How do you speak the Sioux language?

Answer 1

Just the same as any other language, you need to learn the vocabulary (words) and the grammar (how the words are put together and how they change in different situations). Lakota (or the closely related Dakota) does not work anything like English, so you need to forget everything you ever learned about the English language.

You also need to know something about the religion and culture of the Sioux people; it is common to find terms such as yuwipi, meaning "tied one". Without understanding the background (a healer who uses the power of rawhide and stones to perform supernatural healing) this word would make no sense.

The Sungmanitu-Isna (Lone Wolf) website via the link below is a good starting point (look first at the phonological key), but you will quickly realise that the language is highly complex and far from easy to learn. It also helps if you have learned another foreign language so you can identify parts of speech and grammatical terms. There are also very different opinions even among Lakota speakers about the correct way to write Lakota sounds.