Interestingly, in the Toronto art museum, all labels are available not only in English and French but also in Ojibwe, also known as Anishinaabemowin (ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ); in the USA, the language is called Chippewa. The ethnonyms “Chippewa” and “Ojibwe” originate from the same word with different pronunciations, meaning “puckered”. It is the language of one of the largest Native American peoples in North America, roughly equal in number to the Cree, and second only to the Cherokee and Navajo. However, only about 10,000 people speak it in the USA and about 48,000 in Canada.
Chipmunk, wigwam, totem – these are borrowings from this language. And as for geographical names – there are loads. Illinois, Mississippi, Ottawa, Michigan.
Did you know that half (25) of the names of American states are named in honor of Native Americans? I found this very surprising at the time.
I inserted into the image another example of original, not adapted for the English alphabet, writing. These are the circles and stars, triangles. This is the Evans syllabic system. I don’t know how one can remember it: it consisted of only nine symbols, each of which could be written in four different orientations to represent different combinations of consonant and vowel. This allowed for a complete recording of the Ojibwe language. However, Evans’ superiors disapproved of his invention and prohibited its use. Later, he adapted his system for writing in Cree. Today, it is still found among some Ojibwe communities in Canada, but its use is limited. It is more common in Cree. In the USA, Ojibwe speakers mostly prefer Latin writing.
ChatGPT recognizes the language, but is unable to translate anything at all. There are also no online translators, and online dictionaries are very poor. Interestingly, the language has enough words to describe modern concepts.
I tried to translate Native expressions, which, according to the author’s intention, were supposed to mean “Europe” and “dilemma”, but nothing similar resulted. Then I compared how different LLMs translate a piece about the historical period of 1910–1930 when “Europe was shaken by war and its consequences”. Each system produces its own version of the text: some talk about the war on the Great Lakes, some about “the great bay” or spiritual practices, somewhere it’s even about protecting the Indian population (I fed them a text about artists). In the end, “war” is somewhat uniformly recognized (apparently, there are fifty words for war there), but the overall meaning varies significantly.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 