Customer Reviews

Reading and Writing the Lakota Language

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

These lessons are the most "user-friendly" that I have seen for home study. The only real drawback that I found was that I had to wait the extra few days for the delivery of the accompanying cassettes, because the cassettes and the text are sold separately. These should be packaged together. Even if you only anticipate learning to read and write Lakota, knowing the sounds unique to the Lakota language are essential to grasping the meaning of the written word. The author tells us, "Lakota must be written based on sound." Make sure you order the cassettes and the book!

From the start, Albert White Hat makes it clear that learning Lakota is more than just a linguistic exercise. As he writes in his introduction: "When we teach a language to a student, we should develop in that student another heart and another mind." And indeed, these are lessons in Lakota culture from the ground up, introducing the Lakota heart and mind through their expression in basic grammatical relations. And from the very beginning, White Hat makes it a compelling journey.

I was involved in using this text from the very beginning. Mr. White Hat presented a workshop on how to teach Lakota Language, which I attended. He gave each of the Lakota Language Instructors present a copy of this text to use in their classes. If it were not for this text, I would not have stayed in the field of teaching this long (5 years). It is an excellent resource for teaching Lakota Language which I highly recommend. Pilamayaye ksto. (Thank you).

As wimpy as this sounds, I agree with both the five-star and one-star reviews. As a pronunciation guide and cultural primer, this book rocks. It's clear that the author holds his language in high regard and wants to keep it alive and "pure". This fight for purity (purging words that have become a type of reservation slang) is usually a losing battle - just talk to William Safire or the French Academy. Anyway, the book presents excellent explanations of the meaning of words and the Lakota way of life. What it lacks is completeness and a true under5sanding of language learning. White Hat and some reviewers here seem to think that Lakota is somehow unique and that learning it is different from other languages. Vine Deloria's introduction would have us believe that grammar is the invention of the white man, or some such nonsense. All languages have grammar, and there's precious little grammatical explanation in this book. Often, verbs are presented only in the third person (he, she, it), which means that you have no idea about how to say I X or you X correctly. He never gets to the level of a complete explanation of object pronouns, so I can see IT, but never YOU. I would recommend Buechel's grammar to complement this book. Buechel will never teach you to pronounce correctly, or the cultural significance behind certain words, but he'll give you all the nuts and bolts. This book (with the CD's) is the best guide to actually pronouncing the language correctly. If you're just curious about Lakota, get this book. If you want to learn it, get this book and Buechel's grammar, to get the full picture.

I have spent a great deal of time out west and studied the Lakota Language. As a teacher back east, I run a Native American club and I am interested in teaching people back east the richness of the Lakota language. This book is the best. A rare and wonderful insight into language, culture and spirituality. Pilamayeyelo!

The book is well meant but there isn't enough in it to really learn our language. I have had it for years and read it back and forth but it doesn't teach that much. And I see too much of the non-native editor behind some of the work. I don't understand why the female voice on the CD (most likely that of the editor) is a non-native speaker with strong English accent. And I was never able to pronounce words written in the orthography, I think it is too complicated. I recently started learning from the New Lakota Dictionary, the orthography in it is so much easier to read and there is so much more in it to learn the language and the culture.

Mr. White Hat should be commended for the outstanding job he did combing the inseparable concepts of language and culture. Unfortunately, many of the cultural tidbits were personal anecdotes, which detracted from the flow of language learning. There are hundreds of books on the market he could have studied to format the book in a more approachable manner. The pronunciation of Lakhota phonemes is scattered throughout the chapters, there is no glossary in alphabetical order in the back, the dialogs are barely useful and the list goes on and on. His own orthography is not in Unicode and is overly burdened with diacritical marks. Other books, all be they written for teaching children, such as the Ullrich texts, use a much simpler orthography and attain the same goal of teaching the correct pronunciation. The Ullrich books also use a very useful acute accent on every single word to indicate stress. One of the female voices on the White Hat cd is not a native speaker and her pronunciation is so horrible, I can't believe they used her.
Experienced language learners will be annoyed at the round-about way White Hat describes grammar. He sounds as if he's not really sure of himself and covers with making philosophical remarks.
Despite all I've said, it is of utmost importance that more people learn Native American languages. Lakhota is a real treat for those who are language enthusiasts, people interested in our country's diversity or a Lakhota. Lakhota is no more difficult than many European languages and has many fascinating grammatical concepts and ways of saying things, that will excite the arm-chair linguist. Buy the White Hat textbook, but don't expect to go happily from one lesson to another as one is typically able with, for instance, the British Teach Yourself books.

Since I found much repetition in this book, I copied all relevant info (except pronounciation examples) into a notebook. Well, page six was blank, there waas nothing more to write. This book will teach you forms of address, and its great for teaching pronunciation, but apart from that it just teaches conjugation and colors. Whatever it cost, you will get a Lakota phonetics course for that price.

This is easily the best language text I've seen. As Vine Deloria says in the Foreword, "Traditionally, grammar textbooks are about as exciting as military memos... Reading them is laborious to such an extreme that the reader could conclude that the Prussians are responsible for all linguistic studies." Not this book! This is the first language textbook that has made me laugh, made me cry. The stories that illustrate Lakota usage bring the language to life and place the student among a great people. Not many pages into this book and you will realize that this was written by a truly good and wise man. Thanks to the perfectly clear CD and the excellent presentation, I am thrilled by the progress I am making in Lakota Iyapi. (If you are interested in doing your written exercises on the computer, you can find free computer input software for Lakota at http://www.languagegeek.com/siouan/keyboards/si_kbds.html )
Thank you, Albert White Hat, Sr. , for this wonderful book.

This book is good for some, but not for me. I did not exactly care for the set-up of this textbook. Instead of your typical language in which the lessons are set-up based on dialogues and grammar notes, this text systematically goes through the Lakota alphabet through the WHOLE book. I though that this approach limited the scope of the book and the content that was covered.

The historical/social insights are good, but the overall layout of the book could have been better. Perhaps this would make a good supplement, but I don't think it would make a good textbook by itself.