Ottawa (also spelled Odawa) is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of communities in southern Ontario and a smaller number of communities in northern Michigan. Ottawa has a phonological inventory of seventeen consonants and seven oral vowels; in addition, there are long nasal vowels the phonological status of which are discussed below. An overview of general Ojibwa phonology and phonetics can be found in the article on Ojibwe phonology. The Ottawa writing system described in Modern orthography is used to write Ottawa words, with transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) used as needed.
Consonants[]
Consonants are written using the conventional symbol from the Ottawa writing system, with the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabetic (IPA) following where the two vary.
| Bilabial | Dental / Alveolar |
(Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Stop | lenis | b | d | j [dʒ] | g [ɡ] | h [ʔ] |
| fortis | p [pːʰ] | t [tːʰ] | ch [tʃː] | k [kːʰ] | ||
| Fricative | lenis | v [β] | z | zh [ʒ] | ɣ | |
| fortis | f [ɸː] | s [sː] | sh [ʃː] | x [xː] | q [hː] | |
| Approximant | central | r [ɹ] | y [j] | w | ||
| lateral | l | c [ʎ] | ||||
Vowels[]
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close | /ii/ [iː] | ||
| /i/ [ɪ] | |||
| Close-mid | /e/ [eː] | /oo/ [oː]~[uː] | |
| /o/ [ʊ]~[ə] | |||
| Open-mid | /ɛɛ/ [ɛː] | /ɔɔ/ [ɔː] | |
| /ɛ/ [ɛ] | /u/ [ʌ] | /ɔ/ [ɔ] | |
| Open | /aa/ [ɑː] | ||
| /æ/ [æ] | /a/ [ə]~[ɑ] | /ɐ/ [ɒ] | |