O is for Ojibwe

o is forOjibwe, also known as Chippewa, belongs to the Algonquin family of languages. Spoken in Southern Canada and northern USA, it is made up of several dialects which are mutually intelligible. It is known by the Ojibwe people as Anashinabe.

It is classified by UNESCO as critically endangered, which means that the speakers are mostly older generations (grandparents and above) who speak the language infrequently. Despite this, it is possibly the least endangered of the indigenous North American languages, and there are efforts being made to revive the language, such as immersion centres.

There is no common writing system across the dialects, but a few different ones have been devised using the Latin alphabet.

The word order is verb-object-subject or verb-subject-object.

Related posts: N is for Norwegian     P is for Proto-Indo-European

Author: Sally-Jayne