Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Lakota language
Summary
Lakota (Lakȟótiyapi laˈkxɔtɪjapɪ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. Lakota is mutually intelligible with the two dialects of the Dakota language, especially Western Dakota, and is one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language.
Speakers of the Lakota language make up one of the largest Native American language speech communities in the United States, with approximately 2,000 speakers, who live mostly in the northern plains states of North Dakota and South Dakota. Many communities have immersion programs for both children and adults.
The language was first put into written form by European American missionaries around 1840. The orthography has since evolved to reflect contemporary needs and usage.
The Lakota people's creation stories say that language originated from the creation of the tribe. Other creation stories say language was invented by Iktomi.
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 written with a following , , or ; historically, these were written with ogoneks underneath, . No syllables end with consonantal /n/.
A neutral vowel (schwa) is automatically inserted between certain consonants, e.g. into the pairs , and . So the clan name written phonemically as has become the place name Ogallala.
The voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ becomes a uvular trill ([ʀ]) before /i/ and in fast speech it is often realized as a voiced velar fricative [ɣ]. The voiceless aspirated plosives have two allophonic variants each: those with a delay in voicing ([ph th kh]), and those with velar friction ([px tx kx]), which occur before /a/, /ã/, /o/, /ĩ/, and /ũ/ (thus, lakhóta, /laˈkhota/ is phonetically [laˈkxota]). For some speakers, there is a phonemic distinction between the two, and both occur before /e/.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.