Kansa language

Kansa is a Dhegihan language, a broader category containing other languages such as Quapaw, Omaha-Ponca, and Osage. This group of languages is a subset of the Mississippi Valley Siouan languages, which is further of a subset of the Siouan-Catawban languages.

The speakers of Kansa, known as the Kaw people, lived together with the Dhegihan language-speakers in a larger nation known as the Dhegihan. This group was originally situated north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River and then moved west down the Ohio River. Following their westward migration, the Dhegihan branched into five indigenous tribes known as Ponca, Osage, Omaha, Quapaw and Kaw people. Later on, many Kaw people migrated west of Missouri river and were called "People of the Southwind." The languages of the five tribes originating from the single Dhegiha group are quite similar, and have been regarded as dialects of each other.

The Kansa Sioux language was mostly spoken in the U.S. state of Kansas.

Pioneering anthropologist and linguist James Owen Dorsey collected 604 Kansa words in the 1880s and also made about 25,000 entries in a Kansa-English dictionary which has never been published. Dorsey also collected 24 narratives, historical accounts, and personal letters from nine Kansa speakers.

In 1974, linguist Robert L. Rankin met Walter Kekahbah (d. 1983), Ralph Pepper (d. 1982), and Maud McCauley Rowe (d. 1978), the last surviving native speakers of Kansa. Rankin made extensive recordings of all three, especially Rowe, and his work over the next 31 years documented the language and helped the Kaw Nation to develop language learning materials.

Kansa has no native speakers. Members of the tribe now use English, while some still understand certain Kansa phrases and words. As part of a broader trend toward Native language revitalization efforts, the Kaw Nation offers online language learning for Kansa second language speakers (as of 2012).

The 2nd Annual Dhegiha Gathering in 2012 brought Kansa, Quapaw, Osage, Omaha and Ponca speakers together to share best practices in language revitalization.

Kansa has 29 consonants and 8 vowels.

/ɛ/ is phonetically open-mid, whereas /o/ is phonetically close-mid. Additionally, /a/ and /o/ can also be pronounced as [ə] and [u] respectively.

Nouns

Kansa does not mark nouns for number or gender. The number of a particular noun can be determined from the verb, an article or from context. For example, the word sínga could be translated to English as "squirrel" or "squirrels" depending on context, in the sentence Sínga miⁿ aⁿdómbabe, (transl. We looked at a squirrel), it must be a single squirrel because of the article miⁿ.

Verbs

Kansa is a SOV language and the verbs are inflected based on the person and number of their subjects and objects. For example, in the sentence ni kóⁿbla (transl. I want water), the object ni, (transl. water), comes before the verb kóⁿbla (transl. I want).

Kansa does not have verb tenses.

Kansa has a great deal of vocabulary in common with the other languages of the Dhegiha Siouan group. The following table compares cognates in Kansa and Osage: