ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE DAKOTA OR SIOUX INDIANS. 437 



IJussia, l-ara, hlacl', and KAp-A-ar«, very hJaclc ; sary, ycUoic* aud SAp- 

 aary, entirely yelloiv, &c. 



Now, iu Dakota, wc find sajya, blacl; and v.itli tlio reduplication, SAj^- 

 sapa. The reduplication here is, indeed, a reduplication of the syllable 

 sa, and not of s«^^, the word being s«-pa, and not sap-a. The "^> " iu SAp- 

 sa2Xf is inserted after the reduplication of the first syllable, just as we have 

 seen in the above I'ura and KAii-lara, &c. 



In the Ural-Altaic languages " »i" also is sometimes inserted after the 

 first syllable; for instance, in the Turkish heya.r, white, and T^YAM-bcyaz^ 

 very white, &c. If we find, however, similar instances in the Dakota 

 language, such as c'ejM,^ which means Jieshy, (one of the external qual- 

 ities to which this rule applies,) and cBm-cepa, &c., we must consider 

 that the letter "?>4" is in such cases merely a contraction, and replaces, 

 moreover, another labial letter ("j»") followed by a vowel, particulaiiy 

 " «." Thus, for instance, coin is a contraction for copa, gam for gaj^a, 

 liawi for inxpa, ske?» for skepa, om for opa, torn for topa, &c. So is cem, 

 in our exam^)le, onh' an abridged form of cepa ; hence " w" stands here 

 for "j; " or "j^^rt," and belongs essentially to the word itself, while in those 

 Asiatic languages the "wi" is added to the redui)lication of the first syl- 

 lable, like the "j;" in KAp-Aytrrt, &c. We have, therefore, to be very care- 

 ful iu our conclusions. 



The simple doubling of the first syllable is also of frequent occurrence 

 in Dakota; for instance, gi, brown, and gigi, (same meaning;) sni, cold, and 

 snis>ii; Jco, quieh, and lioko, &c. 



There are also some very interesting examples to be found in the 

 Dakota language, which strikingly remind us of a remarkable peculiar- 

 ity frequently met with in the Asiatic languages above adverted to. It 

 consists in the antagonism in form, as well as in meaning, of certain words, 

 according to the nature of their vowels ; so that "«lien such words contain 

 what we may call the strong, full, or hard vowels, viz : «, o, u, (iu the con- 

 tinental in-onunciation,) they generally denote strength, the male sex, 

 affirmation, distance, &c., while the same words with the weak or soft 

 vowels e, i, — the consonantal sJceleton, frame, or ground-tcork of the word 

 remaining the same, — express weakness, t\i(} female sex, negation, proximity, 

 and a whole series of corresponding ideas. 



A few examples will demonstrate this. Thus, for instance, the idea of 

 '■'■ father^'' is expressed in Mantchoo (one of the Ural-Altitic langnage.s) 

 by ama, while '•'■ mother'''' is cme? This gives, no doubt, but a very in- 

 complete idea of that peculiarity, but it will, perhaps, be sufiicieut to 

 explain in a measure what we found analogous in the Dakota language. 

 Instances of the kind are certainly of rare occurrence in the latter, aud 

 we will content ourselves with giving here only a very few examples, in 

 which the above difference of signification is seen to exist, though the 

 significance of the respective vowels seems to be just the reverse; which 

 would iu no wise invalidate the truth of the preceding statement, since 



