Lakota · Lakȟótiyapi

About Lakota

Language family

Siouan

Where it's spoken

The northern Great Plains, chiefly South Dakota and North Dakota

Speakers

a few thousand speakers, an endangered language

Lakota is one of three closely related Dakotan dialects, along with Dakota and Nakota, that together form part of the wider Siouan family spread across the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley. It was never written traditionally, and standardized writing systems are a 20th-century development built mainly for teaching. Language-nest immersion programs on Lakota reservations are the main effort keeping fluent speakers coming up behind the elder generation.