Page 27 - Moose Deer Point First Nation

Although no one in our community speaks the Pottawatomi WORDS TO KNOW
dialect anymore, there are older people in the community
Anishinaabemowin
who still speak Anishinaabemowin, and they say that (a-nish-na-bay-moe-in):
the name of the
Anishinaabemowin is the language in which they think! It is
Anishinaabe language
now used mostly by people who are older, although there are
some younger people who are developing the ability to speak
the language.

Many of our people were prevented from speaking
Anishinaabemowin at school, so this contributed to the loss
of our language. The young people in our community speak
English as their main language. This is because we spend most
of our lives in English-speaking settings now. We use the English
language in our homes and in our schools. Young people are
learning the Anishinaabemowin language in classroom settings,
much like other students learn French.

The people in our community who speak Anishinaabemowin
have a very special way of thinking. In Anishinaabemowin,
many words represent concepts, so it is impossible to translate
the language into English word for word. One word might
paint a whole picture in an Anishinaabemowin speaker’s mind.
This means that how we think in the English language is very
Community members worked on
different from how we think in Anishinaabemowin. a prayer, pictured, to use with
school children.
Our language was once completely oral—we didn’t write in the
language—but that has changed over time. We now have a
system of writing that goes back to the 1830s, although the real
communication in our language remains oral.

The real communication

in our language remains

oral.

Moose Deer Point First Nation 25

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