Lakota Language Dictionary

Our dictionary, however, is under construction at this time as words, image files, and audio files are added and updated frequently so please visit us often.

The dictionary pages provide alphabetical listings in English word sequence. The audio portion can be heard when using the English to Lakota or Lakota to English search pages. When using these search pages, the words that match your search criteria will be displayed.

When searching, enter the word or beginning few characters of a word. When the search word is found, if the Lakota word on the second line is displayed, then you can assume the audio for this word is available. To understand how the English to Lakota page is used, we suggest a search for 'horse' or 'come'. Verbs such as live, here, come, hungry, and want have the complete conjugation in the dictionary to help understand the grammar of the language. When searching Lakota words, the ƞ (nasal n) is just entered as a n.

We must also suggest paying close attention to the nomenclature of the word. Often, words that are used as both a noun and a verb will have different spellings for each.

Since we can not safely display the fonts necessary for the Lakota alphabet, the Lakota spelling is a graphic file. The Lakota search word is spelled using normal English characters and is used when searching for the Lakota word.

All links above are functional, but we have not fully edited the dictionary for correctness and accuracy. Also, we are have not uploaded most of the image files for the Lakota spelling nor the audio files for listening to the Lakota word. If you do not find the words you are looking for, please come back or email us with any suggestions.

We are using the "Everyday Lakota" dictionary for the inital build of our dictionary database. A through C are complete. We intend to expand the online dictionary using "Lakota Dictionary" which has twice as many words. We also want to include phrases, as well as verb conjuncations.

Please be patient while an alphabetical listing page loads. The Lakota spellings are image files and this reduces the load time.

Here's a sample.

English	Listen	Lakota
My name is (your name) and my relatives, I shake your hands with good feelings in my heart.

Due to the Microsoft update KB912812 in April 2006, certain Active X controls required to listen to the audio files in our dictionary require an additional mouse click to play the audio file. You will see a message "Click to activate and use this control." Just click one more time on the play button and the audio file will play. Our web designer is working to simplify this for you. If you are using browsers such as Slimbrowser or Firefox, this issue may not be applicable. This Microsoft update is the result of an ongoing patent dispute with Eolas Technology and the University of California.