Dances with Wolves

[Parks, Douglas R.]

Anthony,

It has been several years since I watched Dances with Wolves, but the
"Pawnees" in the movie were not speaking Pawnee--or anything like it.
My impression was that the speech is nonsense.  (But maybe if I listened
again I might hear a Pawnee word or two.)

That is also the case for most of the Arikara speech that occurs in a TV
serial on Custer that aired five or six years ago.  The character
playing Bloody Knife (Custer's favorite scout) says, "Kaakii'," which
means "no."  The English subtitles, however, gave two or three long
sentences for Kaakii'.  The other Arikara is jibberish.  Ditto the
Arikara in the sequel to "A Man Called Horse."  That's not surprising,
though, given the nature of Arikara and Pawnee.

Doug



------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
FIGHT BACK AGAINST SPAM!
Download Spam Inspector, the Award Winning Anti-Spam Filter
http://mail.giantcompany.com


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
[mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony Grant
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 1:43 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: Dances with Wolves

Folks:

As far as I could tell, based on my reading of the works of Douglas R
Parks, James R Murie, Gene Weltfish and Ferdinand Hayden.at least some
of  the Pawnees in the film were speaking Pawnee. I recall earing
something like /tawit/ 'three' and also a large number of words ending
in /-ks/. I think I heard /tsahriks/ 'person' in there somewhere, but I
may be mistaken.  Plus the phonology of the language was NOTHING like
that either of Lakhota or Cherokee.

Anthony