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<P><EM class=timedate>Mon Mar 27, 6:13 AM ET</EM> </P>
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<P>Those who hope they can stop the Dakota Sioux language from dying have hit on
the perfect word: Scrabble.</P>
<P>A special Scrabble tournament in the language made its debut Friday, pitting
teams from Sioux reservation schools in North Dakota, South Dakota and
Manitoba.</P>
<P>The game is part of the tribe's campaign to revitalize the Dakota language,
now spoken fluently by a dwindling number of elders. One survey predicted the
last fluent Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota speaker would die in 2025.</P>
<P>"With these efforts, we'll try to prolong that," Darell DeCoteau said as he
gestured to a nearby Scrabble board. "This will probably push that back a little
bit."</P>
<P>"Start in the middle," David Seaboy told a group of middle-school students
from the Enemy Swim Day School at Waubay, S.D. "Everybody help somebody make a
word."</P>
<P>The first word to take shape was sa, pronounced "shah" — the color red.</P>
<P>After a few minutes of frantic consultation with the official Dakota Sioux
Scrabble dictionary, a team built on the base to form the word sapa, pronounced
"shah-pa," or dirty, a word worth seven points.</P>
<P>"This is a good stimulant for the mind," said Seaboy, 63, one of a group of
Sisseton-Wahpeton elders, all fluent in the language, who wrote the 207-page
Dakota dictionary.</P>
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