Customer Reviews

Int To Shoshoni Language - Set

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Linguistically, the most exiting language course ever published for learners of the Shoshoni Language. The course starts with Dr. Loether's refinement of the old Shoshoni orthography, then slowly begins feeding the learner into meaningful dialogs and situations, mixed with useful everyday vocabulary, grammar, and sentence drills. This course is designed for the learner to actually use the Shoshoni language, such as, at the house, the trading post, the museum, the pow-wow, or the university. The tapes are wonderfully orchestrated by fluent Drusilla Gould, who speaks very slow and thoughtfully for the learner focusing on the new sounds and words.

Culturally, An Introduction to the Shoshoni Language is a window into the Shoshoni people and culture. Each chapter, in addition to the language lesson, introduces the learner to different topics and cultural situation facing the everyday Shoshoni person. At the end of each dialog, there are

This is a great value for an audio language course. The set comes with four cassettes of spoken Shoshoni lessons and one 200-page textbook including pronunciation, grammar, dialogues, cultural material and a dictionary. The speakers are Fort Hill Shoshones, but there is information about other dialects of the Shoshoni language here as well.

An introduction to one of the lesser known languages of native culture. This volume is accompanied by a set of tapes that make it clear and consise. An easy to read and understand volume with glossaries from Shoshoni to English and English to Shoshoni. It is volumes like this that will keep native languages from becoming extinct.

Drusilla Gould is a fluent Shoshone speaker and has devoted herself to this endeavor by the encouragement and support of her grandmother. Her cultural and historical perspective to the language offers the depth of meaning to the words. Chris Loether offers his vast knowledge as a linguist to the text. This book is a step in the right direction towards saving and preserving the Shoshoni language.

I am studying the Shoshoni Language, and this book is great. I was able to get the CDs that I use along with this book. Wonderful!

Excellent at what it tries to do: Make spoken Fort Hall Shoshoni dialect teachable through using the American English alphabet. The authors, Drusilla Gould and Christopher Loether, associated with Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho, show they are experts. In addition to basic words and phrases, the book covers whispered syllables, glotal stops, accents, drills, dialog practice, and gets one familiar with a moderate sized vocabulary. It includes a Shoshoni-to-English dictionary (both ways) in the back.

Admittedly, you won't become an expert speaker by reading this book--you'd need to speak it a lot with native speakers to do that--but it would be a big help for non-natives interested in learning. There is interesting Shoshoni-focused Indian lore, traditional living habits, and spiritual clues, too, but language is its focus. It does it well. I used it to help lend authenticity in writing my fiction novel, "Sagebrush at Stony Creek" (still unpublished) of a Shoshoni boy's adventures toward manhood and defeating evil forces around and in the reservation. See [...] .