Number of Speakers
The Chippewa dialects have been the focus of many academic works, from William Whipple Warren and Fr. Frederick Baraga in the 19th century, Frances Densmore, Jan P. B. de Josselin de Jong, Charles Fiero, Earl Nyholm and John Nichols in the 20th century. However, the Chippewa dialect of Ojibwemowin has continued to steadily decline. Beginning in the 1970s many of the communities have aggressively put their efforts into language revitalization, but have only managed to produce some fairly educated second-language speakers. Today, the majority of the first-language speakers of this dialect of the Ojibwe language are elderly, whose numbers are quickly diminishing, while the number of second-language speakers among the younger generation are growing. However, none of the second-language speakers have yet to transition to the fluency of a first-language speaker.
In the summer of 2009, Anton Treuer of Bemidji State University conducted an informal survey of number of first-language speakers of the Chippewa dialects in Minnesota and Wisconsin in order to convene a language session to address the need of vocabulary associated with math and sciences. Together with other Reservations that were not surveyed, Treuer estimates only around 1,000 first-language speakers of the Chippewa dialect in the United States.
| Reservation | Number of first-language speakers |
Estimated number of second-language speakers |
Number of total population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Lake | 400 | 2,400 | 10,570 |
| Mille Lacs | 150 | 1,150 | 3,942 |
| Leech Lake | 90 | 950 | 8,861 |
| Bois Forte | 20 | 110 | 3,052 |
| White Earth | 15 | 650 | 19,291 |
| Grand Portage | 3 | 90 | 1,127 |
| Fond du Lac | 0 | 520 | 4,044 |
| St. Croix | 25 | 80 | 1,080 |
| Lac Courte Oreilles | 10 | 130 | 6,146 |
| Lac du Flambeau | 3 | 120 | 3,457 |
| Bad River | 2 | 100 | 6,921 |
| Red Cliff | 1 | 50 | 4,470 |
| Mole Lake | 1 | 20 | 1,279 |
Read more about this topic: Chippewa Language
Famous quotes containing the words number of, number and/or speakers:
“... [woman suffrage] has made little difference beyond doubling the number of voters. There is no woman’s vote as such. They divide up just about as men do.”
—Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980)
“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)