Assessing Lakota Language Teaching Issues on the Cheyenne River Reservation.

Abstract

similar to that affecting many Native languages in the world. Lakotas about 40 years or older still tend to be fluent speakers, while the younger generations can, typically, understand the language but not speak it fluently. Many children can barely understand Lakota, and they tend not to speak it because it is not “cool.” Lakota is being replaced by English, the language of multi-media and modern life. Joshua Fishman (1991, 1996a, 1996b), an expert on language revitalization, argues that any language decline can only be reversed if the language re-emerges in its Native communities as the mother tongue. Surviving speakers need to discipline themselves so that they converse with their children exclusively in the language, which will allow children once again to acquire the language largely unconsciously and automatically. Speakers have to aim to conduct all daily communication in the home in the language. In the formal education system, children should be immersed in the target language as early as possible. This notion is supported by research, which suggests that spontaneous language acquisition usually stops around the age of puberty. In later years, students require increasingly analytical instruction based on grammar. Language learning then becomes a highly conscious effort (Saville-

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