Chippewa language

Chippewa
Anishinaabemowin, ᐊᓂᐦᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ
Pronunciation[anɪːʃɪnaːpeːmowɪn]
Native toUnited States
RegionUpper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota
Ethnicity104,000 Chippewa (1990 census)[1]
Native speakers
6986 (2010 census)[2]
Algic
Language codes
ISO 639-3ciw
Glottologchip1241
ELPSouthwestern Ojibwa

Chippewa (native name: Anishinaabemowin;[4] also known as Southwestern Ojibwa, Ojibwe, Ojibway, or Ojibwemowin) is an Algonquian language spoken from upper Michigan westward to North Dakota in the United States.[4] It represents the southern component of the Ojibwe language.

Chippewa is part of the Algonquian language family and an indigenous language of North America. Chippewa is part of the dialect continuum of Ojibwe (including Chippewa, Ottawa, Algonquin, and Oji-Cree), which is closely related to Potawatomi. It is spoken on the southern shores of Lake Superior and in the areas toward the south and west of Lake Superior in Michigan and Southern Ontario.[5] The speakers of this language generally call it Anishinaabemowin ('the Anishinaabe language') or more specifically, Ojibwemowin ('the Ojibwa language').

There is a large amount of variation in the language. Some of the variations are caused by ethnic or geographic heritage, while other variations occur from person to person.[6] There is no single standardization of the language as it exists as a dialect continuum, according to Nichols: "It exists as a chain of interconnected local varieties, conventionally called dialects."[7] Some varieties differ greatly and can be so diverse that speakers of two different varieties cannot understand each other.[which?][citation needed]

In the southern range of are where the language is spoken, it is mostly spoken by the older generations of the Anishinaabe people, and many of its speakers also speak English.[7] The language is classified as severely endangered by UNESCO.

  1. ^ Chippewa language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger". unesco.org. UNESCO. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  3. ^ a b Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2022-05-24). "Central-Eastern-Southwestern Ojibwa". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 2022-10-30. Retrieved 2022-10-29.
  4. ^ a b Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  5. ^ Densmore, 7
  6. ^ Rhodes, XXIV
  7. ^ a b Nichols, viii