Ojibwe writing systems
Encyclopedia
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
is an Native American language
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
of the Algonquian
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
family. Ojibwe is one of the largest Native American languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and is characterized by a series of dialects, some of which differ significantly. The dialects of Ojibwe are spoken in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
from southwestern Québec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, through Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
and parts of Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
, with outlying communities in Alberta and British Columbia, and in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
through Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
and Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, with a number of communities in North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....
and Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
, as well as migrant groups in Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
.
The absence of linguistic or political unity among Ojibwe-speaking groups is associated with the relative autonomy of the regional dialects of Ojibwe. There is no single dialect that is considered the most prestigious or most prominent, and no standard writing system used to represent all dialects. Ojibwe dialects have been written in numerous ways over a period of several centuries, with the development of different written traditions reflecting a range of influences from the orthographic practices of other languages.
Writing systems associated with particular dialects have been developed by adapting the Roman alphabet, usually from English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
writing systems. A widely used Roman character-based writing system is the Double Vowel system, attributed to Charles Fiero. The Double Vowel system is quickly gaining popularity among language teachers in the United States and Canada because of its ease of use.
A syllabic writing system not related to English or French writing is used by some Ojibwe speakers in northern Ontario and Manitoba. Development of the original form of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
is credited to missionary James Evans around 1840.
The Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary is based upon the French alphabet, with letters organized into syllables. It was primarily used by speakers of Fox
Fox language
Fox is an Algonquian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico...
, Potawatomi
Potawatomi language
Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian language and is spoken around the Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Kansas in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada, 1300 Potawatomi people, all elderly...
, and Winnebago
Winnebago language
The Winnebago language is the language of the Ho-Chunk tribe of Native Americans in the United States. The language is part of the Siouan language family, and is closely related to the languages of the Iowa, Missouri, and Oto...
, but there is indirect evidence of use by speakers of Southwestern Ojibwe ("Chippewa").
Ojibwe "hieroglyphs"
Midewiwin
The Midewiwin or the Grand Medicine Society is a secretive religion of the aboriginal groups of the Maritimes, New England and Great Lakes regions in North America. Its practitioners are called Midew and the practices of Midewiwin referred to as Mide...
Teaching Scrolls
Birch bark scrolls
Wiigwaasabak are birch bark scrolls, on which the Ojibwa people of North America wrote complex geometrical patterns and shapes. When used specifically for Midewiwin ceremonial use, these scrolls are called mide-wiigwaas...
. In treaty negotiations with the British, the treaty-signing chiefs would often mark an "X" for their signature and then use the Ojibwe "Hieroglyphic" character representing their Doodem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
. Today, Ojibwe artists commonly incorporate motifs found in the Ojibwe "Hieroglyphs" to instill "Native Pride."
There are said to be several Ojibwe elders who still know the meanings of many of the hieroglyphs, but as their content is considered sacred, very little information about them has been revealed.
Modern Roman orthographies
The different systems used to write Ojibwe are typically distinguished by their representation of key features of the Ojibwe inventory of sounds. Differences include: the representation of vowel length, the representation of nasal vowels, the representation of fortis and lenis consonants; and the representation of consonants which require an International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
(IPA) symbol that differs significantly from the conventional alphabetic symbol.
Double vowel system
The Double Vowel orthography is an adaptation of the linguistically oriented system found in publications such as Leonard Bloomfield’s Eastern Ojibwa. Its name arises from the use of doubled vowel symbols to represent long vowels that are paired with corresponding short vowels; a variant in which long vowels are represented with a macron (ˉ) over short vowels is also reported for several publications in the early 1970s. Development of the Double Vowel orthography is attributed to Charles Fiero. At a conference held to discuss the development of a common Ojibwe orthography, Ojibwe language educators agreed that the Double Vowel system was a preferred choice, while recognizing that other systems were also used and preferred in some locations. The Double Vowel system is widely favored among language teachers in the United States and Canada, and is taught in a program for Ojibwe language teachers.The Double Vowel orthography is used to write several dialects of Ojibwe spoken in the circum-Great Lakes
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...
area. Significant publications in the Southwestern Ojibwe dialect (also called "Chippewa") include a widely used dictionary and a collection of texts. The same system with minor differences is used for several publications in the Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe dialects (see below Ottawa-Eastern Ojibwe double vowel system).
One of the goals underlying the Double Vowel orthography is promoting standardization of Ojibwe writing so that language learners are able to read and write in a consistent way. By comparison, folk phonetic spelling approaches to writing Ottawa based on less systematic adaptations of written English or French are more variable and idiosyncratic, and do not always make consistent use of alphabetic letters.
Letters of the English alphabet
English alphabet
The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
substitute for specialized phonetic symbols
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
, in conjunction with orthographic conventions unique to Ojibwe. The system embodies two principles: (1) alphabetic letters from the English alphabet are used to write Ojibwe, but with Ojibwe sound values; (2) the system is phonemic
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
in nature, in that each letter or letter combination indicates its basic sound value, and does not reflect all the phonetic detail that occurs. Accurate pronunciation cannot be learned without consulting a fluent speaker.
The long vowels /iː, oː, aː/ are paired with the short vowels /i, o, a/, and are written with double symbols ii, oo, aa that correspond to the single symbols used for the short vowels i, o, a. The long vowel /eː/ does not have a corresponding short vowel, and is written with a single e.
The short vowels are: i, o, a.
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | [ɪ] | inini mawi |
'man' 'cries' |
pin |
| o | [o] ~ [ʊ] | ozid anokii nibo |
'someone's foot' 'works' 'dies, is dead' |
obey, book |
| a | [ə] ~ [ʌ] | agim namadabi baashkizigan |
'count someone!' 'sits down' 'gun' |
but |
The long vowels are: ii, oo, aa, e.
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ii | [iː] | niin googii |
'I, me' 'dives' |
seen |
| oo | [oː] ~ [uː] | oodena anookii bimibatoo |
'town' 'hires' 'runs by' |
boat, boot |
| aa | [aː] | aagim maajaa |
'snowshoe' 'goes away' |
father |
| e | [eː] ~ [ɛː] | emikwaan awenen anishinaabe |
'spoon' 'who' 'person, Indian, Ojibwe' |
bed |
The short vowel represented as orthographic a has values centring on [ə ~ ʌ]; short i has values centring on [ɪ]; and short o has values centring on [o ~ ʊ]. The long vowel aa has values centring on [aː]; long ii has values centring on [iː]; and long oo has values centring on [oː ~ uː]. The long vowel e has values centring on [eː ~ ɛː].
The long nasal vowels are phonetically [ĩː], [ẽː], [ãː], and [õː]. They most commonly occur in the final syllable of nouns with diminutive
Diminutive
In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...
suffixes or words with a diminutive connotation. Orthographically they are represented differently in word-final position as opposed to word-internally.
In the final syllable of a word the long vowel is followed by word-final nh to indicate that it is nasal; the use of h is an orthographic convention and does not correspond to an independent sound. The examples in the table below are from the Ottawa dialect.
| Nasal Vowel | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
| iinh | kiwenziinh | "old man" |
| wesiinh | "(small) animal" | |
| enh | mdimooyenh | "old woman" |
| nzhishenh | "my uncle" | |
| aanh | bnaajaanh | "nestling" |
| oonh | zhashkoonh | "muskrat" |
| boodoonh | "polliwog, tadpole" | |
Word-internally long nasal vowels are represented by orthographic ny, as in Southwestern Ojibwe mindimooyenyag 'old women'.
The nasalized
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s of the vowels, which occur predictably preceding the nasal
Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
+fricative clusters ns, nz, and nzh are not indicated in writing, in words such as "gaawiin ingikendanziin" 'I don't know it,' "jiimaanens" 'small boat', and "oshkanzhiin" 'someone's fingernail(s)'. Long vowels after the nasal consonants m or n are frequently nasalized, particularly when followed by s, sh, z, or zh. In such cases the nasalization is sometimes overtly indicated by optionally writing n immediately after the vowel: "moonz" or "mooz" 'moose."
In the original Double Vowel system, nasal long vowels now represented with -ny-/-nh were written with the ogonek
Ogonek
The ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
diacritic in some publications, while in others they are represented by underlining
Underline
An underline, also called an underscore, is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of writing. Single, and occasionally double , underlining was originally used in hand-written or typewritten documents to emphasise text...
the vowel. The Double Vowel system used today employing -ny-/-nh for long nasal vowels is sometimes called "Fiero-Nichols Double Vowel system" since John Nichols popularized this convention.
The affricates tʃ and dʒ are written ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨j⟩, and the fricatives ʃ and ʒ are written ⟨sh⟩ and ⟨zh⟩. The semivowel
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
s j and w are written ⟨y⟩ and ⟨w⟩.
The lenis obstruent
Obstruent
An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
s are written using voiced characters: b, d, g, j, z, zh
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b | [b] ~ [p] | bakade nibi gigizheb |
'is hungry' 'water' 'in the morning' |
pit, spit |
| d | [d] ~ [t] | debwe biidoon waagaakwad |
'tells the truth' 'bring it' 'ax' |
do, stop |
| g | [ɡ] ~ [k] | giin waagosh ikwewag |
'you' 'fox' 'women' |
geese, ski |
| j | [dʒ] ~ [tʃ] | jiimaan ajina ingiikaj |
'boat, canoe' 'a little while' 'I'm cold' |
jump |
| z | [z] ~ [s] | ziibi ozid indaakoz |
'river' 'someone's foot' 'I am sick' |
zebra |
| zh | [ʒ] ~ [ʃ] | zhabonigan azhigan biizh |
'needle' 'sock' 'bring someone!' |
measure |
The fortis
Fortis and lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc....
consonants use voiceless characters: p, t, k, ch, s, sh.
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| p | [pː] | opin imbaap |
'potato' 'I laugh' |
rip |
| t | [tː] | ate anit |
'(something) is there' 'fish spear' |
pit |
| k | [kː] | makizin amik |
'moccasin shoe' 'beaver' |
pick |
| ch | [tʃː] | michaa miigwech |
'is big' 'thank you' |
stitch |
| s | [sː] | asin wiiyaas |
'stone, rock' 'meat' |
miss |
| sh | [ʃː] | ashigan animosh |
'bass' 'dog' |
bush |
The remaining consonants are written m, n, w, y, h, in addition to the glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
/ʔ/, which is written <'>.
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| m | [m] | miinan jiimaan miijim |
'five' 'boat, canoe' 'food' |
man |
| n | [n] [ŋ] before g, k |
naanan bangii |
'five' 'a little bit' |
name |
| w | [w] | waabang giiwe bizindaw |
'tomorrow' 'goes home' 'listen to someone!' |
way |
| y | [j] | wiiyaw inday |
'someone's body' 'my dog' |
yellow |
| h | [h] | hay' |
hi | |
| |
[ʔ] | bakite ode |
'hit it!' 'someone's heart' |
|
Although the Double Vowel system treats the digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s ch, sh, zh each as single sounds, they are alphabetized as two distinct letters. The long vowel written with double symbols are treated as units, and alphabetized after the corresponding short vowel. The resulting alphabetical order is:
a aa b d e g ' h i ii j k m n o oo p s t w y z
The consonant clusters that occur in many Ojibwe dialects are represented with the following sequences of characters:
mb, nd, ng, nj, nz, ns, nzh, sk, shp, sht, shk
Ottawa-Eastern Ojibwe double vowel system
A minor variant of the Double vowel system is used to write the Ottawa
Ottawa language
Ottawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma...
and Eastern Ojibwe
Eastern Ojibwa language
Eastern Ojibwe is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken north of Lake Ontario and east of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. Eastern Ojibwe-speaking communities include Rama and Curve Lake. Ojibwe is an Algonquian language....
dialects spoken in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
and Southwestern Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, as exemplified in a prominent dictionary. Other publications making use of the same system include a reference grammar and a collection of texts dictated by an Ottawa speaker from Walpole Island
Walpole Island
Walpole Island is an island and Indian reserve in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the border between Ontario and Michigan in the United States. It is located in the mouth of the St. Clair River on Lake St. Clair, approximately thirty miles northeast of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario.In...
, Ontario.
These two dialects are characterized by loss of short vowels due to vowel syncope. Since vowel syncope occurs frequently in the Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe dialects, additional consonant clusters arise.
The letter h is used for the glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
[ʔ], which is represented in the broader Ojibwe version with the apostrophe. In Ottawa the apostrophe is reserved for a separate function noted below. In a few primarily expressive words, orthographic h has the phonetic value [h]: aa haaw "OK".
The apostrophe
Assimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
of /n/ to the following velar consonant /ɡ/, which is then deleted in word-final position as in mnising [mnɪsɪŋ] "at the island"), while the latter has the phonetic value [ŋɡ] as in san’goo [saŋɡoː] "black squirrel".
Labialized
Labialisation
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.The most common...
stop consonants [ɡʷ] and [kʷ], consisting of a consonant with noticeable lip rounding
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
, occur in the speech of some speakers. Labialization is not normally indicated in writing, but a subscript dot is utilized in a dictionary of Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe to mark labialization: "he is afraid" and "he is sick".
The Ottawa-Eastern Ojibwe variant of the Double vowel system treats the digraphs sh, zh, ch as two separate letters for purposes of alphabetization. Consequently the alphabetical order is:
a b c d e g (g̣) h (ḥ) i j k (ḳ) m n o p s t w y z
Saulteaux-Cree Roman system
The Saulteaux-Cree Roman system is based on the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. This system is found in northern Ontario, southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan. Compared to the Fiero or Rhodes Double Vowel systems, long vowels, includingMacron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
or circumflex
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
diacritic marks, depending on the community's standards. Though syncope is not a common feature with Saulteaux, the occasional vowel loss is indicated with a <'>. Nasaled vowels are generally not marked. The resulting alphabetical order is:
' a â c ê h i î k m n o ô p s š t w y
Northern Ojibwe system
Although speakers of the dialects of Ojibwe spoken in northern Ontario most commonly write using the syllabary, an alphabetic system is also employed. This system is similar to the Saulteaux-Cree Roman system, the most notable difference being the substitution of conventional letters of the alphabet for symbols taken from the International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
. This results in the use of
This system is used in several pedagogical grammars for the Severn Ojibwe
Oji-Cree language
The Severn Ojibwa or the Oji-Cree language is the indigenous name for a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of Oji-Cree communities in northern Ontario and at Island Lake, Manitoba, Canada...
dialect, a translation of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
in both the Severn Ojibwe and the Berens River
Berens River Ojibwe language
Berens River Ojibwe is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken along the Berens River in northern Ontario and Manitoba. Berens communities include Pikangikum and Poplar Hill, both in Ontario, well as Little Grand Rapids, in Manitoba...
dialects, and a text collection in the Northwestern Ojibwe
Northwestern Ojibwa language
Northwestern Ojibwe is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken in Ontario and Manitoba, Canada. Ojibwe is a member of the Algonquian language family.-References:...
dialect.
The short vowels are: i, o, a
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | [ɪ] | ihkwe nihka paaki |
'woman' 'Canada goose' 'shouts' |
sit |
| o | [o] ~ [ʊ] | onapi inkoci tako |
'sits up' 'somewhere' 'together with' |
put |
| a | [ɑ] ~ [ʌ] | ahki kaye ekwa |
'land, moss' 'and, also' 'and, so' |
but |
The long vowels are: ii, oo, aa, e
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ii | [iː] | iitok niin mii |
'supposedly' 'I, me' 'so, it is' |
seat |
| oo | [oː] ~ [uː] | oocii kinooshe pimipahtoo |
'fly' 'fish' 'runs by' |
time, dime |
| aa | [aː] | aapihta maawiin kemaa |
'half' 'probably' 'maybe' |
father |
| e | [eː] | eshkan pehkaac piinte |
'horn, antler' 'hold on!' 'is inside' |
bed |
The consonants are:
p, c, h, k, m, n, s, sh, t, y, w
The symbol c is used to represent the postalveolar affricate /tʃ/; the digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
sh is used to represent the postalveolar fricative /ʃ/.
The lenis consonants are:p, c, k, s, sh, t
| Sound | Phonetic | Ojibwe examples | Gloss | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| p | [p] ~ [b] | pine nipi ahsap |
'partridge' 'water' 'net' |
pit, spit |
| t | [t] ~ [d] | tepwe acitamoo kekaat |
'really' 'squirrel' 'nearly' |
time, dime |
| c | [tʃ] ~ [dʒ] | ciimaan aahpici kiimooc |
'canoe' 'very' 'secretly' |
chip, judge |
| k | [k] ~ [ɡ] | kiin waakohsh kotak |
'you' 'fox' 'other' |
keep, game |
| s | [s] ~ [z] | saakahikan misiwe ninsekis |
'lake' 'everywhere' 'I am afraid' |
sit, zip |
| sh | [ʃ] ~ [ʒ] | shemaak peshik tawash |
'right away' 'one' 'more' |
ship, measure |
| m | [m] | miskwi ohomaa saakaham |
'blood' 'here' 'goes out' |
man |
| n | [n] | naabe pine waawan |
'man' 'partridge' 'egg' |
name |
| w | [w] | waahsa kaawin ahaaw |
'far' 'no' 'okay' |
win |
| y | [j] | keyaapic sanaskway |
'still' 'leech' |
yes |
| h | [h] | ohowe | 'this' | him |
Consonant clusters of h followed by a lenis consonant correspond to fortis consonants in other dialects:
hp, hc, hk, hs, hsh, ht
The consonant clusters that occur in Ojibwe dialects that use the Northern orthography are represented with the following sequences of characters:
mp, nt, nc, nk, nz, ns, nsh, sk, shp, sht, shk
Algonquin Roman system
Unlike the other Roman systems modeled after English, the Algonquin Roman system is instead modeled after French. Its most striking features are the use of either circumflexCircumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
or grave
Grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
diacritic mark over the long vowels, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ written as
Correspondence chart of the popular Roman systems
The n-dash (–) is used to mark where no equivalent is found.| Fiero Double Vowel system |
Ottawa-Eastern Ojibwe Double Vowel system |
Northern Ojibwe system |
Saulteaux system |
Algonquin system |
IPA Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ' | ' | ' | |||
| a | a | a | a | a | ə |
| aa | aa | aa | ā / â | â / à | aː |
| b | b | p | p | b | b |
| ch | ch | hc | hc | tc | tʃ |
| d | d | t | t | d | d |
| e | e | e | ē / ê | ê / è | eː |
| g | g | k | k | g | ɡ |
| gw | gw / g̣ | kw | kw | gw | ɡw |
| h | h | h | h | h | h |
| ' | h | h | h | h | ʔ |
| i | i | i | i | i | ɪ |
| ii | ii | ii | ī / î | î / ì | iː |
| j | j | c | c | dj | dʒ |
| k | k | hk | hk | k | k |
| kw | kw / ḳ | hkw | hkw | kw | kw |
| m | m | m | m | m | m |
| mb | mb | mp | mp | mb | mb |
| n | n | n | n | n | n |
| nd | nd | nt | nt | nd | nd |
| ng | ng | nk | nk | ng | ŋ(ɡ) |
| n' | nh | ṽʔ | |||
| nj | nj | nc | nc | ndj | ndʒ |
| ns | ns | nhs | nhs | ns | ṽs |
| nz | nz | ns | ns | nz | ṽz |
| ny / -nh | ny / -nh | y / – | ṽj / ṽ | ||
| nzh | nzh | nsh | nš | nj | ṽʒ |
| o | o | o | o | o | o / ʊ |
| oo | oo | oo | ō / ô | ô / ò | oː / uː |
| p | p | hp | hp | p | p |
| s | s | hs | hs | s | s |
| sh | sh | hsh | hš | c | ʃ |
| shk | shk | shk | šk | ck | ʃk |
| shp | shp | shp | šp | cp | ʃp |
| sht | sht | sht | št | ct | ʃt |
| sk | sk | sk | sk | sk | sk |
| t | t | ht | ht | t | t |
| w | w | w | w | w | w |
| y | y | y | y | y | j |
| z | z | s | s | z | z |
| zh | zh | sh | š | j | ʒ |
Folk Spelling
Folk spelling of Anishinaabemowin is not a system per se, as it varies from person to person writing speech into script. Each writer employing folk spelling would write out the word as how the speaker himself would form the words. Depending on if the reference sound representation is based on English or French, a word may be represented using common reference language sound representation, thus better able to reflect the vowel or consonant value. However, since this requires the knowledge of how the speaker himself speaks, folk spelling quickly becomes difficult to read for those individuals not familiar with the writer.Folk spellings continue to be widely used, and in some cases are preferred to more systematic or analytical orthographies. Prominent Ottawa author Basil Johnston
Basil H. Johnston
Basil H. Johnston O.Ont, Anishinaabe writer, storyteller, language teacher and scholar, was born on the Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Canada, on July 13, 1929, to Mary and Rufus Johnston...
has explicitly rejected it, preferring to use a form of folk spelling in which the correspondences between sounds and letters are less systematic. Similarly, a lexicon representing Ottawa as spoken in Michigan and another based on Ottawa in Oklahoma use English-based folk spelling distinct from that employed by Johnson.
Evans system
James Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, UKKingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
, had prepared the Speller and Interpreter in English and Indian http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/56105?id=2ea03332e39105c7 in 1837, but was unable to get its printing sanctioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society
British and Foreign Bible Society
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply as Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world....
. Evans continued to use his Ojibwe writing system in his work in Ontario. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties working with the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds. Furthermore, the structure of the Ojibwe language made most words quite long when spelled with Roman letters, and Evans himself found this approach awkward. His book also noted differences in the Ojibwe dialectual field. The "default" dialect was the Ojibwemowin spoken at Rice Lake, Ontario (marked as "RL"). The other two were Credit, Ontario, (marked as "C") and areas to the west (marked as "W").
Evans' Ojibwe writing system recognized short and long vowels, but did not distinguish between lenis and fortis consonants. Another distinct character of Evans system was the use of
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
over a vowel or vowels to represent nasals and diaersis (¨)
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
over the vowel to indicate a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
(/ʔ/); if the glottal stop was final, he duplicated the vowel and would place a circumflex (ˆ)
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
over the duplicated vowel. "Gladness," for example, was written as buubenandumooen (baapinendamowin in the Fiero system).
Evans eventually abandoned his Ojibwe writing system and formulated what would eventually become the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
. His Ojibwe syllabics parsing order was based on his Romanized Ojibwe.
| Evans system | a | aa | b | d | e | ee | g | j | m | n | o | oo | u | uu | z | s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiero system | i/e | e | b/p | d/t | y/i | ii | g/k | j/ch | m | n | w/o | oo | a | aa | z/s | zh/sh |
| Evans system | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiero system | Vn | VVny/VVnh | 'V/hV | V' |
Baraga system
Bishop Frederic BaragaFrederic Baraga
Frederic Baraga, Servant of God was a Slovene American Roman Catholic missionary, bishop, and grammarian.-Early life:Frederic Baraga was born as Friderik Irenej Baraga in the manor house at Mala Vas no...
, in his years as a missionary to the Ojibwa
Ojibwa
The Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
and the Odawa
Odawa people
The Odawa or Ottawa, said to mean "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. Their original homelands are located on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, on the Bruce Peninsula in...
, became the foremost grammarian of Anishinaabemowin
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
.
His work A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language, explained in English is still considered the best reference regarding the Ojibwe vocabulary. In his dictionary, grammar books and prayer book, the sound representations of Ojibwe are shown in the table below. There has also been discussion regarding if Baraga represented nasal. In his earlier editions of the dictionary, circumflex accents were used to indicate nasals but in his later editions, they appear to instead either represent long vowels or stressed vowels, believed to be changed by the editor of his dictionary.
| Baraga system | a | â | b | d | dj | e/é/ê | g | h | i | j | k | m | n | o | ô | p | s | sh | ss | t | tch | w | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiero system | ' | a | a/aa | b | d | j | e | g | '/h | i/ii/y | zh | k/g- | m | n | o/oo | oo | p/b- | z | sh | s | t/d- | ch | w |
Cuoq system
Jean-André Cuoq was a missionary to the Algonquin and the IroquoisIroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
. He wrote several grammar books, hymnals, a catechism and his premier work Lexique de la Langue Algonquine in 1886, focusing on the form of Anishinaabemowin spoken among the Algonquin. His published works regarding the Algonquin language
Algonquin language
Algonquin is either a distinct Algonquian language closely related to the Ojibwe language or a particularly divergent Ojibwe dialect. It is spoken, alongside French and to some extent English, by the Algonquin First Nations of Quebec and Ontario...
used basic sounds, without differentiating the consonant strengths or vowel lengths. However, unlike Baraga, Cuoq further broke words down to their root forms and clarified ambiguously defined words found in Baraga's dictionary.
| Cuoq system | a | b | c | d | dj | e | g | h | i | j | k | m | n | o | p | s | t | tc | Vv | w | z | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiero system | ' | a/aa | b | sh/zh | d | j | e | g | '/h | i/ii/y | zh | k/g | m | n | o/oo | p/b | s/z | t/d | ch/j | V/V:/Vw | w | z |
In later works using the Cuoq system, such as Dictionnaire Français-Algonquin by George Lemoine, long vowels were indicated by a circumflex (ˆ)
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
placed over the vowel, while the unstressed short vowels were indicated by a diaersis (¨)
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
placed over the vowel. As a relic to an older system upon which the Cuoq system is based,
Ojibwe syllabics
- See Canadian Aboriginal syllabicsCanadian Aboriginal SyllabicsCanadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
for a more in-depth discussion of Ojibwe syllabics and related scripts
Ojibwe is also written in a non-alphabetic orthography often called syllabics. Wesleyan
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
clergyman James Evans devised the syllabary in 1840-1841 while serving as a missionary among speakers of Swampy Cree
Swampy Cree language
Swampy Cree is a dialect of the Cree language complex. Swampy Cree is spoken in a series of communities in northern Manitoba, central northeast of Saskatchewan along the Saskatchewan River and along the Hudson Bay coast and adjacent inland areas to the south and west, and Ontario along the coast...
in Norway House
Norway House, Manitoba
- Treaty and York Boat Days :Held annually each summer, the York Boat events serve as the main attraction.-External links:* * * *...
in Rupert's Land
Rupert's Land
Rupert's Land, or Prince Rupert's Land, was a territory in British North America, consisting of the Hudson Bay drainage basin that was nominally owned by the Hudson's Bay Company for 200 years from 1670 to 1870, although numerous aboriginal groups lived in the same territory and disputed the...
(now northern Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
). Influences on Evans' creation of the syllabary included his prior experience with devising an alphabetic orthography for Eastern Ojibwe, his awareness of the syllabary devised for Cherokee, familiarity with Pitman shorthand
Pitman Shorthand
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...
, and Devanagari
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
scripts.
The syllabary spread rapidly among speakers of Cree and Ojibwe, and is now widely used by literate Ojibwe speakers in northern Ontario and Manitoba, with most other Ojibwe groups using alphabetically based orthographies, discussed above.
The syllabary is conventionally presented in a chart, although different renditions may present varying amounts of detail.
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
consisting of a vowel without any preceding consonantal onset, written with a triangle rotated through four positions to represent the vowel qualities /e, i, o, a/; (b) characters that represent consonant-vowel syllables for the consonants /p t k tʃ m n s ʃ j/ combined with the four vowel qualities; (c) characters called finals that represent syllable-closing consonants both word-finally and word-internally; and (d) modifier characters for /h/ and /w/.
The characters representing combinations of consonant plus vowel are rotated through four orientations, each representing one of the four primary vowels, /e i o a/. The syllabic characters are conventionally presented in a chart (see above) with characters organized into rows representing the value of the syllable onset and the columns representing vowel quality.
A glottal stop or /h/ preceding a vowel is optionally written with a separate character
The syllable-closing characters referred to as finals (called "terminations" by Evans, with "final" being a later terminological innovation), occur in both word-final, and, less frequently, word-internal positions. The finals are generally superscripted, but originally were printed or handwritten mid-line. There are two distinct sets of finals in use, a Western set and an Eastern set. The Western finals are accent-like in appearance, and are unrelated to the other characters. The Eastern finals occur in two different forms. The more common form, the a-position finals, uses smaller versions of the characters for syllables containing the vowel /a/; the less common i-position set uses smaller versions of the characters for syllables containing the vowel /i/. Use of the i-position series is common in some communities particularly in handwriting. The Western finals were introduced in the earliest version of the syllabary and the Eastern finals were introduced in the 1860s.
The examples in the table are cited from Neskantaga, Ontario (Lansdowne House), a community assigned to the Northwestern Ojibwe
Northwestern Ojibwa language
Northwestern Ojibwe is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken in Ontario and Manitoba, Canada. Ojibwe is a member of the Algonquian language family.-References:...
dialect.
| Sound | Western | Eastern | Roman equivalent | English gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| p | ᐊᓴᑊ |
ᐊᓴᑉ |
ahsap |
'net' |
| t | ᑫᑲᐟ |
ᑫᑲᑦ |
kekaat |
'nearly' |
| k | ᒥᑎᐠ |
ᒥᑎᒃ |
mihtik |
'tree, stick' |
| c /tʃ/ | ᑭᒧᐨ |
ᑭᒧᒡ |
kiimooc |
'secretly' |
| s | ᓂᑯᓯᐢ |
ᓂᑯᓯᔅ |
ninkosihs |
'my son' |
| sh /ʃ/ | ᐱᐡ |
ᐱᔥ |
piish |
'bring him!' |
| m | ᐊᑭᒼ |
ᐊᑭᒻ |
aakim |
'snowshoe' |
| n | ᒪᑭᓯᐣ |
ᒪᑭᓯᓐ |
makisin |
'shoe' |
| y | ˙ ᐊᔕ˙ |
ᐊᔕᔾ |
aashay |
'now, then' |
| w | ᐱᔑᐤ |
ᐱᔑᐤ |
pishiw |
'bobcat' |
The sound /w/ is represented by adding a modifier character (), sometimes called 'w-dot', to a triangle or consonant-vowel character. Several different patterns of use occur related to the use of western or eastern finals: (a) Western, w-dot added after the character it modifies, with western finals; (b) Eastern, w-dot added before the character it modifies, with eastern finals; (c) Mixed, w-dot added before the character it modifies, with western finals.
| Western | Eastern | Mixed | Roman equivalent | English gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᐃᐧᓯᓂᐣ | ᐧᐃᓯᓂᓐ | ᐧᐃᓯᓂᐣ | wiihsinin | 'eat!' |
Vowel length is phonologically contrastive in Ojibwe, but is frequently not indicated by syllabics writers; for example the words aakim 'snowshoe' and akim 'count him, them!' may both be written ᐊᑭᑦ. Vowel length is optionally indicated by placing a dot above the character, with the exception of /eː/, for which there is no corresponding short vowel and hence no need to indicate length. The practice of indicating vowel length is called 'pointed syllabics' or 'pointing'. In the pointed variant, the word 'snowshoe' would be written ᐋᑭᑦ.
The fortis consonants are generally not distinguished in the common unpointed writing from the lenis ones, and thus both /d/ (
The
Not shown in the sample table are the characters representing non-Ojibwe sounds
The syllabics-using communities can be classified into:
- Finals use
- Eastern A-Finals—consonant in a-direction shown as a superscript; most common finals in use
- Eastern I-Finals—consonant in i-direction shown as a superscript; used in some communities of Ontario and Quebec
- Eastern Mixed Finals—consonant in i-, o- or a-direction shown as a superscript with choice dependent upon the word's root; typically found in James Bay Cree influenced communities
- Western Finals—typically found in Saulteaux
(ᑊ , ᐟ
, ᐠ , ᐨ , ᒼ , ᐣ , ᐢ , ᐡand ᕀ )
- W-dot positioning
- pre-glyph—most commonly associated with Eastern communities (ᐌ)
- post-glyph—most commonly associated with Western communities (ᐍ)
- L/R representation
- independent Sigma form—shaped like Greek capital letter sigma (ᓬ for
and ᕒ for ). - nesting Sigma form—similar to above, but nesting on the N-shape with superscripted sigma-form alone as finals
- N-shape modified form—most common form, created by an erasure of part of the N-form (ᓓ ᓕ ᓗ ᓚ ᓪ for
and ᕃ ᕆ ᕈ ᕋ ᕐ for ) - Roman Catholic form—most often found in western communities (ᕃ ᕆ ᕊ ᕍ ᔆ for
and ᖊ ᖋ ᖌ ᖍ ᙆ for )
- independent Sigma form—shaped like Greek capital letter sigma (ᓬ for
Not part of the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
standard, thus not shown in the sample table above, is an obsolete set of syllabics form representing šp-series, or the sp-series in those communities where <š> have merged with
Also, not shown are the alternate
Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary
The Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary is a syllabic writing system based upon the French alphabet, with letters organized into syllables. It was primarily used by speakers of FoxFox language
Fox is an Algonquian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico...
, Potawatomi
Potawatomi language
Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian language and is spoken around the Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Kansas in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada, 1300 Potawatomi people, all elderly...
, and Winnebago
Winnebago language
The Winnebago language is the language of the Ho-Chunk tribe of Native Americans in the United States. The language is part of the Siouan language family, and is closely related to the languages of the Iowa, Missouri, and Oto...
, but there is indirect evidence of use by speakers of Southwestern Ojibwe ("Chippewa").
It has been suggested that Ottawa speakers were among the groups that used the syllabary, but supporting evidence is weak.
External links
- Ojibwe Language Society
- OLS Miinawaa — Yahoo Group extension of the Ojibwe Language Society
- Rand Valentine's introduction to Ojibwe
- Grammar, lessons, and dictionaries
- Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary — Freeware off-line dictionary, updated with additional entries every 6–10 weeks.
- Kevin L. Callahan's An Introduction to Ojibway Culture and History
- Language Museum report for Ojibwe
- Aboriginal Languages of Canada — With data on speaker populations
- Language Geek Page on Ojibwe — Syllabary fonts and keyboard emulators are also available from this site.
- Ojibwe Toponyms
- Our Languages: Nakawē (Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre)
- Niizh Ikwewag — A short story in Ojibwe, originally told by Earl Nyholm, emeritus professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University.
- Ethnologue report for Ojibwe
- Native Languages: A Support Document for the Teaching of Language Patterns, Ojibwe and Cree
- BWCAW/Quetico Park Petroglyphs
- Bois Forte Petroglyphs
- Ontario Parks Petroglyph finder
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
