Language is like a mirror of a culture. When a person speaks Anishinaabemowin, the Anishinaabe culture is visible. When a person studies and learns Anishinaabemowin, the culture continues to become more visible.

Anishinaabemowin is the name of the language of the Anishinaabek. The word Anishinaabe translated means a good person. Anishin means good and aabe comes from the word yaabe meaning the male species. The female in Anishinaabe is kwe. When we use mowin on the end of Anishinaabe, it simply means the language of the good person. We as the Anishinaabe nation never wrote our language until about 40 years ago. In the past, missionaries and linguists tried to write Anishinaabemowin, but since they were not speakers of this language, they were unable to do so. Now that some of us are teaching the language, which has never been done before, we are writing it as well. It is very important that we use a standard system throughout our nation. We do not have our own alphabet, so we use the English alphabet and spell our language phonetically as best as we can. It is indeed a challenge to write the unwritten.

There are dialects in Anishinaabemowin just like any other language. Some of the major dialects are known today as Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodwe’aadamiinh. In some areas, the word Ojibwe has been substituted by the word Chippewa, the word Odawa by Ottawa, and the word Bowe’aadamiinh by Potawattamii.

Anishinaabemowin consists of verbs and nouns. I read somewhere that approximately 70% of our language consists of verbs. Our language is made up of animate and inanimate nouns and verbs. Inanimate meaning that we consider it to have no life, whereas animate is considered to have life or a spirit. Our language consists of many other forms such as articles, question markers, pronouns, topography, locatives and prepositions, inclusive and exclusive terms, tenses, singular and plurals. It is a very precise language. We do not have what is called a figure of speech.

The geographic location of the Anishinaabe nation includes parts of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan.