ALPHABET.
§ 3. With the exception of seven letters taken from Riggs’s Dakota Dictionary, and which are used only in the Dakota words, the characters used in recording the Indian words occurring in this paper belong to the alphabet adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Many of the letters in the original book cannot be represented faithfully in the character set available. The following table explains the conventions used to represent such characters. In the table, ‘x’ is used to mean “any letter”.
| Symbol | Symbol in book |
| ‘ | Inverted comma, to the left of a letter and raised above the baseline, like a single opening quotation mark. |
| ’ | Comma, to the right of a letter and raised above the baseline, like a single closing quotation mark. |
| ´ | “Accent mark”—a diagonal slash indicating a stressed syllable. |
| [x] | The letter upside-down. This is used for upside-down lower-case ‘p’, because an upside-down lower-case p looks too much like a ‘d’; and for upside-down ‘s’, which looks too much like a right-side-up ‘s’; and for an upside-down upper-case K, because I don’t think that character exists in Unicode. |
| ȼ | A lowercase ‘c’ with an acute accent and a mark below. |
| Ȼ | An uppercase ‘c’ with an acute accent and a mark below. |
a, as in father.
‘a, an initially exploded a.
ă, as in what, or as o in not.
‘ă, an initially exploded ă.
ä, as in hat.
c, as sh in she. See ś.
ɔ, a medial sh, a sonant-surd.
ć (Dakota letter), as ch in church.
ç, as th in thin.
[ç], a medial ç, sonant-surd.
ȼ, as th in the.
e, as in they.
‘e, an initially exploded e.
ĕ, as in get.
‘ĕ an initially exploded ĕ.
g, as in go.
ġ (in Dakota), gh. See x.
ɥ (in Osage), an h after a pure or nasalized vowel, expelled through the mouth with the lips wide apart.
ḣ (in Dakota), kh, etc. See q.
i, as in machine.
‘i, an initially exploded i.
ĭ, as in pin.
j, as z in azure, or as j in the French Jacques.
ʞ a medial k, a sonant-surd.
k’, an exploded k. See next letter.
ḳ (in Dakota), an exploded k.
ŋ (in Dakota), after a vowel has the sound of n in the French bon. See ⁿ.
ɯ (in Kansa), a medial m, a sound between m and b.
ñ, as ng in sing.
hn, its initial sound is expelled from the nostrils and is scarcely heard.
o, as in no.
‘o, an initially exploded o.
[p], a medial b or p, a sonant-surd.
p’, an exploded p.
q, as German ch in ach. See ḣ., a medial z or s, a sonant-surd.
ś (in Dakota), as sh in she. See c.
ʇ, a medial d or t, a sonant-surd.
t’, an exploded t.
u, as oo in tool.
‘u, an initially exploded u.
ŭ, as oo in foot.
ṵ, a sound between o and u.
ü, as in German kühl, süss.
x, gh, or nearly the Arabic ghain. See ġ.
ź (in Dakota), as z in azure. See j.
dj, as j in judge.
tc, as ch in church. See ć.
tc’, an exploded tc.
ʇɔ, a medial tc, a sonant-surd.
ts’, an exploded ts.
ʇ, a medial ts, a sonant-surd.
ai, as in aisle.
au, as ow in how.
yu, as u in tune, or ew in few.
The following have the ordinary English sounds: b, d, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, y, and z. A superior n (ⁿ) after a vowel (compare the Dakota ŋ) has the sound of the French n in bon, vin, etc. A plus sign (+) after any letter prolongs it.
The vowels ‘a, ‘e, ‘i, ‘o, ‘u, and their modifications are styled initially exploded vowels for want of a better appellation, there being in each case an initial explosion. These vowels can not be called “breaths,” as no aspiration is used with any of them; nor can they be spoken of as “guttural breaths,” as they are approximately or partially pectoral sounds. They have been found by the author not only in the Siouan languages, but also in some of the languages of western Oregon. In 1880 a brother of the late Gen. Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., who was born on one of the Hawaiian islands, informed the author that this class of vowel sounds occurred in the language of his native land.