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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.
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: Vowels Lakota has five oral vowels, , and three nasal vowels, (phonetically ). Lakota and are said to be more open than the corresponding cardinal vowels, perhaps closer to and . Orthographically, the nasal vowels are sometimes written with a following or Consonants The voiced plosives and should perhaps be considered allophones of and , since for almost all words they are in complementary distribution, with and occurring only before , , , , and , as well as in certain morphophonemic situations. The voiceless aspirated plosives have two allophonic variants each: those with glottal friction , and those with velar friction , which occur before , , , , and (thus, lakhóta, is phonetically ; does not occur). For some speakers, there is a phonemic distinction between the two, and both occur before . Some orthographies mark this distinction; others do not. The velar fricatives and are commonly spelled (sometimes <ĥ>) and . The spelling used in modern texts is often written without diacritics, resulting in the failure to mark stress and the confusion of numerous consonants: and are both written s, and 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 (Rood and Taylor 1996). When two vowels of unequal height contract, or when feature contrasts exist between the vowels and the glide, two new phonetic vowels, and , 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...," (Rood and Taylor 1996). 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," , "it's brown" (Mithun 1999:33). 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). 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 womens 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 "Hoka hey!" is a phrase used by traditional Lakota people during battle. In such a context, it means "it is a good day to die". According to a Lakota Holy Man, Eagle Voice, Nebraska poet, John Neihardt, it is literally translated as "Hold fast. There is more!" "Hau 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. (Note: The word "hau" is unique in the Lakhota language because it contains a diphthong, au. This suggests that the word was in fact adapted from English how, as in how do you do?. If true, this would be parallel to the standard greeting word bozho of the Ojibwe, which was adapted from the French bon jour.) Bibliography | ||||||||
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