Editing Oneida language (section)

===Situation of Oneida with regard to multilingualism and language shift===
Oneida is a secondary language: Oneida leaders write in English about the value of preserving Oneida language and culture.<ref>{{harvp|Elm|Antone|2000|pp=vii–viii}}</ref> Almost all Oneida are either bilingual or monolingual English speakers; according to M. Dale Kincade, only six monolingual Oneida speakers remained in the United States in 1991. The Oneida have embraced the use of English since the colonial years, but Oneida Nation leaders continue to promote their language's cultural relevance and work to preserve it through maintenance of the Oneida language and bilingualism.<ref>{{cite web |title=Language Dreams Take Form |url=http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/culture/language/26874924.html |date=August 12, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100103164928/http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/culture/language/26874924.html |archive-date=January 3, 2010}}</ref>{{primary source inline|date=October 2020}}

During the Depression era, the Folklore Project was created to preserve and promote the Oneida language.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Campisi|first1=Jack|last2=Hauptman|first2=Laurence|date=December 18, 1981|title=Talking Back: The Oneida Language and Folklore Project, 1938–1941|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=125|pages=441–448}}</ref>

Due to its disuse as a common communicative language – and its extensive use as a prescribed ritual language – the alteration of Oneida by its speakers is minimized. Demus Elm's retelling of the Creation Story, a linguistic act for which the form is not tightly prescribed, has limited space for language change.<ref>{{harvp|Elm|Antone|2000|pp=2–3}}</ref> But, oral narratives change over time; Anthony Wonderley confirms that they do. Having fewer speakers to tell the stories reduces possibilities for mutation.<ref>{{harvp|Wonderley|2004|p=xviii}}</ref> Gick notes one of several minor changes from Elm's morphology to Antone's over the 25-year span between their narratives: the omission of the final syllable from one particular verb. He assesses that "such differences simply indicate the two speakers' different ways of storytelling, or of speaking in general," rather than an appreciable linguistic shift.<ref>{{harvp|Elm|Antone|2000|p=29}}</ref>