Lesson
The Double Vowel Writing System
An orientation to how every word in this dictionary is spelled: vowels, consonants, and common spelling patterns.
This lesson is built from the course's Syllabics Chart, which documents the Double Vowel alphabet used throughout this dictionary. It intentionally does not include invented English-sound-alike pronunciation guides -- those weren't in the source. Real audio recordings will be the authoritative pronunciation guide once available (see public/audio/README.md).
Where this spelling system comes from
Anishinaabe people have written in several traditions — an ancient pictographic system, the syllabics developed in the nineteenth century for northern communities, and a long line of roman alphabets. The spelling used throughout this course is the Double Vowel system, developed by Charles Fiero in the 1950s for Minnesota and Wisconsin Anishinaabemowin. It became the de facto standard in widely used published materials, and its name says how it works: long vowels are written with doubled letters, exactly as the chart below shows.
Historical background follows the C10 supplemental grammar reference (see docs/c10-supplemental-source-audit.md); the letter charts on this page remain the course's own documented material.
Vowels: short and long
The Double Vowel system distinguishes short vowels from long vowels by writing the long ones twice (except e, which is always long).
Short vowels
- a“Animikiikaa” (thunder)
- i“Idash” (and)
- o“Odaabaan” (sled)
Long vowels
- aa“Aanakwad” (cloud)
- ii“Diindiisi” (blue jay)
- oo“Oodena” (town)
- eAlways long -- there is no short "e" in this system.
Consonants: soft/hard pairs
Six consonant sounds come in soft/hard pairs; four (m, n, w, y) have no hard counterpart and never change. This is the same soft/hard system used in Ojibwe syllabics.
digraph; rarely starts a word
digraph
digraph
uncommon at the start of a word
glottal stop -- a real consonant sound, not punctuation
Common spelling patterns
Doubled vowels mark length
Writing a vowel twice (aa, ii, oo) signals the long version of that vowel rather than two separate vowel sounds. This is documented directly in the course's Syllabics Chart, which pairs each short vowel column with its long counterpart.
The apostrophe is a consonant
The apostrophe (') represents the glottal stop -- a real sound (like the catch in the English "uh-oh"), not punctuation. The same mark is also used before a consonant to show the "hard" member of a soft/hard pair, and before a vowel for the uncommon letter "h."
Eya' (yes)
Soft and hard consonant pairs
Six consonant sounds come in soft/hard pairs (b/p, d/t, j/ch, g/k, z/s, zh/sh); m, n, w, and y have no hard counterpart and never change. This is the same soft/hard system used in Ojibwe syllabics -- see the Syllabics lesson for more.
Practice
Try a few quick checks before the final quiz.
Question 1 of 3
Which spelling shows a LONG vowel sound?
Quiz
Finish this short quiz to mark the Writing System lesson complete on your dashboard.
Question 1 of 4
Which vowel in this system is always long (no short version)?