A Central Algonquian language spoken across the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada — one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in North America.
Where it’s spoken
Ojibwe (also called Anishinaabemowin) is spoken in dispersed communities around the upper Great Lakes — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and across Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in Canada. The dialect continuum spans nearly 1,500 km from Saulteaux in the west to Algonquin in the east. Total speakers number perhaps 50,000.
What it sounds like
A polysynthetic Algonquian language with elaborate verb morphology that incorporates direct objects, locations, and aspect into a single verb word. The “obviative” fourth person tracks which third-person referent is most prominent in a discourse.
How it’s written
Written either in Cree syllabics (in the more northerly Saulteaux and Severn Ojibwe varieties) or the Latin alphabet (with the “Double Vowel” orthography developed by Charles Fiero being the most widely used). Ojibwe-language schools operate in several reservations and reserves.
Find more languages by letter
Ojibwe starts with O and ends with E. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Ojibwe":