Genetic relations

It was initially thought to be closely related to the languages of the Hidatsa

Hidatsa

The Hidatsa are a Siouan people, a part of the Three Affiliated Tribes. The Hidatsa's autonym is Hiraacá. According to the tribal tradition, the word hiraacá derives from the word "willow"; however, the etymology is not transparent and the similarity to mirahací ‘willows’ inconclusive...

 and the Crow tribes. However, since the Mandan language has been in contact

Language contact

Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...

 with Hidatsa

Hidatsa language

Hidatsa is an endangered Siouan language, closely related to the Crow language. It is spoken by the Hidatsa tribe, primarily in North Dakota and South Dakota....

 and Crow

Crow language

Crow is a Missouri Valley Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Nation in present-day southeastern Montana...

 for many years, the exact relationship between Mandan and other Siouan languages (including Hidatsa and Crow) has been obscured and is currently undetermined. For this reason, Mandan is most often considered to be a separate branch of the Siouan family.

Mandan has two main dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s:

1. Nuptare
2. Nuetare

Only the Nuptare variety survived into the 20th century, and all speakers were bilingual in Hidatsa. In 1999, there were only six fluent speakers of Mandan still alive. By 2009, there was just one, Dr Edwin Benson

Edwin Benson

Edwin Benson is the last speaker of the Mandan language. He was born in 1931 on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. He has been involved in efforts to teach the basics of Mandan to youth....

 (born 1931). There are currently programs in local schools to encourage the use of the language. Linguist Mauricio Mixco of the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

 has been involved in fieldwork with remaining speakers since 1993. Along with the Hidatsa and Arikara languages, it is taught at Fort Berthold Community College.

The language received much attention from Euro-Americans because of the supposedly lighter skin color of the Mandan people, which they speculated was due to an ultimate European origin. In the 1830s Prince Maximilian of Wied spent more time recording Mandan over all other Siouan languages and additionally prepared a comparison list of Mandan and Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

 words (he thought that the Mandan may be displaced Welsh). The idea of a Mandan/Welsh connection was also supported by George Catlin

George Catlin

George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.-Early years:...

.

Sounds

Mandan has the following phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s:

Consonants of Mandan	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	t		k	ʔ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		s	ʃ	x	h
Sonorant	w	r

/w/ and /r/ become [m] and [n] before nasal vowels, and /r/ is [ⁿd] word-initially.

Vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s of Mandan

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...				Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...				Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
	Oral		Nasal Nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...		Oral		Nasal Nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...		Oral		Nasal Nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
	short Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...	long	short	long	short	long	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i	iː	ĩ	ĩː					u	uː	ũ	ũː
Mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...	e	eː							o	oː
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...					a	aː	ã	ãː

Grammar

Mandan is a subject–object–verb language.

Mandan has different grammatical forms that depend on gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

 of the addressee

Addressee

In linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speaker's communication. A listener is either an addressee or a bystander.Second-person pronouns refer to an addressee or a group including an addressee...

. Questions asked of men must use the suffix

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

  while the suffix is used when asking of women. Likewise the indicative suffix is when addressing men and when addressing women, and also for imperatives

Imperative mood

The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...

: (male) , (female).

Mandan verbs include a set of postural verbs, which encode the shapes of the subject of the verb:

wɛ́rex	nakóc
wɛ́rex	nak-óc
pot	sit-present
'A pot was there (sitting).'

mítixtɛ̀na	tɛ́romakoc
míti-xtɛ̀-na	tɛ-romakoc
village-big-emphatic	stand-narrative.past
'There was a big village.'

má:ta	makómakoc
má:ta	mak-omakoc
river	lie-narrative.past
'The river was there.'

Note that the English translations of these forms are not "A pot was sitting there," "A big village stood there," or "The river lay there." This reflects the fact that the postural categorization is required in such Mandan locative statements.

Vocabulary

Mandan, like many other North American languages, has elements of sound symbolism

Sound symbolism

Sound symbolism or phonosemantics is a branch of linguistics and refers to the idea that vocal sounds have meaning. In particular, sound symbolism is the idea that phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves.-Origin:...

 in their vocabulary. A /s/ sound often denotes smallness/less intensity, /ʃ/ denotes medium-ness, /x/ denotes largeness/greater intensity:

• síre "yellow"
• šíre "tawny"
• xíre "brown"

• sró "tinkle"
• xró "rattle"

Compare the similar examples in Lakhota.

External links

• Turtle Island Storyteller Edwin Benson - Recording of Edwin Benson
  Edwin Benson
  Edwin Benson is the last speaker of the Mandan language. He was born in 1931 on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. He has been involved in efforts to teach the basics of Mandan to youth....
  
  , the last native speaker of Mandan. The beginning of the recording has a sample of Benson speaking Mandan.