Native American Languages

The Lakota word mahto (in some modern orthographies written matho) is generic for any kind of bear, male or female. The word for little is chinchala, so mahto chinchala is "little bear" of either sex.

In order to emphatically specify a female bear you would need to add winyela, which can be used of humans or animals; if you are thinking about a female human being with the name "Little Bear" you would have to add -win to the end of the name.

So:

• mahto chinchala = a little bear
• mahto chinchala winyela = a little bear that is female
• mahto chinchalawin = a woman called Little Bear

The Lakota term ch'unkshi can mean daughter!, or my daughter; ch'unkshi kin means a daughter; ch'unkshiwaye means she is my daughter.

The word ch'unkshi is also applied to the daughters of a woman's sisters and other female relatives.

An alternative word for daughter is chuwitku.

In Navajo not everything is word for word like it is in English.

You could just say ahéhee'. (ah-hyeh-he') meaning "thank you."

If you are starting to talk to a gathering you might say: Ahéhee' shikéí dóó shidine'é… (Thank you my friends/family and my people…)

or

you might say if someone has come to see you: Shaa yíníyáhígíí baa 'ahééh nisin.

---Which means "I'm grateful (or appreciate or thankful) for you coming to see me".

You can say this many ways with slight differences that change it a great deal in the way you say it in Navajo.

"I'm thankful for you for coming to see me like you usually do" would make a different conjugation than : "I'm grateful for you coming to see me over and over".

Usually you need more careful particulars in the Navajo than you need in the Navajo because there are modes and aspects in Navajo as well as tense and the verb conjugates as to who is being spoken about with a dual and plural and fourth person and indefinite person too. Sometimes the verb changes depending on what sort of object is being acted upon, such as picking up a round object vs a long thin flexible one.

to learn (1st person imperfective)--íhoosh'aah

ínáhoosh'ááh--- Iterative mode. íhooł'ą́ą́' --- perfective.

íhwiideesh'ááł --future mode. íhoosh'ááł --Optative mode

"Are you leaning Navajo" ---Diné bizaadísh bóhooł'aah

Aoo' dine bizaad bihoosh'aah. --Yes, I am learning Navajo language.

yihoołaah--- he is learning it

Navajo has many, many more ways to conjugate a verb than in English.

There is no language called Mohican, since the Mohican tribe was invented by James Fenimore Cooper for one of his books. He had heard of two different eastern woodlands tribes (the Mohegan and the Mahican) and simply mixed the two names together to produce a third.

In the Mahican language the word for river is sibò; in Mohegan it is sipo.

One modern "expert" has written that the place-name Nescopeck is "An Indian word meaning "black, deep, and still water." Ignoring the impossibly vague term "Indian word", there is no native American language that can express three different concepts (black, deep and still) in such a short word. Another writer claims that it is an Algonquian word for "black spring", which seems far more likely.

Since the place is said to be in north-eastern Pennsylvania the language should be Unami (Lenape). In that language water is mpi and black is sëke or sLike-; clearly neither of these appear in the word nescopeck.

One very archaic Lenape word for a lake is scheyjunuppek, which could comprise two elements (big + pool of water), with -uppek looking very close to -opek. If the nesc- element is similarly archaic and means dark or deep or something of that kind, the word would make sense as "black pool or spring".

The Lakota prefix iča- signifies "alongside", but there is no such element as taga in Lakota. The word ičagla means "by the edge of" - this is the nearest I can find.

Perhaps you need to check the spelling of your word - is the second letter really a c (pronounced ch)? or is it a k?