Most indigenous languages in the United States and Canada are endangered, with few speakers remaining, even though these languages had previously flourished for thousands of years on the North American continent. Sioux stands as the fifth-biggest indigenous language in the US and Canada, behind Navajo, Cree, the Inuit languages, and Ojibwe.
However, even though Sioux can claim the title of “fifth-biggest indigenous language in the US and Canada,” the language still only has roughly 30,000 speakers. All indigenous languages in the US and Canada are seriously threatened, the natural result of centuries of repression and the widespread promotion and prestige of English. This, of course, also leads translation agencies to ignore the hundreds of endangered indigenous languages spread across the US and Canada—meaning it’s difficult to find translation services even for the fifth-biggest indigenous language in the two countries. TranslationServices.com, however, is here to do its part to provide high-quality Sioux translation services.
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What kind of language is Sioux?
Sioux speakers are concentrated in northern central area of the US, with some speakers also found across the border in Canada. Namely, speakers can be found in North Dakota and South Dakota as well as parts of Nebraska, Minnesota, Montana, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Sioux is divided into three key dialects, which the average American or Canadian has probably heard of: Lakota, Western Dakota, and Eastern Dakota. Indeed, it was from the Sioux people that North and South Dakota got their names.
Sioux belongs to the Siouan language family, which consists of several languages spoken mostly in the Great Plains region. Like most indigenous languages in the US and Canada, Sioux uses a high degree of inflection, adding prefixes, suffixes, and even infixes to indicate grammatical relationships. Another feature Sioux shares with many Native American languages is its animacy distinction, which different markers for living beings versus inanimate objects. Although Sioux employs a subject-object-verb word order—the most common word order among the world’s languages—verbs, which are marked for the person and number of both the subject and object, take an object-subject-verb marking order, which is the least common word order, found only in a handful of languages.
Sioux is so different from English that it’s difficult for English speakers to wrap their head around the grammatical structure of Sioux. But don’t worry—our Sioux translators are experts.
Serving all kinds of Sioux translation needs
At TranslationServices.com, we’re passionate about providing translation services in Sioux, whether that means translating into Sioux or out of Sioux. Our translators can handle both expertly, so don’t hesitate to reach out no matter what you need. Our translators have translated historical Sioux-language documents into English for historians and government agencies, and we’ve translated traditional Sioux stories so that Sioux people can share their rich culture with outsiders. We’ve translated questionnaires into Sioux so that researchers and organizations can survey Sioux speakers in their own language, and we’ve translated fun content like books, websites, apps, and more into Sioux to give Sioux speakers and learners more opportunities to use their valuable language.
If any of these services are what you’re looking for—or if you’re seeking something else—message us anytime for Sioux translation services.