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Osage — the Osage Language

The language of the Osage people — Wazhazhe in the recovered book's naming, Wahzhazhe in the Nation's writing today — carried by the Osage Nation's own Language Department in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

Recovered texts are here to read. The people's own curriculum doorway is in preparation — in partnership with the Osage Nation's own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Osage: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

The dictionary on this shelf names it, on its title page and throughout, the Osage language — the language of the Osage people, whose own name for themselves and their language the recovered page records as Wazhazhe; the Nation today writes Wahzhazhe, and both spellings stand here as their sources give them. Its maker was Francis La Flesche, an Omaha man and an Indigenous scholar of the Bureau of American Ethnology, recording the language of a sister Dhegiha people from inside the tradition, with Osage helpers he names, among them Chief Fred Lookout and former Chief Bacon Rind of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

The Nation's own Language Department states where the language stands and what is being done: established in 2003 by resolution of the 31st Osage Tribal Council to preserve and perpetuate the Osage language — a commitment the 2006 Osage Nation Constitution reaffirmed — its mission is “to sustain the integrity of the Osage language while advancing its integration into the everyday lives of our people.” Its own account names the work honestly: rigorous research into some two centuries of preserved language captured from fluent speakers, classes and learning materials, and the work of reconstructing lost areas of the language, toward the goal the Nation's Strategic Plan states — a revitalized language “spoken at a basic level by the vast majority” of Osage Nation members.

Their own teachers

The Osage Nation Language Department is the language's own house of teaching: dedicated staff, classes and learning materials, translation requests, and the Nation's own language staff page. What is learned to speak is learned there, in the Nation's own teaching and the Nation's own spelling.

Osage Nation — Language Department (Osage Culture) — the Nation's own language department: its mission, its foundation in 2003, and its direction

The writing

The recovered witness below keeps La Flesche's orthography as the 1932 page prints it — his accent set as a separate ´ sort after the accented letter, the nasal as a superscript ⁿ, the medial letters with a dot below, and the exploded vowels with their prefixed mark — with the book's Phonetic Key entire on the recovered page. The Nation's own department teaches the language in the Nation's writing today; the two are not to be confused. What is relearned here is read in the old spelling exactly as printed, and learned to speak at the Nation's house in the Nation's spelling.

Recovered reading

One recovered book stands here: A Dictionary of the Osage Language (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 109, 1932), by Francis La Flesche — the front matter complete (title page, Letter of Transmittal, Contents, and the Introduction entire, which carries the abbreviations and the Phonetic Key entire) and the first two pages of Osage–English entries (printed pp. 5–6), from a through a´-da-ga-xe, exactly as printed, with no reading marked [?]. The remaining entries, the English–Osage dictionary, and the Appendix are not taken; the boundary is the foot of printed page 6. The dictionary was published in the year of La Flesche's death. It is the people's own witness, recovered as a historical text — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection's own edition in this language waits for the partnership. Read the front matter and opening entries of La Flesche's Dictionary of the Osage Language (1932)

An open invitation

This door stands open by invitation. If you are a speaker, teacher, or language keeper of Osage, or you carry its authority, this programme asks to work with you — to be guided, corrected, and reviewed by the people whose language this is. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

The first door is the Osage Nation Language Department.

To hear it

When Osage opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Osage speakers. Until then this door is silent in Osage on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

One small advertisement stands at the bottom of this page — never inside the reading text. The words of the book stand more prominent than the advertisement.