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Many people are confused about the term "Algonquin", which really refers to just one small tribe living along the Ottawa River valley in Canada, where they have always lived and still live today.

The similar word Algonquian refers to a huge family of distantly related languages spoken by many tribes across most of North American, but mainly in the north, around the Great Lakes and in the north-east woodlands and along the eastern seaboard of the USA. This language family gets its name from that small Algonquin tribe, who are used as representative of the whole group.

The Algonquin language is still spoken today thanks to concerted efforts by the tribe itself, supported by the Canadian government; it is very closely related to Ojibwe and Ottawa (two more Algonquian languages).

A few words of the Algonquin language are:

kaagaagiw (raven)

andeg (crow)

miziki or kiniw (eagle)

okad (leg)

odoon (mouth)

onagocag (stars)

nodin (windy)

kiziz (sun)

cigwatik (pine tree)

wabos (rabbit)

nokomis (grandmother)

biibiins (baby)

So, to answer your question, the Algonquin people spoke the Algonquin language; the Algonquian tribes spoke a huge number of related Algonquian languages.

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13y ago

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