Talk:Ottawa dialect

Oklahoma revitalization
I would like to see a citation on the claim about language revitalization in Oklahoma. I have a small lexicon of Ottawa from Oklahoma dated 1982 but have not seen references to Ottawa linguistic activity there. John Jomeara421 (talk) 02:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My colleagues from there speak of their program, but I haven't seen anything either, so I have written to them this morning and have asked them to provide documentation on their claims. CJLippert (talk) 20:31, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Documentation Please
CJLippert, you added the following statement: "Today, the language is spoken by about 8,000 people out of total of ethnic population of 60,000 in the northern United States and Southern Canada." But you provided no documentation. In order to meet Wikipedia's Verifiability standard for inclusion a reference is required. Please provide or I will remove this statement. Claims about numbers of speakers are not an exception to this expectation.

John Jomeara421 (talk) 12:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. CJLippert (talk) 15:12, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

To Dos for this Article
Some or all of the following would help to enhance this article. The following is more or less a prospectus. I will add bits and pieces as I have time.

1. Add more detail on how population movements (Potawatomi and 'Chippewa') have substrate influence on Ottawa; added prose on subdialects that reflect Ottawa vs Chippwa / Potawatomi origin of speakers. 2. Add more dialect characteristics (lots not included still); Could add more but have covered key diagnostics. 3. Add info on how Syncope impacts secondary consonant clusters (i.e. those that arise from Syncope); Can add a few details but mostly done. 4. Clarify difference between: Syncope as a historical process; Syncope as a synchronic (i.e. currently productive) process; Syncope as resulting in restructuring of phonological representations of words. This is a complex topic, with many subtleties; 5. Clarify extent and nature of internal variation in Ottawa (which is very extensive), including possible impact of declining fluency; 6. Confirm list of communities that can be confirmed as Ottawa; * Have expanded listed Canadian communities from published sources; some uncertainties about dialect assignment around periphery. 7. A map would be nice; 8. More on writing systems, etc. in Ottawa; * Will add information about e.g. Meeker orthography. 9. A section on oral literature (verbal art). * This would be nice but not imperative. 10. Define Y in 'Sample text and analysis' section.
 * LOL, it's undefinable but now corrected. Jomeara421 (talk) 03:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. John. Jomeara421 (talk) 03:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC) Number 10. added by CJLippert (talk) 16:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * On both 1. and 6. -- maybe the way to go would be to instead clean up and beef up the Odawa article. The discussion about the population movement in that article is poor, but it may be the best place to expain the movements and influences, and have the language article instead refer to the Odawa article's section. For 6., an attempt has been made to identify Ottawa Tribes/First Nations (both Federally Recognized/Status and Federally Unrecognized/Non-status), but muddling it is a list of historical communities which may or may not be part of those governments, as well as missing are the non-Ottawa communities with large Ottawa and Ottawa-descent populations in those communities. Missing from the Odawa article are the discussions about historical Odawa maximum extent, historical Odawa core extent, and current Odawa core extent (though the illustration I threw together needs a caption to say that it represents the current Odawa core extent). CJLippert (talk) 01:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * For 1, I agree that the details of population history really belong in the main article on the people, the brief information information I included is just to give the flavour of the impact of the historical interractions. The population movements involving Ottawa and Chippewa are incredibly complicated (the Feest and Feest article on Ottawa in Handbook of North American Indians vol. 15 gives an overview, and some useful summary maps). There is a small amount of information on Ottawa subdialect differentiation related to population history, i.e. Rhodes argues that there is a "Chippewa Ottawa" subdialect that has substratum influence from Chippewa (because the Ottawa speakers in certain communities include many people of Chippewa descent whose ancestors shifted their language to Ottawa), and this dialect can be distinguished from "Ottawa Ottawa" in communities where Ottawa speakers are primarily of Ottawa descent. I can write this up.
 * For 6, I have already included the main Michigan communities that are included in Rhodes 1985 (dictionary) and on the map in Rhodes and Todd 1981 (Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6; these are communities that he is confirming have Ott. speakers, and also the main Canadian communities confirmed as having Ott. speakers. I will go through Valentine 1994 (dialect study) and Rhodes 2001 (Ott. Grammar) to try and determine any other communities having Ottawa speakers. Valentine 2001 has a list of Canadian communities he recognizes as Ottawa but didn't necessarily do research in. A secondary list of communities believed to have or have had Ott. speakers could be useful. John Jomeara421 (talk) 02:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Word-Initial Secondary Clusters
John, assuming you're still working on it, but the examples you gave sort of made me scratch my head. Yes, /nanaamad=/ is given the the CDMO as the reduplication form of /namad=/, but it doesn't mean "sit" but rather "upright" so nanaamadabi would mean to 'sit upright' or 'sit up' or 'sit tall'... as the /abi/ is the "sit". And wawenabi instead of wenbi? I think you must be tired. Take a look at the examples you've provided, and I'm sure you'll chuckle. I'm commenting out that portion for now and let you fix it and un-comment out the examples. Cheers. CJLippert (talk) 04:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm glad someone's reading the article. :) The 'take a seat' one is definitely a brain cramp, from copying and pasting tables. For the 'sit around' one, the Ottawa form is from Rhodes 1985a, so it's his gloss which I didn't try to improve. The roots are unreduplicated /namad-/ and reduplicated /nanaamad-/, I was concentrating on the reduplicating syllables but you are correct, it's better to give the complete root. I didn't cite unreduplicated nanaamadabi in the table because Nichols and Nyholm don't actually list it, but I'm sure it's a word in Minnesota Ojibwe.
 * Thanks. John Jomeara421 (talk) 12:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This makes think I should add a sentence explaining specifically how the combination of Syncope plus Consonant Restructuring obscures or eliminates in Ottawa the formerly productive Reduplication patterns, e.g. the general template represented in 'sit' above (CVC- root /namad-/ --> CVCVV- /nanaamad-/), and several others.
 * John Jomeara421 (talk) 15:10, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Map - Excellent
Great map - very helpful. John Jomeara421 (talk) 01:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * miigwech gaye giin CJLippert (talk) 01:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Population Statistics Information
The article has two mentions of population statistics, one in the lead (fourth paragraph), and one in the section entitled “Speakers and population history.” The two cite different population statistics but actually come from the same source, the Ethnologue entry for Ottawa.

The first is as follows:

The second is as follows:

Both sets of statistics do not separately identify Ottawa. The Ethnologue information for the first quotation above is: "Including Ottawa, Eastern and Central Ojibwa in USA: 8,000" [so therefore Canada + USA] In the Ethnologue entry this sentence is followed by: "Including Ottawa and all Ojibwa in Canada: 30,000 (1999 C. Fiero SIL). All Ojibwa first-language speakers in Canada: 25,885 (1998 Statistics Canada)." I haven't been able to locate "1999 C. Fiero SIL" but it may be an internal SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) report

For the second quotation above, it says "Total of 35,000 in all Ojibwa, Chippewa, and Ottawa in Canada and USA. (1999 C. Fiero)"

It's obvious from this that it is not possible to reliably identify a separate set of pop. stats. for Ottawa. Further, because an unknown number Ottawa speakers self-identify as "Chippewa" or perhaps "Ojibwa" (as noted in the article), they will not be counted. I have not looked at the original data from the 1996 Canadian census (which is what "Statistics Canada 1998" is reporting on) but Norris (1998), in her discussion of the 1996 census data gives a single category of "Ojibway" (25,885 'mother tongue population') and a separate figure for "Oji-Cree" of 5,400.

Valentine (1994) has discussed some of the issues relating to identifying numbers of speakers, and I think any statistics that are utilized should be treated with caution, and if they are used in the article their limitations should be mentioned. Valentine (2001) does not attempt to give an estimate of Ottawa speakers.

The population statistics that are used in the article should be reconciled, i.e. it is confusing to cite two different sets of conflicting stats in two different places. A summary of estimated speakers is the sort of information that is useful in the lead paragraph but limitations of stats need to be made clear, and should be consistent with any other numbers used elsewhere.

My own guess is that the 8,000 number is very likely high. A better way to "estimate" the number of Ottawa speakers might be to add up the populations of reserves on Manitoulin Island, which is where the language is mostly spoken, and then subtract some amount. I haven't done this yet.

I suggest modifiying the first quote, to say:

I will either delete the pop stats sentence in the "Speakers and population history" section or rework, but in any event there should be continuity/consistency between any pop stats data presented in the article.

Next Steps
This article now has a lot of content. It is classified as "B" on the WikiProject Languages rating scale. I have looked at some of the language articles that are listed as either "Good Article" (GA) or "Feature Article" (FA), and think this article is comparable in quality and coverage to many of them. In developing the content of the article I haven't really followed the WikiProject Languages/Template, and there is no template for dialect articles. I have primarily focussed on material that distinguishes Ottawa in some way.

In the section on writing systems I have added a scanned page from a nineteenth century missionary publication, to give an idea of one of the many ways that Ottawa has been written. So, along with the very useful map added by CJ Lippert, there are now two illustrations.

The GA criteria indicate that a GA "... stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail."

This article contains a lot of detail, and some sections can probably be moved into separate articles. The article is 81 KB, which fairly large. Overall I think the organization is alright. I have thought specifically of separating out Vowel Syncope and Ottawa dialect features, both of which are long and have a lot of detail. I will try splitting the Syncope section into a separate article and see what that looks like - this section is very long and justifiably could be split. My only concern is that these are really the core parts of the article, so splitting them out might take something away from the article as a whole, but I think that is a reasonable thing to do with one at least. John Jomeara421 (talk) 03:55, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Very good article. My only comment right now is that the text wanders between "Ottawa", "Odawa", "the Ottawa language", "the Ottawa dialect", "Nishi....whatever", etc.  There should be a standard reference usage here.  If you don't want to use either "language" or "dialect" because of the problems that entails, then just stick with "Ottawa".  (Taivo (talk) 00:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC))
 * Thanks. I knew that had to be cleaned up. John. Jomeara421 (talk) 03:06, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Section Headings
An editor made some changes to section headings, and the general principle is reasonable: section headings should not need the word "Ottawa" in them because that is in the title of the article. So I will go ahead and change the remaining one or two that have 'Ottawa' in the section heading (although redundancy is not always a bad things for readers. But I suggest that the former heading "Ottawa dialect features" remain as "Dialect features" because that is what the section is about. The Languages template headings don't always work for dialects. John Jomeara421 (talk) 14:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Standard sections
I think the article could benefit from applying some more of the standard section headings suggested in WikiProject Languages/Template. "Dialect features" seems to contain information that could be split up into at least two useful level 2-sections: "Grammar" and "Vocabulary". "Dialects" might be useful too, but might be a somewhat of a tautology. A suggestion is to move "Subdialects" up as a level 2-section.

Peter Isotalo 14:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * (a) Thank you for your interest in this article, it's certainly good to have several people looking at it. Organization of some of the material is something that likely can be improved.


 * (b) Using more of the conventional headings from WikiProject Languages/Template might be useful but they are guidelines only. I'm have mostly followed them, but they don't always apply tidily to dialects as opposed to languages. As an aside, I've always thought that the division between "Sounds/Phonology" and "Grammar" with subheadings "Syntax" and "Morphology" was a little weird, since it implies that phonology and phonetics are not parts of "grammar" which is surely bizarre.


 * (c) There could certainly be different ways of organizing the material in the "Vowel Syncope" section and the "Dialect features" section, and I will try a couple - the comments above have some helfpul suggestions. The latter has eight items, a mixture of: lexical (3); morphological (3 [including one that has a phonological aspect to it]); and phonological (1), in addition to one that doesn't fit in either. One reorganization that might work is like this: (1) move all the Vowel Syncope material into the Phonology section, with the exception of the section on restructuring of prefixes (which is how Syncope impacts morphology). Then have a "Dialect features" heading, with subheadings for lexical, morphological, and phonological features, and put the prefix restructuring material in the morphology subsection. I'll try some of these and see how they look.


 * (d) This is an article about a particular dialect of Ojibwe, so using 'Dialects' as a heading would not help with clarity.


 * (e) "Subdialects" is a very brief section that deals with one particular phenomenon, so moving it up doesn't seem necessary. There ight be a better place to put it, though. The other items in the "dialect features" section aren't about features that distinguish subdialects of Ottawa.


 * (f) (reproduced from Peter Talk page, just want to keep everything together):
 * Re your change of the section heading on the "Ottawa language" page, what the Language Template uses as a heading is in fact "Sounds/Phonology" and that's what I put. There's no direction to use one or other but not both, and I don't see how such an interpretation could be construed from the template. "Sounds/Phonology" is of course just another way of saying "Phonology and phonetics," the heading I had before.


 * (g) What is now called 'History' is not about linguistic history (which is how WikiProject Languages/Template) clearly uses it), but rather about external history, or population history, because the historical movements of Ottawa speakers and other Ojibwes who subsequently shifted their dialect to Ottawa, is very significant for accounting the current configuration of Ottawa. It doesn't merit a higher-level section of its own. I suggest making it a lower-level heading "External History" (which is a conventional enough term) under "Geographical Distribution" because that is what is related to.
 * Thanks. John Jomeara421 (talk) 18:17, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The language template of WP:LANG is a guideline, but more than just a suggestion. It's been in use for a long time and has been designed to fit just about all type of language article, covering all the relevant aspects of linguistics. Consensus as far as I know is that articles intended for GA or FA status should conform to it as much as possible.
 * (b) I know there are linguistic opinions about phonology technically sorting under grammar, but that's not how this type of information is presented in more general sources like Wikipedia.
 * (c) I was more concerned that there wasn't a section that clearly described the grammatical features of Ottawa. Even if there's a link to Ojibwe grammar, it could still be useful with a brief summary of the specifics of Ottawa (agglutinative, treatment of gender, number, cases, etc). Just a few sentences will usually do the trick.
 * (d)/(e) Any section heading with "features" added would still mean the same thing. "Grammatical features" is still just "Grammar". I was actually trying to suggest that "Dialect features" be renamed "Subdialects", but the issue of moving out grammar and such muddled the issue a bit.
 * (f) I participated in the discussions concerning the recommendation "Sounds/Phonology" and the intention was never to be double naming. Just like "Dialects/Varieties" and "Vocabulary/Lexis" it provides two alternative names since there was disagreement over which term to use. I personally prefer "Sounds", since it's more easily recognized by non-linguists, but "Phonology" is just as common. As for "phonology" as a heading, in this case it refers to "the phonological system or the body of phonological facts of a language", not the linguistic discipline. The same actually goes for all the other headings. That's why "phonetics" is irrelevant here.
 * I have no other objections concerning the other points brought up. Overall I think the article looks like a worthy GA candidate.
 * Peter Isotalo 08:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm working on a reorganization of the phonology dialect features that makes more use of the template headings and will post that later today.
 * John Jomeara421 (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Split = Ottawa phonology
I've split out the Ottawa phonology material, with a summary and a slight overlap. John Jomeara421 (talk) 02:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Material on Ottawa in Oklahoma
Hi, an editor added information on Ottawa in Oklahoma. Unfortunately the only source is a web site: Intertribal Wordpath Society. There is no discussion on the web site of how the information was obtained, and it appears to fall below Wikipedia's threshold for Reliable sources or Verifiability. If there is reliable information that can be added, that is great but the source in question falls below the standard for Reliable Sources: there is no discussion on the site of how the information was obtained, e.g. through census data, surveys, etc. Hence it does not seem to be particularly reliable and falls short of expectations for peer review, published sources, etc.

I will remove this material for now and if there is a way to make it meet the Wikipedia criteria it can be reinserted.

This article is currently undergoing "Good Article" review: Talk:Ottawa language/GA1. I have been as thorough as possible in providing appropriate and reliable sources for everything that is included in the article, and would hate for the review to be jeopardized because of problematic citations.

It would be nice to have ONE article on a North American Indigenous language reach GA status.

Thanks. John. Jomeara421 (talk) 16:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Good Article Process Underway: Please Take Note When Editing
Hi, this page is undergoing Good Article review. The reviewer is extremely thorough and has spotted a number of issues that I have been able to clean up.

He has also made a variety of revisions to the text. While not everyone might agree with all of these, unless there is a change that seems egregiously out of place (and I have not noted any) please refrain if at all possible from reverting the changes he has made.

As well, please consider carefully any additions to the page during this process.

It would be great to add one North American Indigenous language to the Good Article list - we're almost there. I will be working on the final set of comments in the next day or so and after that am optimistic about a positive outcome.

Thanks. John. Jomeara421 (talk) 16:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Dale's peer review
I am honored to have been requested to review this article. I suppose the Talk page is an appropriate place to record my impressions.
 * Normally Peer Review feedback goes under the request on the Peer Review page, but here is fine. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

So far so good; but I find the presentation vague, and in places oblivious. At first look, the best aspect of this current version is the links to articles on theoretical linguistics (e.g., head-marking).
 * I'm unlear what 'oblivious' refers to. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Here are my comments on just the lead.
 * How many dialects of Ojibwe are there recognized to be? If it is the case that researches disagree on this, then of course this hinders answering this question within the lead to this article.
 * There is not a definitive answer so not an issue to be addressed in the lead in my opinion. I have worked on this issue in the Ojibwe language article to work out a presentation of what is know. The Good Article reviewer recommended staying away from discussion of the total dialect picture, which is reasonable that other articles provide a better venue for this topic.


 * The observation share common characteristics is redundant.
 * I took out 'common' but will try and find a better way to express the idea of this phrase. If the article were written solely for linguists, it would not be necessary to state something so self-evident, but since Wikipedia is really for non-experts, it helps to state concepts that are less obvious to non-expert readers (in this case, that dialects have a lot of common features but are differentiated by others to greater or lesser degrees). Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * out of an estimated total population of XX. Population of what: speakers of all varieties of Ojibwe, or members of the Ottawa tribe? The lead should announce how many ethnic Ojibwes there are (all communities/bands) and how many speakers of the combined dialects of Ojibwe there are.
 * Reading the sentence, I would have inferred 'out of an estimated total population of 60,000 [of the named groups identified in the first part of the sentence]', but I will see if there is a better way to put this. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Reliable population figures are difficult to come by (because of the way that ethnic groups and subgroups are identified in censuses), and reliable information about numbers of speakers of particular dialects is even more elusive. What I have here is the most reliable information available. Jomeara421 (talk)


 * As to the dialect classification: Ethnologue proposes a grouping, "Ojibwa", which comprises 8 languages, "Ottawa", "Chippewa", "Algonquin", and five "Ojibwas". I think the lead as well as the body should state (in condensed form in the lead) whether all 8 constitute a single language. Let me note that as a rule I don't take the pronouncements Ethnologue uncritically. They are "splitters", which in my opinion is the safer practice in language classification, given the state of the field. But of course we should not split uncritically.
 * Ethnologue's presentation is only partly accurate, and the more recent work by Valentine (1994, in the list of 'References') gives a better picture. But as noted above deferring discussions of the dialect to other articles makes sense to me. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The relative prevalence of Ottawa among the Ojibwe dialects ought to be given.
 * Sorry, don't understand this one. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, now on to the body of the article.
 * "the other Algic languages being . . . ." This is bad writing because it the careless reader would think it says "Algonquian" is a single language, when it is a group of about two dozen languages. You mean to say "the non-Algonquian languages of Algic are . . . .".
 * I have reorganized this paragraph to make it flow more logically and have clarified the relation between Algonqian and Algic. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * recent research. Wikipedia editors have to adopt the view that the time of writing of a WP article is not the day it is accessed. Even though "recent" is a deliberately vague term, it is inappropriate in an encyclopedia that undergoes near continuous revision. Hence, please give a specific decade.
 * I've rewritten. The information is in the reference for that sentence (Valentine 1994). Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * contribute to differentiating. This is one of many phrasings that I consider awkward.
 * I've changed that. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The tabulation of consonants is misorganized: the total table should come first.
 * I've put that at the beginning of the section. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Another misorganization: the fact that the dialect has both oral vowels and nasal vowels should be stated in the opening sentence!
 * * It is actually in the second sentence of the Phonology (higher-level) section, but I assume you mean the beginning of the Vowels sub-section, so I've added it there as well. Jomeara421 (talk) 04:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

That's it for now. Dale Chock (talk) 02:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Image on first page
I have moved the image of the page from Blackbird to the upper right hand corner of the first page. This position was suggested in the Peer Review, and was also included in the automated Peer Review, so presumably having an image in that location is highly favoured.

Moving the image is an experiment, and I'm not arguing that it should stay there; I just want to see what it looks like for a while. Perhaps another image would be better, and the book page image could go back to where it was. As it is, there are now four images stacked flush right: Page image, IPA template, infobox, and then in the next section the map. The image is slightly fuzzy but certainly readable when expanded.

I don't have a strong sense of the page layout visuals, so any comment would be appreciated.

I have also modified the caption somewhat and have added the link to the online source, following the model that the Good Article reviewer used for the image in the "Writing system" section. Doesn't have to be done that way but seems reasonable.

My goal is to take this article to Featured Article reasonably soon, so am thinking about that process in considering the image issue.

Thanks. Jomeara421 (talk) 02:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I put the IPA template above the image just to see what that's like. Jomeara421 (talk) 02:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I put the map up at the top right, and moved the Blackbird page to the 'Grammar' section. So need to decide which is better. Jomeara421 (talk) 01:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)