Kansa, sometimes known as Kaw or Kanza, is a Siouan language of the Dhegihan group once spoken by the Kaw people of

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

. Vice President Charles Curtis spoke Kansa as a child. The last mother-tongue speaker, Walter Kekahbah, died in 1983.

Classification

Kansa is a Dhegiha Siouan language, a broader category containing other languages such as Quapaw, Omaha, Ponca and Osage. This group of languages falls under Mississippi Valley Siouan, which is grouped under the largest category of the Siouan language family.

History

The speakers of Kansa, known as the Kaw people, lived together with the Siouan-speakers in a united nation known as the Dhegiha Siouan group. This group was originally situated north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River and then moved west down the Ohio River. Following their westward migration, the Dhegiha Siouan group branched into five indigenous ''tribes'' (Sioux subgroups) known mainly as Ponca, Osage, Omaha, Quapaw or Kaw people. Later on, many Kaw people migrated west of Missouri river and were called "People of the Southwind." The languages of the 5 tribes originating from the single Dhegiha group are quite similar, and have been regarded as dialects of each other.

Geographic distribution

The Kansa Sioux language was mostly spoken only in the plains region now known as the U.S. state of Kansas, and now because all of the descendants of Native Kansa speakers have died, Kansa is no longer natively spoken. Members of the tribe now use English, while some still understand certain Kansa phrases and words. There are, however, ongoing

language revitalization Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...

efforts to document and study several Native languages, both to improve understanding of language evolution and to honor the legacy of indigenous peoples.

Scholarship and resources

Pioneering anthropologist and linguist James Owen Dorsey collected 604 Kansa words in the 1880s and also made about 25,000 entries in a Kansa-English dictionary which has never been published. Dorsey also collected 24 narratives, historical accounts, and personal letters from nine Kansa speakers. In 1974, linguist Robert L. Rankin met Walter Kekahbah (d. 1983), Ralph Pepper (d. 1982), and Maud McCauley Rowe (d. 1978), the last surviving native speakers of Kansa. Rankin made extensive recordings of all three, especially Rowe, and his work over the next 31 years documented the language and helped the Kaw Nation to develop language learning materials.Ranney, Dave. “Researchers try to preserve Indian languages.”
accessed 12 Apr 2011

Phonology

Kansa has 29 consonants and 8 vowels. /ɛ/ is phonetically open-mid, whereas /o/ is phonetically close-mid. Additionally, /a/ and /o/ can also be pronounced as �and respectively.

Grammar

Nouns

Kansa does not mark nouns for

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

. The number of a particular noun can be determined from the verb, an article or from context. For example, the word could be translated to English as "squirrel" or "squirrels" depending on context, in the sentence , (), it must be a single squirrel because of the article .

Verbs

Kansa is a SOV language and the verbs are

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

based on the person and number of their subjects and objects. For example, in the sentence (), the object , (), comes before the verb (). Kansa does not have

verb tense In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, an ...

Orthography

Vocabulary

Kansa has a great deal of vocabulary in common with the other languages of the Dhegiha Siouan group. The following table compares cognates in Kansa and Osage:

Language revitalization

As of 2012, the Kaw Nation offers online language learning for Kansa second language speakers. The 2nd Annual Dhegiha Gathering in 2012 brought Kansa,

Quapaw The Quapaw ( , Quapaw language, Quapaw: ) or Arkansas, officially the Quapaw Nation, is a List of federally recognized tribes in the United States, U.S. federally recognized tribe comprising about 6,000 citizens. Also known as the Ogáxpa or � ...

, Osage,

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the List of cities in Nebraska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is located in the Midwestern United States along the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's List of United S ...

and

Ponca The Ponca people are a nation primarily located in the Great Plains of North America that share a common Ponca culture, history, and language, identified with two Indigenous nations: the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma or the Ponca Tribe of ...

speakers together to share best practices in language revitalization.

References

External links

Kansa language at the Kaw Nation
(extensive online language study resources and texts)

OLAC resources in and about the Kansa language

English to Kansa Dictionary

Kanza Language for Families and Communities

Examining the Development of Kaw Writing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kansa Language Kaw tribe Indigenous languages of Oklahoma Western Siouan languages Languages extinct in the 1980s Native American language revitalization