Dialects of Ojibwemowin are spoken in Canada, from southwestern Quebec, through Ontario, Manitoba and parts of Saskatchewan, with outlying communities in Alberta;[9][10] and in the United States, from Michigan to Wisconsin and Minnesota, with a number of communities in North Dakota and Montana, as well as groups that were removed to Kansas and Oklahoma during the Indian Removal period.

[20] The Ottawa dialect is sometimes referred to as Daawaamwin,[22] although the general designation is Nishnaabemwin, with the latter term also applied to Jibwemwin or Eastern Ojibwe.

"[27] In a proposed consensus classification of Algonquian languages, Goddard (1996) classifies Ojibwa and Potawatomi as "Ojibwayan," although no supporting evidence is adduced.

[30] Documentation of such usage dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, but earlier use is likely, with reports as early as 1703 suggesting that Ojibwe was used by different groups from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Lake Winnipeg, and from as far south as Ohio to Hudson Bay.

[34] Reports from traders and travellers as early as 1744 indicate that speakers of Menominee, another Algonquian language, used Ojibwe as a lingua franca.

[35] Other reports indicate that agents of the American government at Green Bay, Wisconsin, spoke Ojibwe in their interactions with Menominee, with other reports indicating that "the Chippewa, Menominee, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sac, and Fox tribes used Ojibwe in intertribal communication...."[35] Some reports indicate that farther west, speakers of non-Algonquian languages such as Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Iowa, and Pawnee spoke Ojibwe as an "acquired language.

Students were forced to speak English, cut their hair, dress in uniform, practise Christianity, and learn about European culture and history.

[36] Although the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 mandated the phasing-out of the Native American boarding school program, the practice of sending youth to these institutions continued into the 1960s and 1970s.

This government assimilation effort caused widespread loss of language and culture among indigenous communities, including the Ojibwe people.

[37] With the remaining population of native speakers declining as older generations pass away, many historians consider now an important point in the language's history that will determine if it will proliferate or become extinct.

Teacher of the language Keller Paap approximates that most fluent speakers in the United States are over 70 years old, making exposure to spoken Ojibwemowin limited in many communities.

Alongside his current mentor, a Ponemah elder named Eugene Stillday, he writes the recorded stories in both Ojibwe and translated English.

This is difficult to replicate in schools, which is why speaking Ojibwe with family and in one's home life is important in growing language revitalization.

[47] Research has been done in Ojibwe communities to prove the important role language revitalization has in treating health concerns.

It is an accessible system that allows users to search in English or Ojibwe and includes voice recordings for many of the 17 000 entries in the collection.

[51] Despite what they have faced in the American and Canadian Governments' attempt to force Ojibwe into language death through the educational system, many indigenous communities across the Great Lakes region are making efforts towards the Ojibwe language revival by similarly using the school system.

They are taught mathematics, reading, social studies, music, and other typical school subjects through the medium of the Ojibwe language so as to increase student's exposure to Ojibwemowin while providing a well-rounded education.

This can be a challenge as public education standards are rigorous with curriculum on complex mathematic and scientific concepts occurring at the second and third grade levels.

Because the Ojibwe language is traditionally oral, it is often difficult for educators to find adequate resources to develop the curriculum.

The younger students are then encouraged to participate as they learn, gathering wood, helping to drill trees, and hauling buckets of sap.

Thus, the Ojibwe language is kept alive through indigenous methods of teaching, which emphasizes hands-on experiences, such as the sugar bush harvest.

[68] While each of these dialects has undergone innovations that make them distinctive, their status as part of the Ojibwe language complex is not in dispute.

[80] The Ottawa and Southwestern Ojibwe (Chippewa) have /h/ in a small number of affective vocabulary items in addition to regular /ʔ/.

[83] Obstruent consonants are divided into lenis and fortis sets, with these features having varying phonological analyses and phonetic realizations cross-dialectally.

[85] In some practical orthographies such as the widely-used double vowel system, fortis consonants are written with voiceless symbols: p, t, k, ch, s, sh.

[90] The latter have been analysed as underlying phonemes[8] and/or as predictable and derived by the operation of phonological rules from sequences of a long vowel and /n/ and another segment, typically /j/.

For example, anami'egiizhigad [ana · mi'e · gii · zhigad /əˌnaməˈʔɛːˌɡiːʒəˌɡad/] (Sunday, literally 'prayer day') may be transcribed as anama'egiizhigad in those dialects.

Ojibwe is a head-marking language in which inflectional morphology on nouns and particularly verbs carries significant amounts of grammatical information.

Separate personal pronouns exist but are used mainly for emphasis; they distinguish inclusive and exclusive first-person plurals.

Verbs, the most complex word class, are inflected for one of three orders (indicative, the default; conjunct, used for participles and in subordinate clauses; and imperative, used with commands), as negative or affirmative, and for the person, number, animacy, and proximate/obviative status of both the subject and object as well as for several different modes (including the dubitative and preterit) and tenses.