About the Lakota/Dakota (Sioux) language 

I took Dakota in college and studied it on my own after that. Dakota was and is one of the languages spoken by some Native tribes in my home state. There are many places in the Midwestern US with Dakota/Lakota names. I still have my English-Dakota and Dakota-English dictionaries. I didn't find the language that difficult to learn. The letter sounds are consistent and don't change (like in English) so one letter = one sound. The hardest parts of the language for me to learn were certain sounds not in English - mainly the Dakota ġ and ḣ sounds - and the grammar is very different from English. But once you learn it, the language is very interesting and lovely. I hope it never dies. Pidamayaye, Julie!

Hoka!! ❤ Wakpa Waste Oyanke ematanhan na le wanblake cha lila iyomakhipi yelo! Lakhota here from Cheyenne River Wakpa Waste Oyanke. Even with the technical errors pointed out in the comments, it makes my heart glad to see our language survives and that others have taken an interest in it. Wophila thanka Julie!!

In the scene from "Dances with Wolves," the actor speaking Lakota is Graham Greene. Greene is not Lakota, he is an Oneida from Ontario, Canada. He has said that he found it difficult to speak the Lakota lines properly, but he obviously worked very hard to do so, because an Assiniboine friend of mine said he made quite a good job of it. I saw Greene in the stage play "Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing," a year before his Oscar nomination, and thought his performance brilliant. He remains one of Canada's most beloved actors, regularly appearing on Canadian television shows, as well as in numerous Hollywood movies. His sense of humour is legendary, and it's sad that he never got to play something with Leslie Nielsen.

Interesting bit of trivia: The Klingon language (from Star Trek) uses subject/object pronoun affixes too, and the creator got the idea for it from the Sioux language.

I might be biased since I grew up on one of the Lakota reservations, and am half Lakota, but Lakota is my favorite language ever. It’s very difficult, and even here on the reservation, I don’t know anyone who speaks the language, but I hope to learn it to fluency someday.

As a native who loves the Lakota language. Thank you for struggling thru this language. That and many other reasons I am a subscriber :)

I read about something kind of charming. In northwest Ontario, Canada, there's a town called Sioux Lookout. I understand it comes from the Ojibwe people watching for the incursion of Siouxs into their lands.

Great video! I was so excited to watch this! A bit of movie trivia: the majority of the Native American actors in Dances With Wolves were not Sioux and did not speak the language, but were coached by native speakers to get their lines right. However, the scene where the old woman is describing how her husband years ago got spooked and jumped up a tree...that woman was a true native Sioux speaker, so we get to hear the real language as spoken by a native in that short scene:)

There is also the Nakoda dialect. A breakaway tribe speaking this same dialect are the Assiniboine.

Thanks so much for this interesting and engaging intro into the Sioux language and culture. I live in central Mexico, where many are trying to preserve and promote Nahuatl. When a language dies, with it goes an entire culture. Good luck to you and keep posting!

Чудове відео! Особливо сподобався екскурс в історію та граматику!

Hi, linguist here specialist in (indigenous) American languages. I haven't watched the whole video yet but already wanted to note 2 things: -an American language! Hurrah! 🎉🎉🎉 Hope to see more of them 😊 -no serious scholar in the field believes in the 3 branches theory (anymore). The Eskimo-Aleut, Na-dene and Amerind division, developed by Greenberg and followers, contains way too many errors to be taken seriously in the first place. The theory has been debunked many years ago and most people have moved on. Greenberg was not even specialised in American languages... He became famous for his theory about African ones (where he lumbed everything in just 4 families) . Even that one however is nowadays seriously challenged by colleagues who work with those languages...

The Lakota Language really makes English look like baby talk. I hope so much the language(s) will be thriving again, as much as Navajo is in Arizona. Bilingual education will be the key.

It´s an awesome work you do in the history of languages! I´m pretty sure many generations will thank you in the future.

Thank you for putting you beautiful spot light on the native Americans . Your intelligence on vocabulary is really impressive . AHO WADO :O)

You became such a professional during the years but you still have a special charm in these presentations which I love. 😊

Love the Sioux Beautiful hearing Lakota language. The Lakota lullaby’s beautiful. The Sioux language is one of the oldest Hope it lives ♾ ♾ ♾. Thanks for sharing..🔥

I always enjoy and learn so much from your presentations. Thanks!

I appreciate this awesome work that you do, and I hope to see your Patreon grow! You deserve everything life can offer. Thank you so much for existing, Julie!

8:10 What a beautiful language. Dances with wolves. Sunkmanitu Tanka Owaci. I repeated this phrase for weeks after the movie because it just rolls of the tongue.

I love that you make videos about such indegenous languages!

I always enjoy your videos! Thank you for giving attention to this language!

my favorite learning experience yet. Great job Julie

It is so important not to lose languages / cultures as it is to recuperate those that have almost disapeared. Unfortunately most governments are only interested in one language being spoken for various questionable reasons. Cultures, Customs and Languages are forgotten and everyone everywhere is much of a muchness.......I admire your effort and interest. Cheers.

I absolutely love that you decided to tackle this dialect/language.

Very cool video! My favourite indigenous language is Kiikaapoa/Kiikaapoi, spoken by the people of the same name. They also apparently have a high rate of native speakers in Mexico where many live today despite originally being from Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Itd be very fun to see a language video on it sometime!

The entirety of modern North American civilization is built upon the bones and graves of an amazingly rich, ancient and complex culture. Some of my Sioux friends finally began to learn their own tribal tongues in the late 90's. So much damage was done by racist attempts by the US & Canadian governments to stamp out native language and cultures. Thanks for spotlighting the culture and language of the original Americans!

always fun to binge watch from time to time

Very interesting and well-made video as usual! I can't remember if you've already done a video about this other topic, but it would be great to see how all the different language families in the Americas evolved/related to each other.

Your presence on screen seems much more comfortable than when you first started 🎉 you love to see it

Thank you for this video for historical preservation!

Wow. To learn such a complex language and then explain it to us. Brilliant

Thanks for this video. Very interesting and informative.

This is a very interesting video. Thank you for sharing.

Sounds great! A beautiful language!

Amazing work as always! I'm wandering if you could do the Romaní language/dialects!

They’re from the area where I live, but I don’t personally know anyone who speaks Dakota. It’s interesting to hear you talk about a group of people that are more local for me.

Lovely & fascinating sound. A pleasure to hear [Sioux] spoken.

I love your synopses of languages Julie, and marvel at how much you put into the study of each. The format you use to survey each language shows that people of all languages have much more in common than the differences between their languages suggests.

I appreciate you. For your want and share for the culture.

I've always been fascinated with Native North and South American languages. Here in my country, Brazil, ther're still 200 native languages struggling for survival. I picked up some content on some of these languages on the internet, though they are very complex... thank you for bringing up such a beautiful language!!

trees sun air, breath more ,good vibe hugggss.. 🙏🏻

Hi, I discovered your channel recently and binge watched all your videos, they are really high quality and informative. Are you also intrested in constructed languages? I wish you could make a video on esperanto. Its features are less fascinating than naturale languages, but its history and the vision behind it are truly amazing and worth telling.

Great job Julie

2:20 Wow. I certainly did not expect you to use those diacritic marks and even less to pronounce them the way I do in my native language. Might this be the reason why the mysterious RU-vid algorithm suggested me your video? A very interesting topic and I learned something. I hope something I will remember long-term. EDIT: Towards the end of the video, I was quite surprised. And to be honest, I watched it because of your cute fact with those eyes that make me melt. I do not apologize for admitting to being a male, drawn to your beauty. And it is not pure physical, but intellectual as well. Best wishes, Erik.

Wonderful video! Thank you!

Sioux is a pejorative used against both Lakota (aligned tribes) and Dakota (unaligned Lakota). The distinction came about during Little Crow's war. The language common among the nomadic tribes of the upper plains of North America was Lakhota and Dakhóta which were nearly indistinguishable.

Great quick summary! I would love to see some Algonquian and Iroquoian/Haudenosaunee languages

Thank you for reminding me that there are beautiful people on this planet

Vary cool! You might be one of the first non-bias to cover native language and inform everyone, at least in our modern times. Thanks!🔥

I speak a finno-ugric language (European but of North-Asian origin). We also can pack a whole lot of information in single words similarly to this. But we're not verb focused, I'd say(?). And we too don't have gendered pronouns! In my language for instance who does, when does and making it a question or a suggestion can be baked into a single verb, that can be a whole sentence on it's own. But the same can be done to otherkind of words as well - maybe even more can be baked into subjectives. A verb sentence could be "pääsimmekö?" - Did we get (in)? päästä=get in/out/away , me=we , =question. Another example of a word could be "autoissammekinko" = "also in our cars?" Auto=car, i=plural indicator mid word, ssa=inside, mme=our, kin=also, ko=question indicator.

Thank you for what you do

Cool video and very convincing pronunciation 👍🏻🙏🏻

Your videos are always well made and informational and this one was no different keep up the good work. Though this comment might get buried if your looking to expand on American languages I would love to see you make one on mine which is Menominee since I think its often overshadowed by Ojibwe though the languages are very similar.

Wow, an interesting language, and sounds nice :)

I was very happy to watch this video but it also made me sad because there's so few people who speak the language. I wish there will be more in the future.

enthralled by these videos

Excellent! Thanks a lot.

Thanks for doing this. It's got me curious to learn the Cherokee language, since they used to inhabit where I live.

Good luck in preserving your language!

Great video.

Thanks. Native languages have been mostly mysterious for me until now. Thanks for your very informative video.

very good video

I spent about 3 years working on Pine Ridge in the mid 1970s putting up the council buildings in each village and was only able to pick up about 4 words

Hi, I would like to get your opinion. I was doing some research on Hungarian prehistory and came across some material that I would like to quote for you. It is from a Hungarian engineer working in Canada. First, a brief account of my first amazing Canadian language experience: we had been living in the New World for about 5 months, and had chosen a sublet solution for a short period of time before buying our future family home. It was a Saturday, and the owners of the house were leaving early in the morning to visit relatives. My wife and I were having breakfast and were discussing in Hungarian how we could go on a trip as soon as possible. The only obstacle to this was that the twice-weekly housekeeper was still there, and how we could leave the house unlocked. It was never mentioned with our hosts that the key could be given to anyone. The usually discreet concierge was now apparently always hovering close by. “Hey, that woman is watching us!” my wife said. Then the cleaning lady stood in front of us and said with eyes shining with tears: “I’m really sorry to disturb you in your conversation like this. After all, I would ask you to continue in our dear mother tongue. To my ears, it is like a dream from the old days, when I was raised as a Dakota girl and spoke in my mother tongue. As a young girl, I was placed among the white people. I now search hard for words in my mother tongue, some of which I can only guess at the meaning. But now I am inexpressibly happy to hear the language of my people again…! “ “Madam, do you claim to have understood our conversation?”, I asked incredulously. “Of course, the gist of it. I had forgotten the Dakota and could only make out the meaning of what they were saying. But I was fascinated by the sound of so many familiar words and the end-of-word changes that were completely unknown in English. But if you really want to go, you can go, I’ll lock the door, I have the key to the house.“ “And how did you know we were planning a trip, and we were worried about how long it would take to clean up?” “I didn't understand that you were going on a trip, but I understood that you wanted to go and you didn't know who was going to lock the door.”

The "peaceful" American tribes had such colorful names for each other. The Hopi refereed to the Dine as the head bashers.

Sioux has always been one of my favourite languages. I love the sound of it. Many native American languages sound awesome, and for that reason many of them are on my list. Apart from Sioux, I'm also trying to learn Ojibwe, Mohawk, Salish, Navaho, and Hopi.

Of all the languages, this is one that I've been most interested in. Lately I've been learning Brazilian Portuguese as well as a bit of Ticuna and quechua as I'm planning on moving to the Amazon. BTW, I love that lullaby for the good hearted boy and sometimes sing it when I get my wooden flutes out to play.

Thanks for this video! If I remember well, the future tense is expressed by a particle after the verb. What is funny is that there are no verbal tenses, there's just one way to conjugate the verbs and the tenses are expressed only by particles or adverbs, the verb itself doesn't say anything about tense.

quelque temps que je ne vous voyais plus sur YT ❤

Nice video!

Thank you for learning languages. I am not good at it, but then again I don't work at it. It is tragic that in the name of "diversity" languages and cultures are lost. You are very beautiful Juli and I don't mind telling you that, and you are very smart, and talented and hard working. Very enjoyable.

Thank you

WOW! It's quite complicated language. Greetings from the country of thathanka ;) Poland.

When you hear the radically different accent in the excerpt from Dances With Wolves you wonder if the speaker had a strong English accent, or if that's just what Lakota sounds like now. You hear "contact accents" in other languages - Breton sounds like Welsh with a French accent, for example.

You are amazing in being so well versed and knowledgeable in so many diverse languages. Being tone deaf and dyslexic, language and reading are very difficult for me. As a result, I admire anyone who can speak more than their own native language. In high school, I had 4 years of Latin and 2 years of french. I tried learning Mandarin but the 5 tones used in speaking made me afraid I would insult someone of I used the wrong tone. Because I am tone deaf, I have been banned from singing by the US Supreme Court as my singing is considered cruel and unusual punishment.

As far as i know, "natowessi-wag (-WAG being the plural form in ojibwe), the diminutive of natowessi (Odaawa NAADWESI) Is NATOWESI-NH, in ojibwe, so the diminutive plural would be NATOWESSI-NH-WAG. naadwesi in this context probably does't refer to the snakes poison but to its forked tongue, designating a liar... ASSINIBOIN derives from the french spelling of ASSINIIBWAAN again a western ojibwe word meaning STONE asiin, and BWAAN here apparently meaning a particular type of people. The stone people often recur in the mythology of the region (see mary louise defender wilson, the earth will never end. Also narwal morriseau, an ojibwe author) Thx for sharing julie!

You Are Fantastic: Could you Do the Cayuga Language and if You Need help I AM From The Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Northeast Oklahoma...

Thanks.

It's funny when she tells us to watch Killers of the Flower Moon. I absolutely agree!

Ao Krola. Toksha Ake. Two sentences I learnt in 1997 with a colleague who got knowledge in Lakota language after a trip in the US during the 90's. Thx for the information and for the good memories. I was told long ago the I in the word "Sioux" was silent in English??!

Julie you’re pretty good at saying these Sioux words . Have you been studying it?

Le vidéo kiŋ yakaǧa čha philámayaye ❤. +++±+++++++ Thanks for making this video.❤

I hope Julie can do a series about bilingual education and how that can save endangered languages across the world. It is said that a language dies every two weeks.

Excellent video. Now do Ta’agra or Klingon next

Ok, you've done a good job so far, now, could you please edit a video on the Finnish language? I long after the day you will grant us with some content on that... thank you... following your channel from Brazil... Best regards!!

Apparently Lakota/Dakota is very efficient at expressing reality from the perspective of quantum mechanics.

Westworld season 2, episode 8 inspired me to try to learn Lakota. The entire episode is spoken nearly entirely in Lakota, subtitled in English.

If Tolkien had known about this, Elven languages would be very different. I think this kind of complexity reflects a higher level of thinking.

Westworld (the Sci-Fi series) have stories with characters speaking Lakȟóta. That is how I got an interest in this beautiful language.

In some cultures the snake represents knowledge and wisdom.

What is your native tongue? You have an accent that I find difficult to pin down. Excellent work. I hit subscribe right away.

Very informative video । Please make a vedio on the Bengali বাংলা language। It's my native language।

Dance with Wolves is my favorite film. Congratulations for this important subject.. I sse you. Bye.

I highly recommend Ruth Beebe Hill’s ‘Hanta Yo’ which roughly translates to ‘Here I Come.’ It’s worth a read. Ms.Hill worked along side a Siouan elder to recreate an accurate dialect.

Hi Julie.. Watched a few of your video's and couldn't stop wondering something. You obviously are passionate about languages and are taking a lot of time to research before making these videos. You are also very good with pronounciation regardless of how different the language is from your native language. Kudos to you on the pronounciation. Now I've been wondering about your background. I see you are located in UK but I hear a little eastern european accent in your english and wondered what country in europe you are originally from. Defenitely not Irish or scotch or even german or french or Italian accent. Polish maybe? Yeah - now that I just heard you say "the" fast. It sounded just like one of my college friend Elizabeth who was polish. So where in europe is your background and what do you do beside being a youtuber? School? job? Also, You mentioned of $1 a month support in a video but that was 4 years old. Are you still seeking that support?

Hi Juli, can u make vocabularies video about Kra Dai Language with Ecun Buyang, Qabiao, Paha dialect.

I recommend the film "Prey" for the language and culture. It's a unique film.

I hope you make a video about the Romanian language!

There is another language besides Lakota and Dakota that is part of the linguistic grouping. And that is Nakota or Nakoda, the language of the Stoney or Assiniboine tribe, sometimes historic allies of the Lakota and Dakota--and sometimes enemies.