good advise!

 [ send green star]

You have to be aware that many of the words in the lakota language change depending on who is speaking and depending on whether you are asking a question or saying a statement.

women say ksto at the end of statements and men add yelo to the end of their words in statements.

women add "he" to the end of their questions and men add "hwo".
there are other changes and gender ending rules but I wont go into it. So always becareful cause you dont want to say something and sound like a girl when your a guy or vice versa.

 [ send green star]

Lakota

Young woman , WIKOSKALAKA

 [ send green star]

We each should be careful when we attempt to speak an American Indian language because as in many languages the same word often has another meaning to a different tribe.As an example many tribes use the word "Aho at the end of a prayer". A perrson speaking Cherokee would never use "Aho" at the end of a prayer because aho is often used to tell a Cherokee child to watch what they are saying after they say something wrong. In Cherokee "Aholi"(ahoe lee) means mouth which is often spoken in a loud voice when scolding a child and is shortened and shouted out "Aho" which in my home meant we must be careful what we were saying. My dad was a minister and when we kids were around near the house we had to carefully watch what we said and having a lot of brothers and sisters  I often heard the word Aho being shouted at either myself or one of them.From about the age nine and up I tried to avoid being around the house most of the day,except of course,during the times meals were being served.

 [ send green star]

Cherokee

Sunshine = agalisgv (ah gaah lees guh)

Rain= agasga (ah gaahs gaah)

 [ send green star]

LAKOTA

Mother-in-law, UCISIYA

 [ send green star]

thank you so much for continuing your languages here, you are such special people to share these cherished laguages with all of us! you all are awesome!   Cathi

 [ send green star]

Cherokee

Happy= aliheliga (ah lee hay lee gaah)

 [ send green star]

Love very much (to),TEHILA IT A

Love,WASTE TAKE

 [ send green star]

God,TUNKASILA or WAKATANKA

 [ send green star]

Since tomorrow is a special day to select our leaders here in the US todays language lesson is the Cherokee word for vote..

Vote = adasuyesgv (adah sue yaysguh)

If you select not to vote please don't complain about the people those who did vote placed into office..

 [ send green star]

Man = Wicasa

 [ send green star]

Blackfoot, or Siksika, is an Algonquian language spoken by 8000 people in southern Alberta and northern Montana. The two main dialects are called Pikanii and Siksika Blackfoot. Many children are still learning Blackfoot, but the language is currently undergoing linguistic shift, with 'Old Blackfoot' being spoken by older generations and 'New Blackfoot' being spoken by younger ones.

 [ send green star]

Dakota/Lakota

Cousin-female (of a man),HANKA SI
Cousin-male (of a man),TAN HON SI

 [ send green star]

Mohawk is an Iroquoian language of the Northeast Woodlands. It is the healthiest of the Six Nations languages with about 3000 fluent speakers, half in Canada and half in New York state.

In different Mohawk communities, the language is spoken slightly differently. The most noticeable difference is the letter r, which is pronounced as an l in Ahkwesahsne. Another difference is the pronunciation of ts. In Kahnawake, this sound is always pronounced like the ts in tsunami, but on other reserves it varies. A third difference is the pronunciation of the consonants k and t. In most dialects, these consonants are pronounced voiced (like English g and d) before a vowel. But in Tyendinaga, some speakers pronounce them as unaspirated voiceless consonants before some vowels (like k in English skate or t in English stake.) The differences between Mohawk dialects are comparable to the differences between English dialects spoken in Canada and the United States.

 [ send green star]

The Pueblo are a diverse people and speak many different languages. There are three main languages spoken; each containing several subgroups. The main languages include: Uto-Aztecan, Keresan, and Tanoan. Though there are differences in the way the people speak their languages, it does not put a barrier between them. Dialectal differences between Pueblo speakers are common and more of a novelty than a problem.

 [ send green star]

Choctaw is a Muskogean language of the American Southeast, particularly Mississippi and Alabama. It is very closely related to Chickasaw and many linguists consider the two dialects of a single language. There are around 10,000 speakers of Choctaw today (and another 1000 Chickasaw speakers), most in Oklahoma, where the Choctaw tribe was forcibly relocated in the 1800's. Like other Muskogean languages, Choctaw is a language with morphologically complex verbs and SOV word order.

 [ send green star]

Dakota-Lakota Sioux Language Dakota and Lakota are Siouan languages of the Great Plains. They are so closely related that most linguists consider them dialects of the same language, similar to the difference between British and American English. There are some differences in pronunciation, but they are very regular, and Dakota and Lakota Indians can almost always understand each other. The Nakota languages--Stoney and Assiniboine--are also closely related languages but a Dakota or Lakota Sioux speaker cannot easily understand them without language lessons, similar to the difference between Spanish and Portuguese. There are a combined 16,000 speakers of Lakota and Dakota Sioux in the western United States and southern Canada, especially in their namesake states of North and South Dakota.

 [ send green star]

In a letter dated May 20, 1848, Schoolcraft gives the following words:

 [ send green star]

Crow is a Siouan language of the Great Plains, spoken today by more than 4000 people in Montana. In their own language, the people call themselves Apsaaloke or Absaroke.

Man =/>Bacheé (Bah chea)/>Woman =/>Bía (bee ah)/> 

 [ send green star]

The threat to linguistic resources is now recognized as a worldwide crisis. According to Krauss (1992a), as many as half of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken on earth are "moribund"; that is, they are spoken only by adults who no longer teach them to the next generation. An additional 40 percent may soon be threatened because the number of children learning them is declining measurably. In other words, 90 percent of existing languages today are likely to die or become seriously embattled within the next century. That leaves only about 600 languages, 10 percent of the world's total, that remain relatively secure – for now. This assessment is confirmed, with and without such detailed estimates, by linguists reporting the decline of languages on a global scale, but especially in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia (Robins & Uhlenbeck, 1991; Brenzinger, 1992; Schmidt, 1990).

In formulating a response to this crisis, there are three questions that need to be explored: (1) What causes language decline and extinction? (2) Can the process be reversed? And (3) why should we concern ourselves with this problem? Before attempting to provide answers, it would be helpful to look in detail at the situation of Native American languages in the United States.

The Crisis

Language loss has been especially acute in North America. No doubt scores, perhaps hundreds, of tongues indigenous to this continent have vanished since 1492. Some have perished without a trace. Others survived long enough for 20th century linguists to track down their last speakers and partially describe their grammars – for example, Mohican in Wisconsin, Catawba in South Carolina, Yahi in California, Natchez in Louisiana, and Mashpi in Massachusetts (Swadesh, 1948).

While Krauss (1995) estimates that 175 indigenous languages are still spoken in the United States, he classifies 155 of these – 89 percent of the total– as moribund. Increasingly, young Native Americans grow up speaking only English, learning at best a few words of their ancestral tongue. Out of 20 native languages still spoken in Alaska, only Central Yupik and St. Lawrence Island Yupik are being transmitted to the next generation. Similarly, in Oklahoma only two of 23 are being learned by children. All of the nearly 50 languages indigenous to California are moribund; most are kept alive by small groups of elders (Hinton, 1994). Few of Washington State's 16 Indian vernaculars are spoken by anyone under the age of 60. Krauss (1995) projects that, nationwide, 45 of today's Native American languages will lose their last native speakers by the year 2000; 125 by 2025; and 155 by 2050. Most of the 20 that remain, while viable at present, will soon be fighting to survive.

The imminence and scale of language extinction are well illustrated by the Census Bureau's (1993) estimate that more than one-third of American Indian and Alaska Native tongues had fewer than 100 home speakers in 1990.<1> And this is probably a conservative estimate of the threat, since the Census has no way of knowing whether these are fluent speakers. It simply asks the rather vague and ambiguous question: "Does this person speak a language other than English at home?" But not "How well?" "How often?" or "Under what circumstances?"<2>

Rapid shift to English is evident even among speakers of the healthiest indigenous languages such as Navajo, a group that was historically isolated and thus among the slowest to become bilingual. As late as 1930, 71 percent of Navajos spoke no English, as compared with only 17 percent of all American Indians at the time (Census Bureau, 1937). The number who speak Navajo in the home remains substantial – 148,530 in 1990, or 45 percent of all Native American language speakers (Census Bureau, 1993). But the percentage of Navajos who speak only English is growing, predictably among those who have migrated from their tribal homeland, but also among those who have remained. For Navajos living on the reservation, aged 5 and older, the proportion of English-only speakers rose from 7.2 percent in 1980 to 15.0 percent in 1990. For those aged 5-17, the increase was even more dramatic: from 11.8 percent to 28.4 percent (see Table 1). Among school-age children living on the reservation, the number of monolingual English speakers more than doubled, from 5,103 to 12,207.

 [ send green star]

goodby= amba

 [ send green star]

Choctaw language
Yokoke ( yo ko kay) = Thank You

 [ send green star]

The Cheyenne Indians- Tribe of Algonkian linguistic stock, whose name means "red talker", or "people of a different speech", lived, and hunted on the hills and prairies alongside the Missouri and Red rivers.

In the 1700s, after acquiring horses from the Spanish like the Comanche Indians before them, the once sedentary Cheyenne became expert buffalo hunters. The tribe usually moved their encampments according to the location of the buffalo herd they were following.  Like other plains Indians, The Cheyenne had become very dependent on the buffalo for food, clothing, and other other items such as tools and jewelry.  Buffalo hearts, brains, liver and kidneys were best eaten warm, as the Cheyenne celebrated a successful hunt. 

Aside from warm winter robes, Cheyenne clothes were not made from buffalo skins; hip-leggings, jackets, dresses, shirts, and moccasins were made from buckskin, which was softer  than the thick buffalo hides which were more suited to making winter clothes, blankets and tipi coverings.

One Cheyenne legend tells us that the buffalo used to eat humans, and that a race between animals and humans had been set up to decide whether it would be the animals who would eat the humans, or the humans who would eat the animals. The magpie and the eagle, who were on the same side as the humans had won the race, causing the buffalo to tell their young to hide from humans, who would soon be hunting them.  The buffalo also told their young to take with them some human flesh as provisions, which they stuck in front of their chests.  It was according to this legend that the Cheyenne did not consume the flesh beneath the throat of the buffalo, as it was believed to be made from human flesh.

The Cheyenne creation myth is also interesting, as it offers a story similar to Christianity's Old Testament and God's creation of Adam and Eve, in which we are told that Haemmawihio had created man from his  right rib, and woman from his left.  After Heammawehio had created man and woman, he placed the woman in the north to control of Hoimaha, who in turn controlled storms, snow, and cold, and was also responsible for illness and death.  Heammawehio placed the man in the south to control the heat, and the thunder.  Twice a year, the two battle for control of the earth, creating the seasons.  Another important figure in Cheyenne mythology is that of Sweet Medicine, a deity responsible for giving the Cheyenne four arrows, two bestowing them with power over men, two giving them power over the buffalo.

 [ send green star]

Cheyenne Language

Welcome = va'ôhtama

 [ send green star]

The word "Apache" comes from the Yuma word for "fighting-men". It also comes from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The Zuni name for Navajo was called "Apachis de Nabaju" by the earliest Spaniards exploring New Mexico. Their name for themselves is N'de, Inde or Tinde ("the people"). The Apaches are well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and inexhaustible endurance. Continuous wars among other tribes and invaders from Mexico followed the Apaches' growing reputation of warlike character. When they confronted Coronado in 1540, they lived in eastern New Mexico, and reached Arizona in the 1600s. The Apache are described as a gentle people; faithful in their friendship.

Apache is a language closely related to Navajo.

 [ send green star]

A link to Choctaw Phrases http://myweb.cableone.net/areeves/choctaw/phrase.htm

 [ send green star]

Choctaw Language

Hello = Halito  (ha lee toe)

 [ send green star]

Walelu and I discussed creating this thread where we shall post phrases and words from various Tribes located throughout the Americas. My intent when I created this group back in 2004 was to post words and pharses from many different tribes not just Cherokee. Walelu will be helping me post these words and we hope some other tribal members will research and post a few phrases and words from their tribes. If you have any questions please contact either Walelu or myself..

Walelu and I wish you and yours many blessings and much love..

 [ send green star]