Lakota (also Lakhota, Teton, Teton Sioux) is the largest of the three languages of the Sioux, of the Siouan family. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages, and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language. The Lakota language represents one of the largest Native American language speech communities left in the United States, with approximately 8,000-9,000 speakers living mostly in northern plains states of North and South Dakota. Official language(s) English Capital Bismarck Largest city Fargo Area  Ranked 19th  - Total 70,762 sq mi (183,272 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 340 miles (545 km)  - % water 2. ... Official language(s) English Capital Pierre Largest city Sioux Falls Area  Ranked 17th  - Total 77,163 sq mi (199,905 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 380 miles (610 km)  - % water 1. ... Official language(s) English Capital Lincoln Largest city Omaha Largest metro area Omaha Area  Ranked 16th  - Total 77,421 sq mi (200,520 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 430 miles (690 km)  - % water 0. ... Capital Saint Paul Largest city Minneapolis Area  Ranked 12th  - Total 87,014 sq mi (225,365 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 400 miles (645 km)  - % water 8. ... Official language(s) English Capital Helena Largest city Billings Area  Ranked 4th  - Total 147,165 sq mi (381,156 km²)  - Width 255 miles (410 km)  - Length 630 miles (1,015 km)  - % water 1  - Latitude 44°26N to 49°N  - Longitude 104°2W to 116°2W Population  Ranked... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Pre-contact distribution of the Siouan-Catawban languages Siouan-Catawban (also Catawban-Siouan, Siouan) is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains of North America with a few outlier languages in the east. ... Pre-contact distribution of the Siouan languages The Siouan (a. ... Lakota or Lakhota (as it is also commonly spelled) is the largest of the five major dialects of the Sioux language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Wahktageli (Gallant Warrior), a Yankton Sioux chief (Karl Bodmer) Funeral scaffold of a Sioux chief (Karl Bodmer) Horse racing of the Sioux Indians (Karl Bodmer) The Sioux (IPA ) are a Native American people. ... Pre-contact distribution of the Siouan languages The Siouan (a. ... A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently. ... Lakota or Lakhota (as it is also commonly spelled) is the largest of the five major dialects of the Sioux language. ... Native American languages are the indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by Native Americans from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America. ...

The language was first put into written form by missionaries around 1840 and has since evolved to reflect contemporary needs and usage.

Regional variation

Lakota is predominantly associated with the Teton Sioux bands living west of the Missouri River. Lakota itself contains two major regional varieties, which is spoken by the following bands:

1. Northern Lakota
   • Minneconjou
   • Two Kettles
   • Sans Arcs
   • Blackfoot
   • Hunkpapa
2. Southern Lakota
   • Oglala
   • Brule

Phonology

Vowels

Lakota has five oral vowels, /i e a o u/, and three nasal vowels, /ĩ ã ũ/ (phonetically [ɪ̃ ə̃ ʊ̃]). Lakota /e/ and /o/ are said to be more open than the corresponding cardinal vowels, perhaps closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ]. Orthographically, the nasal vowels are sometimes written with a following <ƞ> or <n>, and sometimes with ogoneks underneath, <į ą ų>. The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. ... Ogonek (Polish for little tail, the diminutive of ogon; the Lithuanian equivalent is nosinÄ— which literally means nasal) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in Polish (letters Ä…, Ä™), Lithuanian (Ä…, Ä™, į, ų), Creek, Navajo and Western Apache (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, ęę, į, įį, , ), Chiricahua and Mescalero (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, ęę, į, įį, ų, ųų), Tutchone and...

Consonants

The voiced plosives /b/ and /g/ should perhaps be considered allophones of /p/ and /k/, since for almost all words they are in complementary distribution, with [b] and [g] occurring only before /l/, /m/, /n/, /w/, and /j/, as well as in certain morphophonemic situations. The voiceless aspirated plosives have two allophonic variants each: those with glottal friction ([pʰ tʰ ʧʰ kʰ]), and those with velar friction ([pˣ tˣ kˣ]), which occur before /a/, /ã/, /o/, /ĩ/, and /ũ/ (thus, lakhóta, /la'kʰota/ is phonetically [laˈkˣota]; [ʧˣ] does not occur). For some speakers, there is a phonemic distinction between the two, and both occur before /e/. Some orthographies mark this distinction; others do not. The velar fricatives /x/ and /ɣ/ are commonly spelled <ȟ> (sometimes <ĥ>) and <ǧ>. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum&#8212;that fleshy part of the palate near the back&#8212;is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Liquid consonants, or liquids, are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial in English yes corresponds to ). The class of liquids can be divided into lateral liquids and rhotics. ... Semivowels (also called semiconsonants or glides) are vowels that function phonemically as consonants. ...

The spelling used in modern texts is often written without diacritics, resulting in the failure to mark stress and the confusion of numerous consonants: /s/ and /ʃ/ are both written s, /h/ and /x/ are both written h, and the aspirate stops are written like the unaspirates, as p, t, c, k.

Prosody

All monomorphemic words have one vowel which carries primary stress and has a higher tone than all other vowels in the word. This is generally the vowel of the second syllable of the word, but often the first syllable can be stressed, and occasionally other syllables as well. Stress is generally indicated with an acute accent: <á>, etc. Compound words will have stressed vowels in each component; proper spelling will write compounds with a hyphen. Thus mánza-ská, literally "metal-white", i.e. "silver, money" has two stressed vowels, the first a in each component. If it were written without the hyphen, as manzaska, it could only have one stress. In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ...

Phonological processes

A common phonological process which occurs in rapid speech is vowel contraction, which generally results from the loss of an intervocalic glide. Vowel contraction results in phonetic long vowels (phonemically a sequence of two identical vowels), with falling pitch if the first underlying vowel is stressed, and rising pitch if the second underlying vowel is stressed: kê: (falling tone), "he said that," from kéye; hǎ:pi (rising tone), "clothing," from hayápi. If one of the vowels is nasalized, the resulting long vowel is also nasalized: čhą̌:pi, "sugar," from čhąhą́pi (Rood and Taylor 1996). This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

When two vowels of unequal height contract, or when feature contrasts exist between the vowels and the glide, two new phonetic vowels, [æː] and [ɔː], result (Rood and Taylor 1996): iyæ̂:, "he left for there," from iyáye; mithɔ̂:, "it's mine," from mitháwa.

The plural enclitic =pi is frequently changed in rapid speech when preceding the enclitics =kte, =kį, =kštó, or =na. If the vowel preceding =pi is high, =pi becomes [u]; if the vowel is non-high, =pi becomes [o] (if the preceding vowel is nasalized, then the resulting vowel is also nasalized): hí=pi=kte, "they will arrive here," [hiukte]; yatką́=pi=na, "they drank it and...," [jatkə̃õna] (Rood and Taylor 1996). In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ...

Lakota also exhibits some traces of sound symbolism among fricatives, where the point of articulation changes to reflect intensity: zí, "it's yellow," ží, "it's tawny," ǧí, "it's brown" (Mithun 1999:33). In speech, consonants may have different places of articulation, generally with full or partial stoppage of the airstream. ...

Grammar

Morphology

Word order

The basic word order of Lakota is Subject Object Verb, although the order can be changed for expressive purposes (placing the object before the subject to bring the object into focus or placing the subject after the verb to emphasize its status as established information). It is postpositional, with adpositions occurring after the head nouns: mas'óphiye él, "at the store" (literally 'store at'); thípi=kį ókšą, "around the house" (literally 'house=the around') (Rood and Taylor 1996). In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... In grammar, an adposition is any of a wide variety of particles and affixes which are attached to a noun phrase (their object) in order to modify the noun phrase or show its relation to another concept or situation in the same clause. ...

Enclitics

Lakota has a number of enclitic particles which follow the verb, many of which differ depending on whether the speaker is male or female. In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ... In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ...

Men and women's speech

There are a number of enclitics which differ in form based on the gender of the speaker. Yeló (men) marks mild assertions, and kšt (men) marks stronger assertions. K(i)štó is the version used by women corresponding to men's yeló and kšt. For men, wą marks a mild opinion and yewą́ marks stronger opinions. The corresponding women's forms are ma and yemá, respectively. Yo (men) and ye (women) mark neutral commands, yethó (men) and nithó / įthó (women) mark familiar, and ye (both men and women) and na mark requests. He is used by both genders to mark direct questions, but men also use hųwó in more formal situations. So (men) and se (women) mark dubitative questions (where the person being asked is not assumed to know the answer).

Phrases

"Hokahe!" is a phrase used by traditional Lakota people during battle. It means "let's go". Crazy Horse was known to use it to mean "charge!" It can be contracted to just "ho!". According to a Lakota Holy Man, Eagle Voice, Nebraska poet, John Neihardt, it is literally translated as "Hold fast. There is more!"^[1] For other uses, see Crazy Horse (disambiguation). ... Johnathan (John) Gneisenau Neihardt (January 8, 1881 - November 24, 1973) was an American author of poetry and prose, an amateur historian and ethnographer, and a philosopher of the Great Plains. ...

"Háu khola", literally, "Hello, friend," is the most common greeting, and was transformed into the generic motion picture American Indian "How!", just as the traditional feathered headdress of the Teton was "given" to all movie Indians. As "háu" is the only word in Lakhota which contains a diphthong, /au/, it may be a loanword from a non-Siouan language.^[2] In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Learning Lakota

Few resources are available for self-study of Lakota by a person with no or limited access to a native speakers of Lakota. Here are a collection of some resources currently available:

• Lakota: A Language Course for Beginners by Oglala Lakota College (ISBN 0-88432-609-8) (The companion 15 CDs/Tapes (11 hours) are available from Audio Forum)
• Lakhótiya Wóglaka Po! - Speak Lakota! : Level 1 & Level 2 Textbooks and Audio CDs by Lakota Language Consortium.(Available at: http://stores.languagepress.com/StoreFront.bok)
• Lakota Dictionary: Lakota-English/English-Lakota : Comprehensive by Paul Manhart (ISBN 0-8032-6199-3)
• Reading and Writing the Lakota Language by Albert White Hat Sr. (ISBN 0-87480-572-4)

References

1. ^ http://www.bobbybridger.com/bb_about_hokaheyarchive.html
2. ^ http://lakxotaiyapi.freecyberzone.com/sk1.htm#23

Bibliography

• DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001). Sioux until 1850. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 718-760). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). The Siouan languages. In Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94-114). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
• de Reuse, Willem J. (1987). One hundred years of Lakota linguistics (1887-1987). Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 12, 13-42. (Online version: https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/509).
• de Reuse, Willem J. (1990). A supplementary bibliography of Lakota languages and linguistics (1887-1990). Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 15 (2), 146-165. (Studies in Native American languages 6). (Online version: https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/441).
• Rood, David S. and Allan R. Taylor. Sketch of Lakhota, a Siouan Language. In: Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 17 (Languages), pp. 440-482. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1996. (Online version: http://lakxotaiyapi.freecyberzone.com/sk0.htm)

External links

• Lakhota Sioux Heritage
• Online Lakota Language and Pronunciation classes
• Lakota Language Consortium
• Omniglot
• Our Languages: Lakota (Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre)
• Lakhota Language
• Sketch of Lakhota, a Siouan Language
• Lakota Iyapi
• Palatalization in Lakhota
• Dakota Culture and Language Encyclopedia