The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations
to Other Languages, by Andrew Woods Williamson

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Title: The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages

Author: Andrew Woods Williamson

Release Date: September 4, 2008 [EBook #26529]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE DAKOTAN LANGUAGES

BY

A. W. WILLIAMSON.

AUGUSTANA COLLEGE, ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS.

FROM

AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN, JANUARY, 1882.

THE DAKOTAN LANGUAGES, AND THEIR RELATIONS
TO OTHER LANGUAGES.

BY A. W. WILLIAMSON.

To the ethnologist and to the philologist the Dakotas and those speaking
kindred languages are a very interesting people. There are four
principal Dakota dialects, the Santee, Yankton, Assinniboin and Titon.
The allied languages may be divided into three groups:

I. a, Winnebago; b, Osage, Kaw, and 2 Quapaw; c, Iowa, Otoe and
Missouri; d, Omaha and Ponka.

II. Mandan.

III. a, Minnetaree (Minitari) or Hidatsa; b, Absauraka, or Crow.

Pawnee and Aricaree seem also to be somewhat related.

In my father's opinion the Dakota dialects differ about as much as the
Greek dialects did in the time of Homer, and the Assinniboin is much
nearer to the Yankton dialect of which it is an offshoot than is the
Titon. Judging by the vocabularies to which I have access chiefly in
Hayden's "Indian tribes of the Missouri," I would suppose the first
group to differ from the Dakota about as much as the German from the
English, and to differ among themselves somewhat as Hollandish,
Friesian, and English. The Mandan appears to be separated much more
widely from them than they are from each other. The Minnetaree and Crow
constitute a distinct group diverging from each other more than the
Santee and Titon, the extreme dialects of the Dakota. They show more
resemblance to the Mandan than to any other one