Boozhoo niijii-bimaadizidog!
I feel like I haven’t posted enough, but I haven’t been able to record any audio files yet. So here are some quick rules for speaking. It sort of spills over into writing/orthography, but that’s ok.
I have a few lists of vocabulary terms that will build upon the other materials I have posted, verbs that would be good to practice these rules on. I also have to finally record numbers and month names so that you can all customize the Boozhoo Speech to your liking.
Until then, check out….
Some Useful Rules:
use of hyphen within words demarcates actor pronoun from verb
Example: niiji–bimaadiziig “my fellow human people”
when a verb begins with a consonant, use a prefix that ends with a vowel (ni-, gi-)
Example: gidoodem “your clan is” nidoodem “my clan is”
when a verb begins with a vowel, use a prefix that ends with a consonant (ind-, gid-)
Example: indizhinikaaz “my name is” gidizhinikaaz “your name is”
when first letter of verb is ‘o’, change to ‘oo’ when adding prefixes
Example: onjibaa “s/he is from” indoonjibaa “I am from” and gidoonjibaa “you are from”
These next three rules show how useful the double-vowel orthography can be for learning how to speak Ojibwemowin:
when a (3p) verb ends with a short vowel (-i, -a, -o), drop the ending vowel for 1p or 2p*
Example: izhinikaazo “his/her name is” indizhinikaaz “my name is” gidizhinikaaz “your name is”
when a verb ends with a short vowel, don’t drop the vowel for 3p
Example: izhinkaazo “his/her name is”
when a verb ends with a long vowel (-e, -ii, -aa, -oo), don’t drop the vowel
Example: bimibatoo “s/he is running” nibimibatoo “I am running” gibimibatoo “you are running”
reduplicative sounds means habitual or usually
Example: Cornell University nindananokii.
I usually work at the Cornell University
Cornell ninanokii.
I work at Cornell.
* 1p, 2p, and 3p mean “first person,” “second person,” and “third person,” respectively. In these examples, they are all singular forms, so I left off the “s” (as in 1ps, 2ps, and 3ps).