Owls See Clearly at Night/Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: A Michif Alphabet/L'Alfabet Di Michif

I bought this book for my partner for Christmas. He is Cree-Metis and is trying to get in touch with more of his family history and language/cultural roots. I am super excited to give this to him. I might even get a copy for myself!

Although I did not enjoy Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Language and Languages by Mikael Parkvall, I did spend two days reading its bibliography alone. Parkvall had consulted hundreds of titles in the compilation of his own work, and I discovered some books about certain languages I had not known about. One language that I had never encountered before reading Parkvall's book was Michif, a language of the Métis. The Michif language is a blend of Cree, French and other regional language elements. It is a severely endangered language, as more and more of the younger generations of Métis are monolingual in English. Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer : l'Alfabet di Michif = Owls See Clearly at Night : a Michif Alphabet by Julie Flett is an alphabet book for young children. I was published in 2010 and I was very surprised to find that my library had it.Flett is an illustrator and for each of the letters of the Michif alphabet (which has no Q or X), Flett, herself a Métis, painted an image specifically relevant to Métis culture.One can see the influence of French in Michif with the words for "water" = "diloo" (de l'eau); "barley" = "lorzh" (l'orge); "snow" = "la niizh" (la neige); "rain" = "la pwii" (la pluie); "eyes" = "lii zyeu" (les yeux); "owls" = "lii yiiboo" (les hiboux) and "night" = "lii swer" (le soir).Michif is only recently a written language, and is still developing a standard orthography. The title alone, to my unscientific eye, seems symptomatic of a new orthography in its abundance of double letters.The paintings are coloured in shades of black, white and red, some with a rare addition of blue or green. They often resembled shadows or silhouettes.

As an owlaholic I think this is a beautiful and interesting addition to my owl library. I am a sucker for a lovely picture book. This has a twist as it also introduces you to a new language.

Un libro che mostra parole di una lingua in parte indigena sull'orlo dell'oblio. Sotto ognuna di esse, la traduzione in inglese (molto semplice). Alla fine, guida alla pronuncia e alcune risorse. Accompagnano il testo, come nelle migliori tradizioni, oramai perdute, del libro alfabetico illustrazioni artistiche realizzate dalla stessa autrice, laureata alla Concordia University."Owls see clearly at night (di notte i gufi vedono chiaramente)": "la capacità eccezionale dei gufi la notte", dice l'autrice del libro, "è simile all'intuizione che il linguaggio offre nel capire una cultura".I Métis, popolo di cui la signora J.Flett fa parte, sono indigeni americani, il cui linguaggio è un misto tra Cree, Francese e altre lingue. Adesso è purtroppo in via d'estinzione e questo libro rappresenta un ottimo modo per rieducare al Michif. E forse per rieducarci tutti, contro ogni stereotipo.

Julie Flett was meant to create, Owls See Clearly at Night (Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer), an alphabet book in both Michef and English. Michef is the language of the Métis. Flett is Métis and Cree. She is also a talented illustrator. The images that accompany many of the words chosen for her alphabet book convey both nostalgia and hope, such as Li Vyaloñ (fiddle), where a man is tapping his foot while playing his fiddle to a bird on his shoulder. This is an alphabet book that does more than teach youngsters their letters. This alphabet book is preserving a dying language, one letter or concept at a time.

I enjoyed looking at the beautiful drawings while learning about Michif language.

This is a great book. Our grandson will really enjoy it!!!