Sound and Spirit: The Power of Anishinaabemowin
All languages are beautiful, full of heart and spirit, and contain indescribable depths of history.
Entire webs of ideas held at the heart of cultures, identity, vantage points, and understandings.
Anishinaabemowin (also called the Ojibwe language) is no different.
It is intimately aligned with concepts of relationships, interdependence and interconnectedness of life beyond time and place, philosophical and spiritual ideas and insights, as well as morality and tempered principles.
It contains ideas related to process, energy, life, experience, and the forever moving (and interrelated) cycles of reality.
My mother taught Anishinaabemowin, as did my late grandmother Elsie. Both were fluent Anishinaabekwewag, born and raised at Manitou Rapids. Having kept our language safe in our family — along with other mentors and teachers over the years who also provided profound understandings — I am forever grateful to each of them.
One of the most profound (and often misunderstood) dimensions of the language are the esoterics. The hidden dimensions. The beautiful heart and soul of the language that defies description.
The esoterics exist beyond personal interpretations and are revealed when symbology, linguistics, protocol, concepts, history, and philosophies converge and intersect with one another – similar to how classical philologists work with written works in antiquity – but with sounds and ideas.
To understand it, it takes a massive amount of patience and discipline as less care can easily disrupt accurate understandings.
Our language is equally beautiful and powerful.
It lends itself to the question – what is the most powerful and meaningful phrase that can be expressed in Anishinaabemowin?
I’ve asked many this question and invariably, the same response is shared:
Aapiji go gizhawenimin.
Phoenetically and step-by-step: AAH-pih-JIH go GIH-zhuh-WAY-nih-MINN
On this surface, this expresses “I profoundly love you very much.”
It can be said to a friend. A relative. A love. Someone respected. Someone cared about. Anyone being who the heart and soul of what is being expressed is fitting.
But, what rests at the heart of this phrase?
What does its energy reveal to us?
Let’s begin with Gizhawenimin.
The leading sound GIZH expresses a profound warmth that can be felt.
Terms like Gizhaate (“It is hot weather”), Gizhide (“The air is humid”), and Gizhaagamide (“The liquid is hot”) demonstrate this root.
The next sound of the phrase A derives from the sound aa, the heart of waas (pertaining to a glow, shine, or visible light).
Terms like Waawaate (“It is the northern lights”), Waasese (“It is a flash of lightning”, and Waawaashkeshi (a whitetail deer with the brilliant and visible tail during nighttime hours) demonstrate this sonic heart.
WE pertains to an energy. In some cases, this may refer to the energy of sound or energy as an unseen force. These are discoverable in the words for a voice (inwewin), drum (dewe’igan), among others.
NI is conceptually intertwined with an often-leading idea of “I” or “Me” found in personal prefixes. Most directly – the life within me. The defining I.
MI pertains to the universe. Everything that impacts a being and everything that a being impacts in the totality of existence. This is evidenced in numerous concepts such as mitig (a tree), mino-ayaawin (wellness), among countless others.
Finally, IN coveys movement within one’s bodily vessel. Throughout the language, the suffixes win or owin linguistically known as nominalizers. When connected to certain actions, they become nouns. Concepts. How this is done is describing how one’s life energy (wi) moves within their bodily vessel (in).
On a surface level, aapiji refers to “quite” or “very much” and is predominantly attached to emotions and experiences within.
As mentioned before AA pertains to a visible glow, light, or shine.
PI conveys a fluid, a liquid, or a droplet. Terms such as nibi (water) and biboon (It is winter) capture this idea, albeit with commonly weak consonant sounds. The bodily vessel contains a massive amount of fluid, as does the third ventricle within the human brain.
JI, a very ancient sound intertwined with an idea, pertains to a soul. The spiritual essence and energy within the body. Terms such as ojichaag (his/her soul) and bawaajige (he/she is dreaming) are intimately related to this concept.
Lastly, the emphatic GO (which functions similar to an exclamation point) invokes and conjures the concept of a grandmother. The grandmother. The collective grandmother that reflects sunlight upon us all during the nighttime hours.
The Grandmother Moon.
The flow moves between a G-sound that leads and “in” that trails, expressing the movement of the concept from I to You.
So, what is revealed here?
The phrase “Aapiji go gizhawenimin” doesn’t simply express that someone is loved, but attempts to describe just how much and how profoundly one is loved.
On the surface, “I profoundly love you very much.”
But deeply at its heart:
I am projecting from my soul to yours the purest form of warmth, light, energy that has originated from the universe and descended into my spirit within.
It is experienced so profoundly, that the light of my soul is spilling visibly brilliant and luminous beyond the water that surrounds it.
It is felt to such an intensity that it is akin to the moon pulling on the tides.
When we speak this phrase, we truly speak from the heart and soul directly to another’s heart and soul.
