Interesting Things To Know About The Ojibwe Language

By Ryan Harris


The Ojibwe were a race of people who used to live in Canada in Ontario up until the US border somewhere in Montana and Michigan. They were a race of people who spoke the Ojibwe language, which is one of the rarest languages in the world as it is the native tongue of the older generation wherein the current generation don't practice it anymore. Here are a few things one might find interesting about this lost dialect.

These people were also known as the Ojibway or the Anishinaabemowin and they encompassed a couple of tribes in the area. They lived near the Great Lake somewhere in between Canada and the US. Today, that area is known as the border between Canada and the United States of America. Also, the dialect they are speaking is the Central Algonquian dialect making it one of the main languages to their community.

Even though it was one of the central languages of the past, it is actually considered endangered now by Minnesota. UNESCO actually announced that it was already included in the Atlas of Worlds Languages in Danger list as it is no longer spoken by the current generation. It is the grandparents who spoke it but their children never did anymore and more so their grandchildren or great grandchildren.

Of course, there have been organizations who want to help preserve the dialect by making schools in states like Michigan and Minnesota. The whole aim of these schools is to ensure that that those who have Ojibway heritage, or those that do not for that matter, learn to read and write it. In fact, the Ojibway Peoples Dictionary was created to aid in these types of efforts.

Now, to know about the dialect a bit, one has to know what kind of alphabet it uses. It makes use of what is known as a double vowel system wherein two letters combine with each other to act as a single sound. It is also pretty interesting to know that there is an apostrophe somewhere in the alphabet which is symbolizing of a sort of stop.

For those who do not know about the alphabet yet, there are some letters straight from the English alphabet but others are not. The ones from the English alphabet include most letters in the alphabet while some other added ones include aa, ee, ii, oo, ch, sh, and zh. As mentioned above, the ones that have two letters in them act as a single unit letter to make a completely different sound than a single letter unit.

There are also the nasal vowels in the alphabet. These include the aanh, oonh, eenh and the iinh. These, as the name implies, are nasal vowels that give off a nasal sound when one pronounces them.

For those who want to know more about the ancient Ojibway dialect, take note of some of these things. It is really interesting that an old language of the past is now being brought back. This is to help the current generation preserve something from the past and keep it for the newer generations to enjoy.




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