The Ottawa, also known as the Odawa dialect of the Ojibwe language is spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma. The first recorded meeting of Ottawa speakers and Europeans occurred in 1615 when a party of Ottawas encountered explorer Samuel de Champlain on the north shore of Georgian Bay. Ottawa is written in an alphabetic system using Latin letters, and is known to its speakers as 'speaking the native language' or 'speaking Ottawa'. Ottawa is one of the Ojibwe dialects that has undergone the most language change, although it shares many features with other dialects. The most distinctive change is a pervasive pattern of vowel syncope that deletes short vowels in many words, resulting in significant changes in their pronunciation. This and other innovations in pronunciation, in addition to changes in word structure and vocabulary, differentiate Ottawa from other dialects of Ojibwe. Like other Ojibwe dialects, Ottawa grammar includes animate and inanimate noun gender, subclasses of verbs that are dependent upon gender, combinations of prefixes and suffixes that are connected with particular verb subclasses, and complex patterns of word formation. Ottawa distinguishes two types of third person in sentences: proximate, indicating a noun phrase that is emphasized in the discourse, and obviative, indicating a less prominent noun phrase. Ottawa has a relatively flexible word order compared with languages such as English. Ottawa speakers are concerned that their language is endangered as the use of English increases and the number of fluent speakers declines. Language revitalization efforts include second language learning in primary and secondary schools. Classification Ottawa is known to its speakers as 'speaking the native language' (from 'native person' + verb suffix 'speak a language' + suffix 'nominalizer', with regular deletion of short vowels); the same term is applied to the Eastern Ojibwe dialect. The corresponding term in other dialects is . (from 'Ottawa' + verb suffix 'speak a language' + suffix 'nominalizer', with regular deletion of short vowels) 'speaking Ottawa' is also reported in some sources. The name of the Canadian capital Ottawa is a loanword that comes through French from , the self-designation of the Ottawa people. The earliest recorded form is , in a French source from 1641. Ottawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a member of the Algonquian language family. The