The Ojibwe Language Table is an inexpensive way to help people who want to learn their language, and practice to become fluent speakers.

Our Native language is becoming like the dinosaur, extinct! The amount of fluent speakers is diminishing at an alarming rate. With the passing of an elder, so too does their knowledge and language pass with this person. Living history best describes our elders. My grandparents remember when there was no TV, no big shopping malls, grocery stores, hardware stores, even cars and telephones, let alone computers, Ipod’s and DVD.

Nope, they grew up in a practical world. Winter is unforgiving, and if your not ready and able, then survival became iffy. As we see today, as it always has been, community is great survival mechanism, whereas everyone willingly helped each other (i.e. gathering and sharing of foods, etc.) Today’s cities only do these things in a bureaucratically fashion, cold and uncaring, as it is a job.

The Anishinaabe way of life is tied to the language. The history, stories, legends, way of life are all tied to the language, as it is a descriptive verb based language. The English language is mainly nouns.

But to learn the language, we must begin at the beginning stages. A practice that we found to work is the Language Table. Simply put, one hour a week we gather around (sometimes over lunch), using the template (use link) we take turns reciting our own particulars. Which is just our name, were we live, how many kids, etc.. We fill in the blanks using our own details. And that’s it. We have our own fluent speaker on hand to correct us, or to expand on what we said, that sort of thing.

For the teachers in the trenches, you can get started at your breaks, or in the staff room, in the classroom, anywhere that is convenient and where it will work. This also good for any language.

It’s easy, doesn’t cost anything, and everyone benefits.

The only thing that you’ll really need, is the motivation to get this going. And for that, we will supply the link to the template we use. It is not written in stone, so you can make your own up, modify this one to suite you needs, and just get started. That’s it!

It has to start somewhere, why not with this. Ojibwe Language Speech Table