Many different names and terms have been used in the description of the "th" dialect of Cree spoken in the forested area north of the Canadian prairies.

A more general, all-encompassing term for this dialect is "Woodland Cree", which also refers to the cultural group living in the forested area north of the prairies.

Different sources in Canadian history texts document the area in which Woods Cree was and still is spoken today.

In the early 1900s, J.B. Tyrrell, a Canadian geologist and cartographer and the editor of explorer David Thompson's work[11] found that the people living in the area of Île-à-la-Crosse and upper Churchill River referred to themselves as Nahathaway and spoke the particular -th dialect of Woods Cree.

[15] However, the actual Woods Cree language is now determined to be spoken in the mid-northern part of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

[9] In 1982 SIL (Summer Institute for Languages) found that the population of Woods Cree speakers was 35,000 people.

Speakers of Woods Cree live in and around the northern, forested area of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The following phonemes can be found in western Cree languages and dialects: /a, â, c, ê, h, i, î, k, m, n, o, ô, p, s, t, w, y/.

[18] In Proto-Algonquian, the /ð/ phoneme of Woods Cree has been reconstructed as *l and, thus, also demonstrates its relation to being categorized as a sonorant.

For example, among younger speakers the /ð/ phoneme is sometimes replaced by a /t/ and voicing in word-final positions also shows that it also falls under obstruent classification.

[18] One reason for this particularly unique form of the /ð/ phoneme as explained in the article is a possible phonological shift that is occurring in Woods Cree speech due to the influence of the English phonology on the language, however, the data is inconclusive due to the endangered status of the language.

Cree languages are polysynthetic and can have single words that would need an entire sentence to properly be expressed in English.

For example: ni-kî-nohtê-wâpam-âw-ak1-PST-want-see.TA-3-PL(note: hyphens here are present solely to demonstrate the separate morphemes) ni-kî-nohtê-wâpam-âw-ak1-PST-want-see.TA-3-PL"I wanted to see them."

For example, a pair of pants (noun requiring a possessor), undetermined in whom they belong to would be preceded with the mi- prefix.

In Woods Cree the mi- prefix is not applied to members of kin as well as body parts unique to animals.

Plains Cree, for example, does apply indefinite third person possessors when referring to kin.

[23] In vowel initial verb stems, Woods Cree will use a vowelless variation of the personal prefixes.

For example, the verb aðahwi:w 'he buries him' can use the vowelless, reduced version of the personal prefix nika- recognized as n-.

[23] This reduction from ni- or ki- to the form n- or k- is unusual in the Cree language to be used in this manner.

As found in Plains Cree, only o- initial verbs are allowed the free variation of using the -t- connective.

[23] The independent order nika- is not commonly used in Woods Cree but is found in situations requiring repetition or clarification:[23] The na- morpheme is classified as a portmanteau because it is a dental [n] and therefore it cannot be a reduced form of nika- when here the [n] assimilates with the following [k] ad becomes a velar nasal.

For example, the sentence "the children killed some ducks" could be expressed in the following six ways:[24] awaˑsisakchildrennipaheˑwakkilledsiˑsiˑpaducksawaˑsisak nipaheˑwak siˑsiˑpachildren killed ducksawaˑsisakchildrensiˑsiˑpaducksnipaheˑwakkilledawaˑsisak siˑsiˑpa nipaheˑwakchildren ducks killednipaheˑwakkilledawaˑsisakchildrensiˑsiˑpaducksnipaheˑwak awaˑsisak siˑsiˑpakilled children ducksnipaheˑwakkilledsiˑsiˑpaducksawaˑsisakchildrennipaheˑwak siˑsiˑpa awaˑsisakkilled ducks childrensiˑsiˑpaducksnipaheˑwakkilledawaˑsisakchildrensiˑsiˑpa nipaheˑwak awaˑsisakducks killed childrensiˑsiˑpaducksawaˑsisakchildrennipaheˑwakkilledsiˑsiˑpa awaˑsisak nipaheˑwakducks children killedWord order is instead used determined by information structure.

[24] For example: Indirect yes–no questions use a specific conditional marker equivalent to the English word 'if'.

However, the following terms and phrases give a good impression of the Woods Cree dialectal form of making words: In the above chart, the bolded letters show the dialect specific th- (/ð/) sound in Woods Cree.

The following examples are of a text called "Encounters with bears" spoken by Mrs. Janet Feitz and transcribed into Woods Cree syllabics as well as the Roman orthography:[29]