Mandan language

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Mandan
Spoken in: United States 
Region: Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota
Total speakers: 6
Language family: Siouan-Catawban
 Siouan
  Mandan
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: sio
ISO 639-3: mhq
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Mandan is an endangered Siouan language.

Contents

[edit] Genetic relations

It was initially thought to be closely related to the languages of the Hidatsa and the Crow tribes. However, since the Mandan language has been in contact with Hidatsa and Crow for many years, the exact relationship between Mandan and other Siouan languages (including Hidatsa and Crow) has been obscured and is currently undetermined. For this reason, Mandan is most often considered to be a separate branch of the Siouan family.

Mandan has two main dialects:

  1. Nuptare
  2. Nuetare

Only the Nuptare variety survived into the 20th century, and all speakers were bilingual in Hidatsa. As of 1999, there were only six fluent speakers of Mandan still alive, though there are currently programs in local schools to encourage the use of the language.[1] Linguist Mauricio Mixco of the University of Utah has been involved in fieldwork with remaining speakers since 1993.

The language received much attention from Euro-Americans because of their lighter skin color, which they speculated was due to an ultimate European origin. In the 1830s Prince Maximilian of Wied spent more time recording Mandan over all other Siouan languages and additionally prepared a comparison list of Mandan and Welsh words (he thought that the Mandan may be displaced Welsh).[2] The theory of the Mandan/Welsh connection was also supported by George Catlin. No linguists would today take this proposal seriously, however, and there is no reliable evidence in its favor.

[edit] Sounds

Mandan has the following sounds:[3]

  • Consonants: /p, t, k, ʔ, s, ʃ, x, h, w, r/
  • Vowels: /i, e, a, o, u, iː, eː, aː, oː, uː, ĩ, ã, ũ, ĩː, ãː, ũː/

Mandan is a tonal language.

[edit] Grammar

Mandan is a subject object verb language.

Mandan has different grammatical forms that depend on gender of the addressee. Questions asked of men must use the suffix -oʔša while the suffix -oʔrą is used when asking of women. Likewise the indicative suffix is -oʔs when addressing men and -oʔre when addressing women, and also for imperatives: -ta (male) , -rą (female).[4]

[edit] Vocabulary

Mandan, like many other North American languages, has elements of sound symbolism in their vocabulary. A /s/ sound often denotes smallness/less intensity, /ʃ/ denotes medium-ness, /x/ denotes largeness/greater intensity:[5]

  • síre "yellow"
  • šíre "tawny"
  • xíre "brown"
  • sró "tinkle"
  • xró "rattle"

[edit] Notes

  1. ^  Personal communication from Mauricio Mixco in 1999, reported in Parks & Rankin. 2001. p. 112.
  2. ^  Chafe. 1976b. p. 37-38.
  3. ^  Phoneme inventory from Mauricio Mixco, reported in Wood & Irvin 2001. p. 349.
  4. ^  Hollow. 1970. p. 457 (in Mithun 1999. p. 280).
  5. ^  Hollow & Parks 1980. p. 82.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Carter, Richard T. (1991a). Old Man Coyote and the wild potato: A Mandan trickster tale. In H. C. Wolfart & J. L. Finlay (Ed.), Linguistic studies presented to John L. Finlay (pp. 27-43). Memoir (No. 8). Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics. ISBN 0-921064-08-X.
  • Carter, Richard T. (1991b). Maximilian's Ruptare vocabulary: Phililogical evidence and Mandan phonology. In F. Ingemann (Ed.), 1990 Mid-America Linguistics Conference: Papers (pp. 479-489). Lawrence, KS: Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas.
  • Chafe, Wallace. (1973). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 10, pp. 1164-1209). The Hague: Mouton. (Republished as Chafe 1976a).
  • Chafe, Wallace. (1976a). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Native languages of the Americas (pp. 527-572). New York: Plenum Press. ISBN 0-306-37157-X. (Originally published as Chafe 1973).
  • Chafe, Wallace. (1976b). The Caddoan, Iroquoian, and Siouan languages. Trends in linguistics: State-of-the-art report (No. 3). The Hague: Mouton. ISBN 90-279-3443-6.
  • Coberly, Mary. (1979). A text analysis and brief grammatical sketch based on 'Trickster challenges the buffalo': A Mandan text collected by Edward Kennard. Colorado Research in Linguistics, 8, 19-94.
  • Hollow, Robert C. (1970). A Mandan dictionary. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).
  • Hollow, Robert C.; & Parks, Douglas. (1980). Studies in plains linguistics: A review. In W. R. Wood & M. P. Liberty (Eds.), Anthropology on the Great Plains (pp. 68-97). Lincoln: University of Nebraska. ISBN 0-8032-4708-7.
  • Kennard, Edward. (1936). Mandan grammar. International Journal of American Linguistics, 9, 1-43.
  • Lowie, Robert H. (1913). Societies of the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians. In R. H. Lowie, Societies of the Crow, Hidatsa, and Mandan Indians (pp. 219-358). Anthropological papers of the American Museum Of Natural History (Vol. 11, Part 3). New York: The Trustees. (Texts are on pp. 355-358).
  • Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
  • Mixco, Mauricio C. (1997a). Mandan. Languages of the world series: Materials 159. Münich: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-213-4.
  • Mixco, Mauricio C. (1997b). Mandan switch reference: A preliminary view. Anthropological Linguistics, 39, 220-298.
  • Parks, Douglas R.; Jones, A. Wesley; Hollow, Robert C; & Ripley, David J. (1978). Earth lodge tales from the upper Missouri. Bismarck, ND: Mary College.
  • Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). The Siouan languages. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94-114). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
  • Will, George; & Spinden, H. J. (1906). The Mandans: A study of their culture, archaeology and language. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 81-219). Cambridge, MA: The Museum. (Reprinted 1976, New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation).
  • Wolvengrey, Arok. (1991). A marker of focus in Mandan discourse. In F. Ingemann (Ed.), 1990 Mid-America Linguistics Conference: Papers (pp. 584-598). Lawrence, KS: Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas.
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