Language is given as OUR SOUND from the Creator
Each Native American language defines an Indian People a distinct group.

On the cradle board, a Native Child listens to her language
for thousands of hours and when she finally speaks a word,
the world is created anew.

Every word is a prayer because the Great Spirit listens all the time. 
Take time to speak well, to listen to your own words.
Talking is singing to the drum of your heartbeat...

The Ojibwemowin; It's  Value as a Culture Keeper

Our Ojibwe way of speaking shapes us culturally, spiritually, and in relationship to the world around us as Native American People. Ojibwemowin is in many ways Native Art, Native Spirituality, and Native Identity. Some memories, because of their context, can only be properly preserved for the future in Ojibwe. Our native words allow us to define ourselves in our own terms, in ways that have nothing to do with the actions and attitudes of the dominant culture. We can define ourselves by virtue of what we've saved. "our sound" as given by the Creator, carries our human identity, it's a vehicle to help us understand, to help us express ourselves. For most of us, in our mother tongues, this happens unconsciously.  There is a growing awareness that we lose more than words when a language dies. "When we lose a language," it is is said, "we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, land creatures, birds, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown, and the everyday."

Today only about a third of the Native American languages that were on the North American continent when Europeans arrived are still spoken, sometimes by a very small number of elders. Our Native Languages have always been ours. It's been given to us by the Creator. Our native way of talking isn't forced on us, it is a part of us.

When we speak in our own way, we are free from all the cultural interference. In speaking, or learning to speak, we become newly made as Native People, and it's easier to more openly and accurately learn from and remember our past. You see, the danger for Native people is that we are more likely to misconstrue ourselves in English or French. In many Anishnabe communities the language is referred to as "Indian", and a person speaking the language is said to be "talking Indian".

Ojibwe is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as being the most difficult of all to learn. It's a difficult, complicated language.  Ojibwe is two-thirds verbs. It's a very active, fluid language. A given verb can have 4,000 different forms by the time you're done monkeying around with it, and that's not an exaggeration. Someone did a count. And so it's actually very, very difficult to come to as a second language learner, which makes its survival a little more precarious than a language that might be easier. Ojibwe is spoken today by about 50,000 people, concentrated around the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and in Ontario and Manitoba in Canada.

Ojibwe alphabet and pronunciation chart

Notes:

1. The English letters and sounds of f, l, q, r, u, v and x are not part of the Ojibwe alphabet.
2. The Ojibwe alphabet contains the additional double-letter symbols of aa, ch, ii, oo, sh and zh .
3. The glottal stop is represented by an apostrophe.