Talk:Anishinaabe language

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Contents 1 To do to improve 2 WikiProject Languages 3 Placement in the Algic family tree 4 In Central and Eastern Ojibwe, accent = syncope 5 Article Length 6 Change the article title? 7 Another split?

[edit] To do to improve

more on the Ojibwemowin dialect

1. specific examples of differences and similarities across all dialects
2. re-word each of the dialect descriptions to be less confusing
3. examples of language use differences between ritual Anishinaabemowin and the secular Anishinaabemowin
4. better referencing across all article sections

Otherwise, the article is very good. All the extra information have already been summarised and placed in this article while the specifics of the article were given their own articles as further details. Special thanks to BentRedNewt/Whimemsz for all the dedicated efforts!! CJLippert 18:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Languages

I feel the layout of this article should be changed a bit to conform to the WikiProject Languages template. So I'm going to go ahead and change it. --Whimemsz 22:40, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Placement in the Algic family tree

Are you sure that Ojibwa is not Central Algonquian? Algonquian has three branches, Eastern, Central, and Plains. The Eastern branch has ten languages (including Abnaki, Micmac, Mohegan, Powhatan, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy and Wampanoag); the Plains branch includes Blackfoot, Arapaho and Cheyenne; there are several "outliers" that do not belong to any of the three branches (including Mahican, Piscataway, Lumbee and Carolina Algonquian); and then there is the big Central branch which counts 23 languages (including the several Cree groups, Montagnais, Potowatomi, Kickapoo, Shawnee, Algonkin, Menominee, Fox, Miami, Ottawa, and, as I understand it, Ojibwa).

Checking this on Ethnologue, I see that they show it as Algic - Algonquian - Central - Ojibwa (see Ethnologue report on Ojibwa). —Stephen 09:39, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but Plains and Central Algonquian are not genetic divisions, merely divisions based on location. Only Eastern Algonquian is a true genetic subfamily. So it seemed misleading to classify Ojibwe as "Central Algonquian" in the family tree. --Whimemsz 00:20, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] In Central and Eastern Ojibwe, accent = syncope

I would say that in the case of Ojibwe, especially in Central and Eastern Ojibwe, as well as in Odawa, terms "accent" and "syncope" are one and the same. The word for "horse" is "bebezhigooganzhii", given as an example in the article. The metred foot would be "(be)(be-zhi)(goo-gan)(zhii)" but due to the resulting syncope, a pure byproduct of the accent meter, makes the word sound like "bbezhgoognzhii" with the unstressed long vowel reduced to a short neutral vowel while the unstressed short vowel dropping out entirely.

In Wisconsin, the unstressed short vowels don't drop out, but often instead go through transformation. However, this doesn't quite happen with the "horse" example, making the word sound like "bbezhigooganzhii". In Minnesota, and Ontario Saulteaux, the word sounds as the way it is written "bebezhigooganzhii". Manitoba Saulteaux, instead uses an entirely different word: "mishtadim", which do experience the reduction and sounds like "mashtadim". CJLippert 03:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

My point was just that the term "syncope" is used to refer specifically to the loss of a sound. As far as I know, it's not technically synonymous with a stress pattern that results in syncope. That is, Ojibwe's stress pattern results in specific rules for vowel syncope in most dialects, but the stress itself is not equivalent to the actual "act" of dropping the vowels. If that makes sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you or I'm incorrect, though.

Take care. --Whimemsz 17:30, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article Length

The article is nearly 50kb now. We should probably split it into a couple of smaller ones (probably the phonology section and writing section at least). Does anyone have any suggestions about what path to take? --Whimemsz 23:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to put the "Phonology", "Grammar" and "History" onto a different page, or have "Phonology" and "History" on a second page and "Grammar" on a third page. Possible separate "Grammar" page might be prudent since this section potentially can grow to a size greater than the current single article as various sub-classes are added in.
As a minor point, this would, however, cause the remaining sections to be slightly re-arranged in their presentation order and appropriate references and external links to be shared/divided between/among the two/three pages. CJLippert 15:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, good point about the grammar section; I agree with you there, then. Looking through the article again, it looks to me like moving the "Phonology" and "Grammar" sections to two new pages would be enough to bring the article to a more reasonable length (though quick summaries of the phonology and grammar would be kept in their respective sections). The "History" section is pretty short, and it doesn't seem to me that it has much potential to grow too much bigger, so I don't know whether we'd need to move that section. Anyway, I'll try experimenting with different possibilities on my subpage (User:Whimemsz/Current). Take care, --Whimemsz 22:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

You might want to include in the "Phonology" of the coalescing of "sh" with "s" in some Ojibwe dialects, resulting in additional clusters of "sp" and "st" in addition to the "sk", as well as the nasal carry-over of CVV if C is an "m" or "n", for example, resulting in "moose" being written in Ojibwe as either "mooz" or "moonz". If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, you could also discuss about the long and short "e" that occurs in the western Wisconsin Dialect (as in "zaaga'egan -- lake"), and the "ai" diphthong that occurs in the eastern Wisconsin Dialect (as in "zaaga'aigan -- lake"). A discussion of the sh- to s-shifting consonant (N&N's /S/) and zh- to n-shifting consonant (N&N's /N/) would be a good addition as well. When I suggested the "History" be moved to be with the "Phonology" page, this was part of my reasoning behind it since it does take linguistic reconstruction to explain these shifts. Also worth mentioning are are the n/ø variation (as in "ningodwaaswi" vs. "ingodwaaswi" -- six) and its associated ny/y variations (as in "giigoonh" vs. "giigooy" -- fish). CJLippert 23:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Since my knowledge of Ojibwe comes mainly through N&N, I'm really only familiar with the Mille Lacs Minnesota variety, and not as much so the dialects spoken in Wisconsin or elsewhere. You obviously know more than I do about dialectal variations, so anything you could add to the pages would be great.

N&N's /N/ and /S/ come from the PA lateral fricative (> modern n), which even in PA became *š (> modern zh) before *i. I'm assuming that /S/ comes from the cluster *ʔɬ~*ʔš (> modern s and sh, respectively). I'm not sure of the origin of the other phenomena (although I had a vague suspicion that the various forms the first person prefix takes come from nasal assimilation, e.g. nig- > ning- (> ing-), and that the same thing happened with (n)ingodwaaswi and (n)ishwaaswi. I could easily be completely wrong, though. Take care, --Whimemsz 23:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think nasal assimuation is happening here (but don't quote me that, 'cause I need to think about this a bit more). Along with the n/ø variation, there is also a parallel zh/ø variation, as in zhaaganaash/aaganaash -- "English". I'm stopping here, because now I am getting way off track. Let's see the article split and then these nitty-gritty details can be worked in later. Miigwech on all your hard work! CJLippert 15:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Okie-doke. Miigwech to you as well! Take care, --Whimemsz 00:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Though the page looks great, it is still very, very large. Would it make sense to move the writing system? If we did, then we could talk about the ancient Ojibwe "heiroglyphics", Evans Double-vowel Roman, Evans Syllabics, Great Lakes Syllabics, Saulteaux-Cree Roman, Algonquin Roman, Fiero Double-vowel Roman and Rhodes Double-vowel Roman. CJLippert 00:31, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point. And besides, it's a little odd to have half of the article taken up by a discussion of the orthography anyway. --Whimemsz 00:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change the article title?

Do we want to keep the current title "Ojibwe language" or would it make more sense to migrate the article to a new title, maybe something like the "Anishinaabe language" or "Anishinaabemowin"? The main reason for this question is, in my opinion, having the "Ojibwe language" title seems to exclude the Odawa, Nipissing, Mississaugas, Algonquin and Saulteaux, but saying "Anishinaabe language" would include these groups. However, the shift would also beg the question of if the Potawatomi language would be folded into the article with the new name or if there ought to be an expanded discussion on the dialects, with a short paragraph or two regarding the Potawatomi language and providing a "Main article: ..." link in that section. Ideas, suggestions and your vote, please. CJLippert 23:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

You know more about this stuff than I do, so I'll trust your judgement on this one; if you think the title should be changed, that's fine with me. Man, I want to get my hands on some of Valentine's stuff so I can learn more about Anishinaabemowin dialectology...

If we do change it, I'd suggest perhaps "Anishinaabe language" or "Anishinaabemowin language"? Take care, --Red Newt 20:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The article has be given a new title. However, this now opens up other issues that make the article weak in places. For example, the dominant dialect of this language is Ojibwemowin, but yet the discussion for this dialect is close to zilch. However, this arrangement now allows for further discussion for additional information on other dialects of Anishinaabemowin. Instead of the SILS grouping, I grouped the dialects by what the people call their speech or tribal affinity... to reduce the non-Anishinaabe slicing and dicing of the language(s). CJLippert 00:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the added dialectal info. I hadn't really understood the situation with Anishinaabemowin dialects when I fist tried to write that (very brief) section, so I basically took Valentine's discussion of dialects on his site with Ethnologue's divisions, and tried to mesh them together into something. Evidently, I wasn't successful :) . It's great to have the new sections and information! --Red Newt 21:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another split?

I've been thinking that maybe we should split the article one more time, and make a new article for the dialectology and historical linguistic information. The dialect section as it is currectly kind of overwhelms the article (well...not really, but it takes up a disproportionate amount of space), and with a separate article we might be able to expand the discussion of the dialectology a bit. Since I just discovered I have semi-access to the Handbook of North American Indians volumes published by the Smithsonian, I've just been able to copy down several good tables of some salient dialectal differences in Anishinaabemowin, as well as some other relevant things. A separate article would also allow the historical linguistic section to be expanded; the only problem there is I don't know how much work has actually been published on the historical evolution of Ojibwe. Actually, since Bloomfield used Eastern Ojibwe as one of the four languages to reconstruct Proto-(Central-)Algonquian, he does more or less lay out the historical sound changes, although not in a neat little list. He goes into more detail in his 1946 article, which I'll try to comb through for stuff on this.

Before I go further with these thought trains, though, I'd like to know other people's opinions on this. Is it necessary? Would this article benefit? Would the presentation of the material be improved? Take care, --Miskwito 07:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If we go for another split, it should be two additional articles created and many, many more beefed-up: one for the dialectology, which should shorten up that large section in the current Anishinaabe language as well as provide for better connections between the dialectology and each of the language articles in that Ojibwe group of languages; and the second be an article about the proto-Ojibwe, which then can have a discussion with the relationship it has to fellow Nii'inawag, which might pull in the historical phonology currently found in the Ojibwe phonology article. This would also mean a need to fully develop similar lines of information in the Cree language article (which other than the Ojibwe-group, is the only other Wikipedia article sets for the Algonquian languages that are robust), add connective starting points in all other Algonquian languages to germinate growth, then in the Algonquian languages articles, such that the reader could pick either end of the language history and smoothly transition in time as well as understand the relationship each Nii'inaw to fellow Nii'inawag. CJLippert 12:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Nii'inawag? What's that? (It looks cognate to Cree Nēhiya-, etc.). Anyway, there's also then the issue of names! Ojibwe dialects wouldn't make any sense, since it would be a totally inaccurate name for what the article would contain; so maybe Anishinaabe dialects or Anshinaabemowin dialects or Anishinaabe language dialects or Anishinaabe dialectology or...and so on. I'm not sure what you mean by a proto-Ojibwe article--just one on the proto-Anishinaabemowin that gave rise to all the modern dialect (plus Potawatomi?)? --Miskwito 04:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Nii'inaw is the general name for the Algonquian peoples in Anishinaabemowin, but Nii'inaw implies "Cree" to which others are compared. According to Cuoq, /ii'inA/ (Cuoq: iinav) is the root. Consequently, nii'inaa means "of our people" and nii'inawe means "of our people's language"... which the Cree forms are nēhinawē/nēhiyawē/etc. According to Hodges, other "Central" Algonquians are Nii'inawens, while "Plains" Algonquians are Nii'inawish but it seems his source material for the names are based from either ojg or otw. "Ojibwe dialects" makes sense only for ciw, ojb, ojc, ojg and ojw, and otw as well among linguists; "Anishinaabe language dialects" would include the "Ojibwe dialects" along with alq, ojs and pot; "proto-Ojibwe" probably don't make much sense so yes, "proto-Anishinaabe language" would be better. However, at the "proto-Anishinaabe language" level, I think the dialects should look something like the ciw/ojb/ojc/ojw, ojg/otw/pot and alq/ojs but this should be checked with research since the three groupings are based only on my observation from the FLOj data-entry. CJLippert 05:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in volume six of the HNAI, Richard Rhodes and Evelyn Todd provide a chart of Anishinaabe dialect divisions/relationships as they were seen at the time (1981) (sorry about the hastily-done diagram):

Where EOj = Eastern Ojibwe, SWOj = Southwestern Ojibwe, COj = Central Ojibwe, and NWOj = Northwestern Ojibwe. --Miskwito 06:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and in volume 17 (1996), the dialects are split into two main groups (pg 4), Northern and Southern, which I think is how Valentine classifies them, iirc. In the HNAI scheme anyway, Northern consists of Severn Ojibwe and northern Algonquin; Southern consists of Saulteaux, Central Southern Ojibwe (?), Eastern Ojibwe, Old Algonquin (?...listed as extinct), and Ottawa. No further subbranching is done this time. --Miskwito 06:48, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

alq-N and ojs are definitely "North", but some place ojb-N as "North" as well, and place the rest as "South". alq-S and ojg should be shown diverging from each other. ojg and otw should be shown with stronger ties. pot when branching off to its separate location, pot-N can be shown in the vicinity of otw (and to some extent, to ciw) but pot-S shouldn't, other than being next to pot-N. Hmm. Too bad there isn't a good way to show this in 3D. In 3D the Rhodes-Todd diagram could be shown with alq being in the vicinity of ojg, ojs in the vicinity of ojb, and ojg being next to otw... all this without breaking that tree apart. Then, North as blue and South as red? The HNAI's "Central Southern Ojibwe" I think is what Guy and I discussed to label as (SO) in FLOj. His observation from the materials he had access at the University of St. Catherine in St. Paul and what I know of regarding plant resources, we knew that it was similar to both Potawatomi and to Odawa, but it went extinct. In all likelihood, the "Central Southern Ojibwe" might have really been "Southern Odawa".

Oral history says that at the Third Stopping Place, the Anishinaabe peoples had "lost their way" and were arguing where to go. This is when the Ojibwe-Odawa-Potawatomi split apart, and the Algonquins, Nipissing and Mississauga Ojibwe wanted nothing to do with the quarreling bunch. Evenually, the Mississaugas were the ones to bring the rest of the Ojibwe back from "being lost" and eventually the Odawa and the Potawatomi returned as well. During the "lost" period, the population centre moved from the SE MI to SW MI, then backtracking to SE MI, then to Georgian Bay, uniting with the Mississaugas that followed the Ottawa River rather than the St. Lawrence, and then from there the reunited Nation spead to Manitoulin Island, the Fourth Stopping Place. However, there are researchers (don't quite remember which ones) who claim this backtracking never happened and the Ojibwe about the Georgian were also the same ones as those about Lake Erie -- they were all Mississauga Ojibwe -- while the main Anishinaabe population centre went from Ottawa River directly to Sault Ste. Marie, and that it was only the Odawa on Manitoulin Island and the Potawatomi shifted from Lower Canada into Michigan and then into Indiana and Illinois/Wisconsin. This story is part of the Anishinaabe identity, so a diagram that implies something other than that would raise POV wars, so think this through: be mindful of tradition, but be scientifically accurate as the same time. CJLippert 07:48, 29 March 2007 (UTC)