Osage Language

Osage Language

Osage is a Siouan language spoken by the Osage people of Oklahoma. The last native speaker, Lucille Roubedeaux, died ca. 2005.

Osage has an inventory of sounds very similar to that of Dakota, plus vowel length, preaspirated obstruents, and an interdental fricative (like "th" in English "then"). In contrast to Dakota, phonemically aspirated obstruents appear phonetically as affricates, and the high back vowel *u has been fronted to .

Recently, a distinctive Latin-based alphabet for Osage has been promulgated.

Read more about Osage Language:  Language Revitalization, Phonology

Famous quotes containing the words osage and/or language:

    Fellow citizens, I have been called upon to conduct this opening meeting of the Osage First Methodist-Episcopalian-Presbyterian-Congregational-Baptist-Catholic-Unitarian-Hebrew Church.
    Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)

    He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)