Lakota language

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.

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

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>, <ŋ>, or <n>, and sometimes with ogoneks underneath, <į ą ų>.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m		n
Plosive	unaspirated	p	t		tʃ	k		ʔ
	voiced	(b)				(g)
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		tʃʰ	kʰ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ		tʃʼ	kʼ
Fricative	voiceless			s	ʃ		χ
	voiced			z	ʒ		ʁ
	ejective			sʼ	ʃʼ		χʼ
Approximant		w		l	j			h

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 voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ becomes a uvular trill ([ʀ]) before /i/. The voiceless aspirated plosives have two allophonic variants each: those with a delay in voicing ([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 uvular fricatives /χ/ and /ʁ/ are commonly spelled <ȟ> (sometimes <ĥ>) and <ǧ>.

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 /χ/ 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.

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.

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: 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].

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). (Compare with the similar examples in Mandan.)

Grammar

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).

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.

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, as recounted by Nebraska poet John Neihardt, it is literally translated as "Hold fast. There is more!"

"Háu kola", 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.

Learning Lakota

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

• Lakhótiya Wóglaka Po! - Speak Lakota! : Level 1 & Level 2 Textbooks and Audio CDs by Lakota Language Consortium.(Available at Lakota Language Consortium Inc.) (elementary/secondary school level)
• Lakota: A Language Course for Beginners by Oglala Lakota College (ISBN 0-88432-609-8) (The companion 15 CDs/Tapes (11 hours) are available at Audio Forum) (high school/college level)
• Reading and Writing the Lakota Language by Albert White Hat Sr. (ISBN 0-87480-572-4) (Available at Amazon.com) (high school/college level)
• University of Colorado Lakhota Project: Beginning Lakhota, vol. 1 & 2, Elementary Bilingual Dictionary and Graded Readings, [[1]] (high school/college level)
• New Lakota Dictionary. (ISBN 0-9761082-9-1) (Pre-order at Lakota Language Consortium Inc. )
• Lakota Dictionary: Lakota-English/English-Lakota, New Comprehensive Edition by Eugene Buechel, S.J. & Paul Manhart (ISBN 0-8032-6199-3) (Available at Amazon.com)
• A Grammar of Lakota by Eugene Buechel, S.J. (ASIN B000AO4ZCK) (Available at Matoska Trading Company) (professional level)
• The article by Rood & Taylor, in References infra (professional level)

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)
• Ullrich, Jan. (2008). New Lakota Dictionary. Bloomington, IN: Lakota Language Consortium. ISBN 0-9761082-9-1.

External links

• Lakhota Sioux Heritage (Established in 1995 by Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal members. Taken in 2001 by webmaster who has no American Indian blood)
• 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
• Some Reflections on Laḱota Syntax