Dances with Wolves

[Anthony Grant]

It may have something to do with people's difficulties in finding
speakers of the language who can coach others for the purposes of syaing
their lies in the relevant language.

Remember that Michael Blake's novel fratured Comanches rather than
Lakhotas as the tribe that Dunbar settled among. I do wonder f the
switch was made because it was easier to find a Lakota-speaker to coach
people in dialogue than a Comanche speaker.  (Though John Ford must have
found one of the latter during the filming of The Searchers.)

Anthony

>>> bi1 at soas.ac.uk 02/12/2003 11:13:37 >>>
Sorry, but why does the nature of Pawnee and Arikara lead to it
becoming gibberish in films.  I'm fascinated
Bruce

On 1 Dec 2003 at 14:20, Parks, Douglas R. wrote:

Date sent:      	Mon, 1 Dec 2003 14:20:17 -0500
Send reply to:  	siouan at lists.colorado.edu
From:           	"Parks, Douglas R." <parksd at indiana.edu>
To:             	<siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Subject:        	RE: Dances with Wolves

> 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
>
>
>
>
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> -----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
>
>