towards standard Canadian English was present.[18][15][page needed] Bungi was spoken with a distinctive rhythm with a Gaelic fall, including the way that syllables are stressed, repetition of both nouns and pronouns in a sentence (e.g. "My brother is coming, him.The third-person pronouns in Cree do not distinguish between masculine and feminine, which resulted in the interchangeable use of he and she in Bungi without regard for gender (e.g. "My wife he is going to the store."[18]).In letters to the Winnipeg Evening Tribune, Mr. J. J. Moncrief, writing under the pen name "Old Timer," and Osborne Scott expressed their concerns about the survival of the Red River dialect.[26] Swan also reports the prejudice towards Bungi speakers in her thesis, Ethnicity and the Canadianization of Red River Politics (1991).[27] She suggests that Anglo-Métis Manitoba Premier John Norquay, who was born near St. Andrews in what was the Red River Colony and would have spoken Bungi, had dropped his accent by the time that he had entered politics.[28] The social prejudice towards Bungi speakers and the very sensitive linguistic environment ultimately led to the extinction of this dialect.The main linguistic documentation of this dialect were conducted by Eleanor M. Blain (1987,[17] 1989[15]), Francis "Frank" J. Walters (1969–1970,[29][30]), Margaret Stobie (1967–68,[10] 1970,[31] 1971[16]) and Elaine Gold (2007,[20] 2009[19]).In an article titled Red River Dialect published in 1936 under the pseudonym Old Timer (a nom de plume commonly used by J. J. Moncrieef who was from the Shetland Islands[21]), the author provided an excerpt from a letter that had some Bungi.Osborne Scott gave a talk on the radio at CKY on December 7, 1937, about Bungi (the talk was later published in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune on December 12, 1937, with the title Red River Dialect and again as a slightly longer article in 1951 in The Beaver, also with the title of Red River Dialect).Willie Brass, Hudson's Bay Co. servant, was an Orkneyman who married an Eskimo woman in the north and retired to the Red River Settlement.I overheard this in our kitchen—the servant next door had come over to visit: "Sit down girl Mary; you'll see I'll make a cup a tea."Stop first, ye'll-see, I'm got in my green boax under the baid, pictsers s'owin' you playin' Cricket with a white peak-ed cap on yer heid, dsust like you were a dsentleman.I'm not got a fifty-cent-bit dsust no, Boy, but I'll bet a s'illin's warth o' sweeties at the karner staure that ye often think long o' th' ould Red Ruvver, an' wis'in' ye was back pickin' Tseepo nuts an' seekin' yer ould red cow 'wid spots-now-an'-agian'!In another letters to the editor in support of Scott, called Oldtimer Appreciates Osborne Scott's Article, Mary I. Kennedy contributed examples of Bungi: She also included a few stories of nicknames, such as a family by the name of Johnstone who were christened with "Teapot" for their addiction to tea, which was more familiar and seen as a distinguishing mark for them.[38] Another example of Bungi with a standard English translation is provided through Red River North Heritage as a part of their geocache work.Siu(r) as me name is Rachel Bunn Samuel Taylor put a handle on it een sixta-too ye-naw-see.Mind, tanks to my Thomas Bunn, fein and coomfortable we are sertently and saiventa foot haigh from the ruvver—we'll not fluid ere.[42] In her thesis, The Bungee Dialect of the Red River Settlement, Eleanor Blain provides an extensive discussion on Bungi, with examples of words and phrases used in Bungi, as well as a transcription of Walters' story This is What I'm Thinkin as part of an appendix (both a linguistic version and a reading version).