An updated Woodland Cree dictionary will soon be finished.
Minnie McKenzie, the Cree language and culture coordinator for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band Education division, said she is hoping to have the dictionary finished sometime this fall.
McKenzie has been working on the dictionary since the fall of 2015 when La Ronge band Chief Tammy Cook-Searson asked to her to write it.
The dictionary will be an updated version of the one written by Keith Goulet and Colin Charles in the 1970’s.
McKenzie said many of the words that are being added are for new technologies such as cellphones, computers and extension cords.
“So, we asked the elders what they would name certain objects like a television or computer.”
She said.
McKenzie said Cree is a “descriptive language” so translations are based on the function an object performs.
For example, she said the Cree word for “computer” translates to “an amazing object,” and the word for “cellphone” translates to “an object used to talk.”
The dictionary will have over 600 pages filled with Cree words translated to English, and vice versa, as well as definitions for Cree words and guides on how to use them correctly.
McKenzie said the project is so important to her she has been working on the dictionary early mornings, evenings and weekends – whenever she was not at her full-time job.
“I want to make it as important as learning English. It’s important to make the language available to people, to promote it and to revitalize it.”
The dictionary will be available in both print and online.
McKenzie said she thinks it’s important the Cree dictionary is available in a form that is accessible to young people.
“It’s important for learners, for young people to learn the Cree language and to hear it, to read it, to have it available for them so they continue to live in the language and so we can save our language.”
(PHOTO: Lac La Ronge Indian Band Cree language and culture coordinator Minnie McKenzie. Photo courtesy Minnie McKenzie.)