Chippewa language
Chippewa is an Algonquian language spoken from upper Michigan westward to North Dakota in the United States. It represents the southern component of the Ojibwe language. Its ISO-3 designation is "ciw".
Chippewa is part of the Algonquian language family and an indigenous language of North America. Chippewa is part of the dialect continuum of Ojibwe, which is closely related to Potawatomi. It is spoken on the southern shores of Lake Superior and in the areas toward the south and west of Lake Superior in Michigan and Southern Ontario. The speakers of this language generally call it Anishinaabemowin or more specifically, Ojibwemowin. There is a large amount of variation in the language. Some of the variations are caused by ethnic or geographic heritage, while other variations occur from person to person. There is no single standardization of the language as it exists as a dialect continuum, according to Nichols: "It exists as a chain of interconnected local varieties, conventionally called dialects." Some varieties differ greatly and can be so diverse that speakers of two different varieties cannot understand each other. In the southern range of are where the language is spoken, it is mostly spoken by the older generations of the Anishinaabe people, and many of its speakers also speak English. The language is classified as severely endangered by UNESCO
Number of speakers
The Chippewa dialects have been the focus of many academic works, from William Whipple Warren and Fr. Frederick Baraga in the 19th century, Frances Densmore, Jan P. B. de Josselin de Jong, Charles Fiero, Earl Nyholm and John Nichols in the 20th century. However, the Chippewa dialect of Ojibwemowin has continued to steadily decline. Beginning in the 1970s many of the communities have aggressively put their efforts into language revitalization, but have only managed to produce some fairly educated second-language speakers. Today, the majority of the first-language speakers of this dialect of the Ojibwe language are elderly, whose numbers are quickly diminishing, while the number of second-language speakers among the younger generation are growing. However, none of the second-language speakers have yet to transition to the fluency of a first-language speaker.In the summer of 2009, Anton Treuer of Bemidji State University conducted an informal survey of number of first-language speakers of the Chippewa dialects in Minnesota and Wisconsin in order to convene a language session to address the need of vocabulary associated with math and sciences. Together with other Reservations that were not surveyed, Treuer estimates only around 1,000 first-language speakers of the Chippewa dialect in the United States.
Reservation | Number of first-language speakers | Estimated number of second-language speakers | Number of total population |
Red Lake | 400 | 2,400 | 10,570 |
Mille Lacs | 150 | 1,150 | 3,942 |
Leech Lake | 90 | 950 | 8,861 |
Bois Forte | 20 | 110 | 3,052 |
White Earth | 15 | 650 | 19,291 |
Grand Portage | 3 | 90 | 1,127 |
Fond du Lac | 0 | 520 | 4,044 |
St. Croix | 25 | 80 | 1,080 |
Lac Courte Oreilles | 10 | 130 | 6,146 |
Lac du Flambeau | 3 | 120 | 3,457 |
Bad River | 2 | 100 | 6,921 |
Red Cliff | 1 | 50 | 4,470 |
Mole Lake | 1 | 20 | 1,279 |
Dialects
According to Ethnologue, the Chippewa Language or the Southwestern dialect of the Ojibwe language is divided into four smaller dialects:- Upper Michigan-Wisconsin Chippewa: on Keweenaw Bay, Lac Vieux Desert, Lac du Flambeau, Red Cliff, Bad River, Lac Courte Oreilles, St. Croix and Mille Lacs.
- Central Minnesota Chippewa: on Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, White Earth and Turtle Mountain.
- Red Lake Chippewa: on Red Lake
- Minnesota Border Chippewa: on Grand Portage and Bois Forte
Structure