Dakota Sioux language saved by Scrabble

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 Posted on Mon, Mar. 27, 2006

Dakota Sioux language saved by Scrabble

Associated Press

HANKINSON, N.D. - Those who hope they can stop the Dakota Sioux language
from dying have hit on the perfect word: Scrabble. A special Scrabble
tournament in the language made its debut Friday, pitting teams from Sioux
reservation schools in North Dakota, South Dakota and Manitoba. 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.

"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." "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." The first word to take shape was
sa, pronounced "shah" - the color red.

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. "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.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/14196840.htm