Ojibwe writing systems

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A sign in Sioux Lookout, Ontario with Ojibwe syllabics. The unpointed syllabics text says ᑳᐃᔑᐊᓉᐱᓈᓂᐗᐠ (Gaa-izhi-anwebinaaniwag—"the place where we repose")…but with the last "ᐧ" / "w" missing from the sign.

The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian American Indian language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. Due to its long history, diversity and just as diverse external influences, there are numerous ways to write the Ojibwe language.

The Ojibwe is written using a form of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, which is usually said to have been developed by missionary James Evans around 1840. In the United States, the language is most often written phonemically with Roman characters. Syllabics are primarily used in Canada. The newest Roman character-based writing system is the Double Vowel system, devised by Charles Fiero. Although there is no standard orthography, the Double Vowel system is quickly gaining popularity among language teachers in the United States and Canada because of its ease of use.

[edit] Ojibwe "hieroglyphs"

Example of a Birch bark scroll piece

Not much is known regarding the Ojibwe "Hieroglyphs". Similar to the text of the Walam Olum of the Lenape (Delaware peoples) and of various Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing, they are found as petroglyphs, on story-hides, and on Midewiwin Teaching Scrolls. In treaty negotiations with the British, the treaty-signing chiefs would often mark an "X" for their signature and then use the Ojibwe "Hieroglyphic" character representing their Doodem. Today, Ojibwe artists commonly incorporate motifs found in the Ojibwe "Hieroglyphs" to instill "Native Pride."

There are said to be several Ojibwe elders who still know the meanings of many of the hieroglyphs, but as their content is considered sacred, very little information about them has been revealed.

[edit] Romanized Ojibwe systems

[edit] Modern Roman orthographies

[edit] Fiero double vowel system

The newest Roman character-based writing system is the Double Vowel system, devised by Charles Fiero during the 1950s. Although there is no standard orthography for Ojibwe, the Fiero Double Vowel system (or simply the "Double Vowel system") is quickly gaining popularity among language teachers in the United States and Canada because of its ease of use. During the 1990s, Ojibwe language educators agreed upon the use of the Double Vowel system for the purposes of international communication.

This system is called "Double Vowel" from the fact that the long vowel correspondences to the short vowels <a>, <i> and <o> are written with a doubled value. In this system, the nasal "ny" as a final element is instead written as "nh." The allowable consonant clusters are <mb>, <nd>, <ng>, <nj>, <nz>, <ns>, <nzh>, <sk>, <shp>, <sht> and <shk>.

In the Fiero Double Vowel system, short vowels are written as expected, where <a>, <i>, and <o> represent /ə~ʌ/, /ɪ/, and /o~ʊ/. To write long vowels, the short vowels are doubled, so that <aa>, <ii>, and <oo> represent /aː/, /iː/, and /oː~uː/. The remaining long vowel, /eː~ɛː/, is just written <e>, since it has no corresponding short vowel. To indicate that a long vowel at the end of a word is nasal, <nh> is written after it (e.g., <-aanh> at the end of a word represents /ãː/). Word-internally, nasal long vowels are indicated with a following <ny> (e.g., in the middle of a word, <-aany-> represents /ãː/). The nasalized allophones of the vowels, which occur preceding nasal+fricative clusters, are not indicated in writing. In the original Fiero Double Vowel system, nasaled long vowels now represented with <ny>/<-nh> were written with the ogonek diacritic. However, due to unavailability of ogonek on most typewriters in the United States and Canada, it became a common practice to represent these nasals by underlining the nasaled long vowels. The Double Vowel system used today employing the <ny>/<-nh> for nasals are sometimes called "Fiero-Nichols Double Vowel system" since John Nichols popularized this convention.

The postalveolar affricates /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ are written <ch> and <j>, and the postalveolar fricatives /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are written <sh> and <zh>. The postalveolar semivowel /j/ is written <y>, and the labiovelar semivowel /w/ is written <w>. In the Double Vowel system, lenis obstruents are written using voiced characters (e.g. <b>, <d>, <g>, etc.), and fortis ones using voiceless characters (e.g., <p>, <t>, <k>, etc.). The glottal stop, /ʔ/, is transcribed <'>.

Double Vowel Roman treats digraphs as a distinct sound element, and thus would parse them accordingly. The resulting alphabetical order for the Fiero Double Vowel Roman is:

a aa b ch d e g ' h i ii j k m n (nh) ny o oo p s sh t w y z zh

[edit] Rhodes Double Vowel system

The Rhodes Double Vowel system, a minor variation of the Fiero Double Vowel system, is popular in Michigan and Southeastern Ontario, often characterized by loss of short vowels due to the syncopated accenting of the words. In this system, glottal stop is transcribed as <h>. Since vowel syncope occurs frequently with the Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe dialects, which employ this system, additional consonant clusters are allowed. As a result of syncope, this system uses <'> to represent a vowel lost during syncope which otherwise may create a confusing consonant clustering, such as to distinguish <n'g> from <ng>. Also, a sub-positional dot under <k> and a super-positional dot over <g> are used to represent <o> and <w> lost during syncope but where some speakers still colour their consonants with a very slight /ɰ/. Unlike the Fiero Double Vowel system, the Rhodes Double Vowel system do not make parsing considerations for the digraphs. Consequently, the alphabetical order is:

' a b c d e g (ġ) h i j k (k̩) m n o p s t w y z

[edit] Saulteaux-Cree Roman system

The Saulteaux-Cree Roman system is based on the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. This system is found in northern Ontario, southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan. Compared to the Fiero or Rhodes Double Vowel systems, long vowels, including <e>, are shown with either macron or circumflex diacritic marks, depending on the community's standards. Though syncope is not a common feature with Saulteaux, the occasional vowel loss is indicated with a <'>. Nasaled vowels are generally not marked. The resulting alphabetical order is:

' a â c ê h i î k m n o ô p s š t w y

[edit] Hybrid system

The Hybrid system is found in northern Ontario. Generally, this system use the same consonant scheme as the Saulteaux-Cree Roman system, but without the use of diacritics. This results in the use of <sh> instead of <š> and the use of double vowels to represent long vowels.

[edit] Algonquin Roman system

Unlike the other Roman systems modeled after English, the Algonquin Roman system is instead modeled after French. Its most striking features are the use of either circumflex or grave diacritic mark over the long vowels, /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ written as <tc> and <dj>, and /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are written as <c> and <j>.

[edit] Correspondence Chart of the Popular Roman systems

[edit] Folk Spelling

Folk spelling of Anishinaabemowin is not a system, per se, as it varies from person to person writing speech into script. Each writer employing folk spelling would write out the word as how the speaker himself would form the words. Depending on if the reference sound representation is based on English or French, a word may be represented using common reference language sound representation, thus better able to reflect the vowel or consonant value. However, since this requires the knowledge of how the speaker himself speaks, folk spelling quickly becomes difficult to read for those individuals not familiar with the writer.

[edit] Historical Roman orthographies

[edit] Evans system

James Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, UK, had prepared the Speller and Interpreter in English and Indian [1] in 1837, but was unable to get its printing sanctioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Evans continued to use his Ojibwe writing system in his work in Ontario. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties working with the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds. Furthermore, the structure of the Ojibwe language made most words quite long when spelled with Roman letters, and Evans himself found this approach awkward. His book also noted differences in the Ojibwe dialectual field. The "default" dialect was the Ojibwemowin spoken at Rice Lake, Ontario (marked as "RL"). The other two were Credit, Ontario, (marked as "C") and areas to the west (marked as "W").

Evans' Ojibwe writing system recognized short and long vowels, but did not distinguish between lenis and fortis consonants. Another distinct character of Evans system was the use of <e> and <o> to serve both as a consonant and vowel. As vowels, they served as /i/ and /o/ while as consonants, they served as /j/ and /ɰ/. The system distinguished long vowels from short vowels by doubling the short vowel value. Evans also used three diacritics to aid the reader in pronunciation. He used a macron (¯) over a vowel or vowels to represent nasals (/Ṽ/) and diaersis (¨) over the vowel to indicate a glottal stop (/ʔ/); if the glottal stop was final, he duplicated the vowel and would place a circumflex (ˆ) over the duplicated vowel. "Gladness," for example, was written as buubenandumooen (baapinendamowin in the Fiero system).

Evans eventually abandoned his Ojibwe writing system and formulated what would eventually become the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. His Ojibwe syllabics parsing order was based on his Romanized Ojibwe.

[edit] Baraga system

Bishop Frederic Baraga, in his years as a missionary to the Ojibwa and the Odawa, became the fore-most grammarian of Anishinaabemowin.

His work A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language, explained in English is still considered the best reference regarding the Ojibwe vocabulary. In his dictionary, grammar books and prayer book, the sound representations of Ojibwe are shown in the table below. There has also been discussion regarding if Baraga represented nasal. In his earlier editions of the dictionary, circumflex accents were used to indicate nasals but in his later editions, they appear to instead either represent long vowels or stressed vowels, believed to be changed by the editor of his dictionary.

[edit] Cuoq system

Jean-André Cuoq was a missionary to the Algonquin and the Iroquois. He wrote several grammar books, hymnals, a catechism and his premier work Lexique de la Langue Algonquine in 1886, focusing on the form of Anishinaabemowin spoken among the Algonquin. His published works regarding the Algonquin language used basic sounds, without differentiating the consonant strengths or vowel lengths. However, unlike Baraga, Cuoq further broke words down to their root forms and clarified ambiguously defined words found in Baraga's dictionary.

[edit] Syllabary

[edit] Ojibwe syllabics

See Canadian Aboriginal syllabics for a more in-depth discussion of Ojibwe syllabics and related scripts

Ojibwe syllabics, shown with Eastern A-Final and pre-glyph W. (Adapted from the charts of Rand Valentine and Language Geek)

Ojibwe syllabics is primarily used by northern (i.e., Canadian) Ojibwe; speakers of more southern dialects (i.e., American speakers) tend to use the Double Vowel system. Syllabics contains ten basic symbols for consonants /∅ p t k ch m n s sh y/, called "initials", and two diacritcs for /h/ and /w/ which are called "medials". The /∅/ is used when there is no initial consonant, or as a glottal stop in some dialects. The initials are rotated into one of four orientations, each representing one of the four primary vowels, /e i o a/. The vowels except for /e/ can be lengthened by adding a dot above the character. For example, the character for the syllable taa is written by rotating the t initial to the a orientation, then adding a dot above it.

There are also "finals", smaller symbols which follow the main character and indicate which, if any, final consonants the syllable has. For example, for the syllable taan, the sequence for taa is followed by a final for n. Not all speakers use all finals in writing. There are two sets of finals: The "Eastern finals" are superscript forms of the initials, most commonly in the a orientation, though other orientations are used in some communities. The shapes of the "Western finals" are unrelated to the initials.

The fortis consonants are generally not distinguished in the common unpointed writing from the lenis ones, and thus both /d/ (<t>) and /t/ (<ht>) are written <t>, etc. However, some speakers will place the <h> initial before another initial to indicate that that initial is fortis rather than lenis.

The <h> initial and final are also used to represent the glottal stop in most communities, but in some, a superscripted <i> is used as a glottal stop character.

Not shown in the sample table are the characters representing non-Ojibwe sounds <f th l r>. All syllabics-using Ojibwe communities use <p> with an internal ring to represent <f>, typically ᕓ, ᕕ, ᕗ, ᕙ and ᕝ, and use <t> with an internal ring to represent <th>, typically ᕞ, ᕠ, ᕤ, ᕦ and ᕪ, but variations do exist on the placement of the internal ring. However, method of representing <l> and <r> varies much greatly across the communities using Ojibwe syllabics.

The syllabics-using communities can be classified into:

• Finals use
  • Eastern A-Finals—consonant in a-direction shown as a superscript; most common finals in use
  • Eastern I-Finals—consonant in i-direction shown as a superscript; used in some communities of Ontario and Quebec
  • Eastern Mixed Finals—consonant in i-, o- or a-direction shown as a superscript with choice dependent upon the word's root; typically found in James Bay Cree influenced communities
  • Western Finals—typically found in Saulteaux (ᑊ <p>, ᐟ <t>, ᐠ <k>, ᐨ <ch>, ᒼ <m>, ᐣ <n>, ᐢ <s>, ᐡ <sh> and ᕀ <y>)
• W-dot positioning
  • pre-glyph—most commonly associated with Eastern communities (ᐌ)
  • post-glyph—most commonly associated with Western communities (ᐍ)
• L/R representation
  • independent Sigma form—shaped like Greek capital letter sigma (ᓬ for <l> and ᕒ for <r>).
  • nesting Sigma form—similar to above, but nesting on the N-shape with superscripted sigma-form alone as finals
  • N-shape modified form—most common form, created by an erasure of part of the N-form (ᓓ ᓕ ᓗ ᓚ ᓪ for <l> and ᕃ ᕆ ᕈ ᕋ ᕐ for <r>)
  • Roman Catholic form—most often found in western communities (ᕃ ᕆ ᕊ ᕍ ᔆ for <l> and ᖊ ᖋ ᖌ ᖍ ᙆ for <r>)

Not part of the Unicode standard, thus not shown in the sample table above, is an obsolete set of syllabics form representing šp-series, or the sp-series in those communities where <š> have merged with <s>. Originally this series looked like "Z" or "N" and had the same orientation scheme as ᔐ <še>, ᔑ, <ši> ᔓ <šo> and ᔕ <ša>. This obsolete set has been replaced with either ᔥᐯ/ᐡᐯ <špe>, ᔥᐱ/ᐡᐱ <špi>, ᔥᐳ/ᐡᐳ <špo> and ᔥᐸ/ᐡᐸ <špa> or by ᐢᐯ <spe>, ᐢᐱ <spi>, ᐢᐳ <spo> and ᐢᐸ <spa>.

Also, not shown are the alternate <y>, written as a superscripted w-dot or w-ring, depending on if a medial or a final respectively, in words where <w> have transformed into <y>. In Evans' design, the y-dot was part of the original syllabics set, but due to ease of confusion between it and the w-dot in handwritten documents, most community abandoned the y-dot in favour of the y-cross (ᕀ), which is still being used among communities using Western Finals.

[edit] Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics

See Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics for a more in-depth discussion of Odawa syllabics and related scripts

Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics, also called the "Pa-Pe-Pi-Po alphabet", used by the Odawa was similar to those used by the Potawatomi, with an added optional "H" used after the vowel element to represent long vowels.

[edit] See also

• Ojibwe language

[edit] References

• Baraga, Frederic. 1878. A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language, explained in English. Montréal: Beauchemin & Valois.
• Cuoq, Jean André. 1866. Études philologiques sur quelques langues sauvages de l'Amérique. Montréal: Dawson.
• Cuoq, Jean André. 1886. Lexique de la Langue Algonquine. Montréal: J. Chapleau & Fils.
• Cuoq, Jean André. 1891? Grammaire de la Langue Algonquine. [S.l.: s.n.]
• Fiero, Charles. 1976. "Style Manual for Syllabics." in Promoting Native Writing systems in Canada. Barbara Burnaby ed. Toronto: OISE Press
• Furtman, Michael. 2000. Magic on the Rocks. Birch Portage Press.
• Nichols, John D. and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Rhodes, Richard A. 1985. Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

• Ojibwe Language Society
  • OLS Miinawaa — Yahoo Group extension of the Ojibwe Language Society
• Rand Valentine's introduction to Ojibwe
• Grammar, lessons, and dictionaries
• Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary — Freeware off-line dictionary, updated with additional entries every 6-10 weeks.
• Kevin L. Callahan's An Introduction to Ojibway Culture and History
• Language Museum report for Ojibwe
• Aboriginal Languages of Canada — With data on speaker populations
• Language Geek Page on Ojibwe — Syllabary fonts and keyboard emulators are also available from this site.
• Ojibwe Toponyms
• Our Languages: Nakawē (Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre)
• Niizh Ikwewag — A short story in Ojibwe, originally told by Earl Nyholm, emeritus professor of Ojibwe at Bimidji State University.
• Ethnologue report for Ojibwe
• Native Languages: A Support Document for the Teaching of Language Patterns, Ojibwe and Cree
• BWCAW/Quetico Park Petroglyphs
• Bois Forte Petroglyphs
• Ontario Parks Petroglyph finder