Phrases
"Háu, kȟolá", literally, "Hello, friend," is the most common greeting, and was transformed into the generic motion picture American Indian "How!", just as the traditional feathered headdress of the Teton was "given" to all movie Indians. As "háu" is the only word in Lakota which contains a diphthong, /au/, it may be a loanword from a non-Siouan language.
"Háu" is spoken only by men; women use the greeting "Haŋ" or "Haŋ kȟolá."
Other than using the word friend, one typically uses the word "cousin" or "cross-cousin" since everyone in the tribe was as family to each other. These words are very important to the language's tone of proper respect. The terms are as follow:
"Taŋhaŋši" N - my male cross-cousin (man speaking, term of address)
"Taŋhaŋšitku" N - his male cross-cousin
"Taŋhaŋšiya" V-CAUSATIVE - to have someone for a male cross-cousin
"Haŋkaši" N - my female cross-cousin (man speaking, term of address)
"Haŋkašitku" N - his female cross-cousin
"Haŋkašiya" V-CAUSATIVE - to have someone for a female cross-cousin
"(S)cephaŋši" N - my female cross-cousin (woman speaking, term of address)
"(S)cepȟaŋšitku" N - her female cross-cousin
"(S)čepaŋšiya" V-CAUSATIVE - to have someone for a female cross-cousin
"šic'eši" N - my male cross-cousin (woman speaking, term of address)
"šic'ešitku" N - her male cross-cousin
"šic'ešiya" V-CAUSATIVE - to have someone for a male cross-cousin
"Hakataku" N - her brothers and male cross cousins, his sisters and female cross-cousins (i.e. relative requiring respect)
"Hakataya" V-CAUSATIVE - to have someone for a sibling or cross-cousin of the opposite sex
Read more about this topic: Lakota Language
Famous quotes containing the word phrases:
“A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
One who the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The Americans ... have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“It is a necessary condition of one’s ascribing states of consciousness, experiences, to oneself, in the way one does, that one should also ascribe them, or be prepared to ascribe them, to others who are not oneself.... The ascribing phrases are used in just the same sense when the subject is another as when the subject is oneself.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)