UNDERSTANDING OJIBWE SENTENCES.
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There are 3 types of sentences in ojibwe. A form sentence, B form sentence and
C form sentence.
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A form- A complete sentence (independent clause) . ex- I am runningnimbimibatoo, you are running- gibimibatoo, s/he is running- bimibatoo.
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B form- An incomplete sentence (dependent clause). ex if I am running-giishpin
bimibatooyaan, if you are running- giishpin bimibatooyan, if s/he is running- giishpin
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bimibatood.
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C form- Interrogative (information getters), all the who, what, where, when, why
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and how questions, awenen, awegonen, aandi, aaniin, apii, aniish wiin and
aaniin.
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When using C form, 2 things need to happen. Initial vowel change and B form
person indicator need to be used.
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In the Minnesota Concise dictionary, there is a page (pg xv) at the beginning of
the book, that says Table 3 initial change. Use this in what is needed to understand
interrogative for sentenceds (C form). ex. aandi ezhaayan?
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Where are you going. Notice the verb izhaa is being used, the first vowel
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in the verb needs to be changed, in this case the first vowel is the letter
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"I". From the concise dictionary, you can see that the initial change is "I"
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to "E" (unchanged I, changed E), so the verb izhaa (going), changes to ezhaa,
notice the i to e change. Next, the person you are talking about, is the suffix (ending of
a word) “yan”. Using the B form person indicator chart that I have provided, you can
see
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that the "yan" suffix is "you". All together the sentence aandi ezhaayan
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translates? to where are you going?
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Ojibwe language consists of mostly verbs, where as English language is more of
a noun bases language. This seems to be a barrier to translate from one language to
the other. Speakers tend to struggle with switching a verb based language into more of
noun bases language. In Ojibwe, there are 4 types of verbs.
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VAI Verb, Animate, Intransitive. Verb- an action is happening. Animate- the
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object that is doing the action is alive. Intransitive- the verb is just
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happening, it isn't happening to someone. ex inaabi- s/he is looking/seeing,
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VII- Verb, Inanimate, Intransitive. Verb- an action is happening. Inanimate-the
object that is doing the action is not alive. Intransitive- the verb is just happening, it
isn't happening to something. ex gimiwan- it is raining. Rain is a verb, it is inanimate
and it's not raining on someone/something, it's just raining.
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VTA- Verb, Transitive, Animate. Verb- an action is happening. Animate- the
object that is being talked about is alive. Transitive - the action is happening to
someone.
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ex niwaabamaa- i see him/her. Notice the action is happening to him/her, this
makes it transitive because another object is being talked about.
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VTI- Verb, Transitive, Inanimate. Verb- an action is happening. Transitive- the
action is happening to something. Inanimate - the object that the verb is happening to,
is not alive. ex niwaabandaan- i see it. Notice the action is happening to something,
this makes it transitive.