Several consonants, as outlined in the following table (and discussed on the previous page), form pairs:

These consonants are also different with respect to where they occur in words, the chief difference being that the strong consonants never appear at the beginning of a word, except in a few rare cases where a syllable which would normally precede them has been deleted, as in, for example, chi-mookomaan, 'American,' which shows reduction of gichi-, 'big,' to chi-. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, words only begin with weak consonants.

Strengthening after Gii- and Wii-. After the preverbs gii- 'past tense,' and wii- 'future tense; want to,' weak consonants become strong. The following examples illustrate.

Now this can be potentially for people trying to look words up in the dictionary, because you won't find an entry paapi in the dictionary-- rather that word will be listed in its normal form baapi. But here's the trick-- since no word in Anishinaabemowin starts with a strong consonant, you can be reasonably sure that when you see a word stem, such as those above, that has a strong first consonant-- that the basic word actually begins with the weak partner to the strong consonant it starts with. So, for example, if you see (or hear) gii-tanakii, you can be reasonably certain that the basic form of the verb will have the t of tanakii changed to d, that is, be danakii.