Talk:Sioux language

message: I've generally seen Sioux described as having five, rather than three, regional dialects/languages: Santee-Sisseton, Yankton-Yanktonai, Lakhota, and then also Assiniboine and Stoney, both of which are n varieties (Nakoda). See, for example, the first paragraph at the Language Geek page on Assiniboine, which is a very respectable site. I'm wondering why the two Nakoda varieties aren't listed here. Thanks. --Whimemsz 22:45, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh wait. I see that they're all considered Dakotan languages, but there are three regional dialects of Sioux itself. Sorry. --Whimemsz 17:50, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Regional Varieties

message: It's clear to me that some significant clean-up of the article is needed (aside from the easier stuff like wikification and converting text to tables). As I see it, the most important tasks here are the following:
#Wikify! :D
#Really pare down the number of quotes - in most cases they aren't needed. We should be summarizing the points of sourcing and providing citations, not quoting from each source (unless the quote itself is somehow notable).
#We don't need all the info in the "History" and "Ecology" sections (and the title of the latter is very misleading), though a lot of it is quite important. But, "The family most likely reached the United States with the first series of migrants that left Africa 140,000 years ago"? No. We don't need to go all the way back to the Out-Of-Africa theory here; we should start with the Siouan family and go from there. This also isn't the article for demonstrating the reality of the Siouan language family with a cognate table - that would be Siouan languages or Proto-Siouan language.
#Clarify the relationships among the varieties of Sioux. Having a section called "Dakota dialects" and referring to the language as "Dakota" within that section is confusing, since the language has earlier been referred to as "Sioux" (and will be for the rest of the article).
#There are many places where the writing needs to be made more encyclopedic. "Prior to the white man’s way of writing" isn't encyclopedic. Nor is "they did so as a means to wipe out the Indian, not promote him" or "Fortunately, it appears that in recent years the Dakota language has experienced resurgence." It's not up to us to declare whether the revival efforts of Sioux are a good thing or not (even though I obviously think they are), though we can quote sources which say they are a good thing.
#Because there is no commonly-accepted orthography for Sioux, deciding how to transcribe it is a somewhat trickier situation. But the page as it is doesn't mark all the distinctive features of Sioux's phonology, which it should. I'd suggest either simply using the IPA or one of the orthographies that's reasonably common and that represents all distinctive features.
#Per CJLippert's suggestion here, I would also recommend making all the citations of the <ref> kind, simply for readability, though I realize that technically full inline citations are in accordance with the Manual of Style.
I'm putting this on the talk page basically because this entails a significant rewrite of a lot of the article, and I suspect it would be too bold of me to undertake that without some consensus first (besides which I don't know all that much about Siouan languages, so I'm hoping someone who does can help out) --Miskwito (talk) 23:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's just be bold and get started! If some expert comes along they can always fix our efforts... babbage (talk) 20:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Comment on point 3: I very much agree with this point 3. Not only the two sections are not needed but they are also based largely on outdated (Riggs) or linguistically unreliable (Robinson, Palmer) publications. There are many more newer and more relevant publications available today. I agree that the history of the language should be under Siouan languages or Proto-Siouan language. Thiyopa (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Comment on point 4: I have attempted to do something in respect to point 4 (Clarify the relationships among the varieties of Sioux). I created a table that compares the dialects. I hope it is helpful. Thiyopa (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

text:  Comment on point 6: I made a comment about on orthography above, in the phonology section. I think IPA should be used only for describing pronunciation but one of the prevailing orthographies should be used for describing the phonology and alphabet. This should, however, be done under the entries of the individual languages since Sioux is really a group of three languages which are "independent" phonetically and politically. The only orthographies that mark all the distinctive sounds are Colorado, New Lakota Dictionary (Ullrich) and White Hat. There have been serious efforts to standardize the Lakota language using the New Lakota Dictionary writing system. The White Hat orthography is over-burdened with diacritics and thus impractical for the purposes of reading and writing. Thiyopa (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: I suggest that the article is cut short and serves only as a sort of a portal to the tree dialects which I believe to be independent languages. The article would contain only the comparison of the three language and links to three independent articles on those languages.
This is my reasoning:
Ethical background: I think that today nobody speaks the "Sioux" language. The term is outdated and is felt as politically incorrect (and perhaps derogatory) by most speakers of Lakota and Dakota because of its foreign origin. This is true despite the fact that the term is still present in some of the official tribal names and is used by some speakers in informal settings.
Linguistic background: The three dialects differ significantly in their phonology, grammar and lexicon. For this reason the phonology and grammar cannot be described in a simple way, the description would be structurally very complex. Even the mutual intelligibility assumed by speakers is largely overestimated. And even Ethonologue considers Lakota and Dakota as separate languages and a different ISO is given to each. There is already a duplicity in describing the Lakota grammar in both this article and the article on Lakota Language.
Cultural and political background: the three speech communities (Lakota, Yankton-Yanktonai, Sante-Sisseton) are separated geographically, culturally and historically. There are no institutions or organizations making an effort to unit these communities in any respect, the least in respect to the language. Historically, the Eastern Dakota have had very sporadic contact with the Lakota and Western Dakota people in the past two hundred years.
Thiyopa (talk) 14:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Major modification

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on Sioux language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131016163022/http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/topics/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?ALEVEL=3&APATH=3&CATNO=&DETAIL=0&DIM=&DS=99&FL=0&FREE=0&GAL=0&GC=99&GK=NA&GRP=1&IPS=&METH=0&ORDER=1&PID=89189&PTYPE=88971&RL=0&S=1&ShowAll=No&StartRow=1&SUB=705&Temporal=2006&Theme=70&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF= to http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/topics/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?ALEVEL=3&APATH=3&CATNO=&DETAIL=0&DIM=&DS=99&FL=0&FREE=0&GAL=0&GC=99&GK=NA&GRP=1&IPS=&METH=0&ORDER=1&PID=89189&PTYPE=88971&RL=0&S=1&ShowAll=No&StartRow=1&SUB=705&Temporal=2006&Theme=70&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081021053923/http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2006/03/26/news/state/112172.txt to http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2006/03/26/news/state/112172.txt
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080923071846/http://www.southdakotamagazine.com/editors_notebook.php?m=200511 to http://www.southdakotamagazine.com/editors_notebook.php?m=200511
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051218090725/http://www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/dnl.html to http://www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/dnl.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051218090725/http://www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/dnl.html to http://www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/dnl.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:58, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The number of speakers is given as 25000, but if you add up the listed regional varieties, the total is less than 10% that value. What's the right number? 73.67.242.64 (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of speakers?