Osage Dictionary

by Carolyn Quintero

Osage, a language of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan family, was spoken until recently by tribal members in northeastern Oklahoma. No longer in daily use, it was in danger of extinction. Carolyn Quintero, a linguist raised in Osage County, worked with the last few fluent speakers of the language to preserve the sounds and textures of their complex speech. Compiled after painstaking work with these tribal elders, her Osage Dictionary is the definitive lexicon for that tongue, enhanced with thousands of phrases and sentences that illustrate fine points of usage. Drawing on a collaboration with the late Robert Bristow, an amateur linguist who had compiled copious notes toward an Osage dictionary, Quintero interviewed more than a dozen Osage speakers to explore crucial aspects of their language. She has also integrated into the dictionary explications of relevant material from Francis La Flesche’s 1932 dictionary of Osage and from James Owen Dorsey’s nineteenth-century research. The dictionary includes over three thousand main entries, each of which gives full grammatical information and notes variant pronunciations. The entries also provide English translations of copious examples of usage. The book’s introductory sections provide a description of syntax, morphology, and phonology. Employing a simple Siouan adaptation of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Quintero’s transcription of Osage sounds is more precise and accurate than that in any previous work on the language. An index provides Osage equivalents for more than five thousand English words and expressions, facilitating quick reference. As the most comprehensive lexical record of the Osage language—the only one that will ever be possible, given the loss of fluent speakers—Quintero’s dictionary is indispensable not only for linguists but also for Osage students seeking to relearn their language. It is a living monument to the elegance and complexity of a language nearly lost to time and stands as a major contribution to the study of North American Indians.

388 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2009

Reviews

[Aubrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a very good reference book! The authors have done the most extensive research they could. I also found their sentence examples hilarious and enlightening.

They only major faults are:
•Lack of syllable help with words (I often found myself wondering if it was ąį, which sounds like "eye"; or ą-į, which sounds like "ah-ee".)


•There is also the alphabetical order, ehich takes getting used to. The letters are a mix of English and IPA. The main order is A-Z, but the IPA letters are put in there in ways without explanation. Some of them make sense, like đ (closest my keyboard has), which is a variant of "th", being d. Because it looks like d! But Y (which has a closed loop underneath) is right after E! And realizing that the nasalized vowels takes some getting used too. Especially when you have a similiar word that you're looking for ("ąa vs aa") And the difference between the near voiceless "h" and the regular sounding (though also voiceless) "h" gets confusing. If it's in front of a consonant, figuring out the right one is kostly clear. But a vowel? Hoo boy...

•The English-Osage dictionary is small, presented more like a really generous after-thought or a subpar index. The English side is about 67 pages long with a smaller font and no descriptions; while the Osage side is about 200 or more pages. Many words are missing from the English side. Without being instructed with a coarse or reading it in some sort of order, it is impossible for me to find certain Osage words, even those with equivalents, such as "waterbug". It took me using Google Books to search for the words "save" "protect" and "rescue" to find that this book has no equivalent thereof (and I don't know if the language is just doesn't have those words, or if they weren't discussed of with the elders they interviewed).

•A second complaint of the English dictionary; yhe author also didn't always put in the correct spelling of the word. Usually what happens is that the inaudible "h-" or a double vowel is written down, or the nasalization is mistaken. Trying to figure out which mistake it is can be troublesome.


Nonetheless they did a great job, and I'm so glad this ecists.