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Language Lineage

Ojibwe

Anishinaabemowin, a chain of dialects (Ojibwe, Odawa, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Oji-Cree) around the Great Lakes, spoken by one of the largest Indigenous nations of North America.

c. 1st millennium CE – presentAround the Great Lakes and west to the Prairies, in Ontario, Manitoba, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan
On this page
  1. Around the Great Lakes
  2. Syncope and Immersion
  3. In its own words
  4. Where it's spoken
  5. Turning points

01

Around the Great Lakes

Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin) and its close relatives are spoken around the upper Great Lakes, and westward to the Prairies. The Anishinaabe were central partners in the French fur trade, and Ojibwe served as a regional lingua franca. English took words such as totem (from Ojibwe doodem, 'clan') from it. Potawatomi is closely related and is sometimes grouped with it.

02

Syncope and Immersion

In the 20th century the Odawa and eastern Ojibwe dialects dropped their short unstressed vowels on a large scale, so Anishinaabe became Nishnaabe. The change happened within living memory and has been studied as it happened. Since the 1990s immersion schools, such as Waadookodaading in Wisconsin (founded 2000), have been raising new child speakers.

A sample

In its own words

Ojibwe

Aaniin ezhinikaazoyan?
Aaniin
how
ezhinikaazoyan?
be.called.so-2SG
‘What is your name?’
Sources (1)
  • Nichols, John D. & Earl Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Canadac. 29,000
  2. United Statesunder 1,000

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Contact17th – 19th century

    The French fur trade

    The Anishinaabe become key partners of French and later British traders around the Great Lakes. Ojibwe becomes a trade language, and words like totem pass into French and English.

    Sources (1)
    • Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Sound law20th century

    Odawa vowel syncope

    short unstressed V → ∅ (Anishinaabe → Nishnaabe)

    In Odawa and eastern Ojibwe, short unstressed vowels are lost in large numbers: Anishinaabe → Nishnaabe. It is one of the few Algonquian sound changes that linguists have been able to observe while it happened.

    Compare with other loss across families →

    Sources (2)
    • Rhodes, Richard A. 1985. Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton.
    • Valentine, J. Randolph. 2001. Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  3. Revitalization2000 onward

    Immersion schools

    Ojibwe-immersion schools such as Waadookodaading on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in Wisconsin begin raising children who speak Ojibwe as a first language again.

    Sources (1)
    • Hinton, Leanne, Leena Huss & Gerald Roche, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York: Routledge.