The LSI shut its doors June 21, but LLC had lots more to get done. From June 24-27, six Lakota fluent speakers joined LLC staff at Makoché Studios in Bismarck, to record 20,000 Lakota words for the New Lakota Dictionary-Online. This audio component of the NLD-O, which will allow users to hear a Lakota word spoken correctly as they call it up, is the final element of the NLD-O and has taken years to come to fruition.
The speakers were Ken and Bernadine Little Thunder, Iris Eagle Chasing, Manny Iron Hawk, Ben Black Bear and Kevin Locke. The LLC team included Linguistic Director Jan Ullrich as Project Manager, assisted by linguists Armik Mirzayan and Nacole Walker.
The staff at Makoché set up three recording areas so that three speakers at a time could record simultaneously. The grueling eight-hour days yielded nearly 100 hours of audio, documenting both male and female voices speaking all 20,000 Lakota words.
Jan Ullrich had already spent weeks beforehand preparing printouts of the 20,000 words – and even now the work is not done. Now Ullrich, Mirzayan and the NLD-O programmer Konstantine Chmielnicki will spend about three months separating the 100 hours of audio into individual audio files for each word, “clean” the sound quality, select the best spoken version of each word, and connect the audio files to the online text database so that a word search will bring up the audio file along with the written word.
The film crew working on the documentary film Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpimade two visits to Lakota Country this June and came away with what they called outstanding results. In their first visit, they recorded scenes and interviews with participating families and staff at the Sitting Bull College Language Immersion Nest. The personal stories of those creating and sustaining the Nest have become central to the film as it is taking shape under the direction of Lawrence Hott, principal of Florentine Films/Hott Productions.
The second shoot took place at Makoché Studios in Bismarck, as the LLC staff team and fluent Lakota speakers recorded thousands of Lakota words for the New Lakota Dictionary-Online’s audio project. These two production weeks were supported by grants from the Administration for Native Americans, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Vision Maker Media (formerly Native American Public Telecommunications, Inc.).
There is more great news afoot for Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi! Our application to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a large production grant was successful! The whole production is now close to being fully funded, and the film’s future for public television broadcast and availability to a worldwide audience is much brighter. There is much more to come for Rising Voices/ Hótȟaŋiŋpi. Watch these newsletters for further updates.
The benchmark product in the Consortium’s comprehensive language revitalization plan has always been the Level 5 textbook and audio CD, as it would advance students to proficiency in the language – the ability to initiate and hold conversations, as well as read and write with clarity. A technical matter with our 2011 Administration for Native Americans application for funding this project meant that we did not get the major funding that we normally expect with each textbook level. As a result, the Level 5 textbook development and production has had to proceed through 2012 and 2013 with staff working fewer hours, meaning that the book’s release is far behind schedule.
However, at this newsletter’s mailing all of the book’s units are done, reviewed and off to the printer. The prototype will definitely be available at the 2014 LSIfor a full introduction to teachers and schools.
LLC is celebrating the Administration for Native Americans’ award of a sizable grant to fund production of the Lakota Language Handbook, a grammar text that is another advanced element of the Consortium’s comprehensive language revitalization plan. The handbook will expand and deepen the 100-page section in the center of the New Lakota Dictionary, which already covers orthography, pronunciation, verb forms, conjunctions, syntax, how words change in Fast Speech, and much, much more. This will make it an invaluable reference for advanced students and teachers of the language, as they practice and maintain the language in the next decade.
The Handbook project’s scope will mean another two years of development and review work for our Linguistic Director, Jan Ullrich, and our consulting Lakota speakers.
