Ojibwe dialects
Mutual intelligibility between some non-adjacent dialects, notably Ottawa, Severn Ojibwe, and Algonquin, is low enough that they could be considered distinct languages.
The relative autonomy of the regional dialects of Ojibwe is associated with an absence of linguistic or political unity among Ojibwe-speaking groups.
The dialects of Ojibwe are spoken in Canada from western Québec, through Ontario, Manitoba and parts of Saskatchewan, with outlying communities in Alberta and British Columbia,[1][2] and in the United States from Michigan through Wisconsin and Minnesota, with a number of communities in North Dakota and Montana, as well as migrant groups in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The recognized dialects of Ojibwe are spoken in the region surrounding the Great Lakes, in Ontario, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, with other groups of speakers in western Québec in the area along the Québec-Ontario border, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and a few communities in Alberta, North Dakota, Montana, British Columbia, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Field research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s led to the recognition of several other dialects: (a) Berens Ojibwe along the Berens River in northwestern Ontario, to be distinguished from Northwestern Ojibwe; (b) Border Lakes Ojibwe, in western Ontario in the area bounded by the borders of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota; (c) North of (Lake) Superior; and (d) Nipissing.
Some sources recognize a Central Ojibwe dialect,[5][6] covering approximately the same territory as North of (Lake) Superior and Nipissing.
The distinction between the northern and southern dialect groupings is argued to "align to some extent with traditional subsistence patterns, in that the southern groups typically harvested maple sugar and wild rice, allowing for population aggregations that promoted such social institutions as medicine societies and totemic clan structures.
[14] For example, the communities at Golden Lake, Ontario and Maniwaki, Quebec are described by speakers at those locations as members of the Algonquin dialect, although linguistically both are distinct from the clearly Algonquin communities north of those locations, and are assigned to the Nipissing dialect.
[15] The degree of mutually intelligibility between nonadjacent dialects of Ojibwe varies considerably; recent research has helped to show the extent of the distance between Ottawa and the maximally different Severn Ojibwe dialect spoken in northwestern Ontario.
[20] The Algonquin dialect of Ojibwe is spoken in communities in northwestern Quebec and eastern Ontario (to be distinguished from the name of the Algonquian language family).
Algonquin is spoken along the Ottawa River valley east of the Quebec-Ontario border, centered around Lake Abitibi.
Recognized Algonquin communities include: Amos (Pikogan), Cadillac, Grand Lac Victoria, Hunter's Point, Kipawa (Eagle Village), Notre Dame du Nord (Timiskaming), Rapid Lake (Barriere Lake), Rapid Sept, Lac Simon, Québec, Winneway (Long Point).
Some older texts were written in a French-based orthography in which the acute accent is used to indicate vowel length and the use of several consonant symbols accords with their general French values.
[34] Eastern Ojibwe is generally written with a version of the Double vowel writing system.
[16] Communities identified as Border Lakes include Lac La Croix, Emo (Rainy River First Nation), and Whitefish Bay, all in Ontario.
A representative community in the Nipissing dialect area is Golden Lake, although the language is moribund at that location.
[46][47] Although speakers of Ojibwe in the community of Kitigan Zibi (also called River Desert) at Maniwaki, Québec self-identify as Algonquin,[48] the language spoken there is Nipissing.
[44][56] In the analysis accepted in this article Central Ojibwe is not recognized; it is divided into North of (Lake) Superior and Nipissing.
