uŋspéičʼičhiyA

Warning: I started with a plan. Then, the stream of consciousness took over. The following is disorganized. But it reflects aspects of learning that may or may not be useful to you. This post will be some insight into how my mind works. Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to create a more organized post. However, for today, I wanted to be more honest to myself, my audience, and any researcher who has interest in how language learners slog through a totally new language. Enjoy!

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One of the first things that I like to do as both a teacher and a learner of a language is to create an inventory, or a micro-dictionary, of words that I can use to practice grammatical structures. The first word that I decided to look at was the word "study".

Here is a screenshot of the dictionary that I am using (I downloaded the program from here.)

Dictionary Entry for "study"

I was a bit (but not really) surprised to see so many entries for this concept. However, I thought that this was a great starting point for looking more deeply at the language.

The example sentences at the bottom provide a lot of useful information. After looking at them, I see that these sentences are linked to other entries. This experience is now more about understanding how this electronic dictionary functions and whatever else I am able to discover.

Let's look at the first example sentence. Lakȟóta is clearly Lakota. When I click on the word, I discover that eháŋni means ancient. Interestingly, wičhówoyake means "narration, tale, legend". Thus, eháŋni wičhówoyake must be referring to history (lit. ancient legends). The final word is the verb for studying.

Now, I am thinking about the structure of this sentence (one day, I will get back to making my list of verbs--this grammatical analysis is much more interesting). Here we have:

Subject--> [n/adj? adj n] Verb

So, I can presume that Verbs will always go at the end. In the examples provided, this is true. But there is something following the verbs in examples 4 and 5. What are "ló" and "yo"? These words instantly remind me of Chinese and Japanese particles. Particles are words that provide pragmatic function to sentences. For example in Chinese 吗 (ma) tells the reader/listener that the sentence is a question and 吧 is used to make a suggestion stronger--basically just a sound that is added for emphasis rather than having specific meaning. In Japanese, よ is used at the ends of sentences to emphasis telling the listener that the information is important (and likely new information). So what do these words do in Lakota? Let's click on the word to find out.

Well, the definition entry uses the term "enclitic"--these are sound/words added to (usually) verbs for some grammatical effect. In English "-n't" is a clitic. "yo" from the example tells us that the sentence is a command given by a male speaker. This is useful information for me, being a male, so I will need to remember to use it when giving commands.

Similarly, "ló" is an assertion given by a male speaker. Wow, I am learning a lot of useful information! (Now my brain is wondering back to a research paper that I wrote about the use of particles in Singapore English...) Be aware that I am in no way making any assertions about historical connections or protolanguages! I am more interested in similar linguistic features and how they compare and contrast cross-culturally. I had similar fun when I compared the Japanese and Cherokee syllabaries. I think it reveals more about human nature and the physiology of language than historical connections.

Another thing that I noticed from the entry for "yo" is the word "šni". It very clearly appears in negative sentences, one that is easily comparable to the affirmative counterpart. I have learned a new word, and that pleases me greatly.

So I will pause here for now, and try to get back on track in the near future. This was pure linguistic pleasure. I hope you were able to follow along.