Ojibwe

About Ojibwe

Ojibwe, called Anishinaabemowin by its speakers, is an Indigenous language spoken around the Great Lakes, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec in Canada and in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Dakota in the United States. About 20,000 people in Canada reported it in the 2016 census. Fewer children are learning it, and many communities run classes and immersion schools to keep it alive.

Most communities in the United States and southern Ontario write Ojibwe in the double vowel system, where aa, ii and oo are long vowels and zh sounds like the s in "measure". Communities further north often use syllabics. Words can differ from one community to the next, so a word from Minnesota may not match one from Ontario. Boozhoo (hello) and miigwech (thank you) are used widely.

FamilyAlgonquian
Speakers in Canadaabout 20,000 (2016)
Where spokenCanada (Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec), United States (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota)
Statusseverely endangered (UNESCO)
ScriptLatin alphabet (double vowel system), Canadian syllabics
Codesoj (ISO 639-1), oji (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census, via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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