Siouan

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A family of indigenous languages originating from North America predominantly used by the Sioux tribes and including dialects like Lakota and Dakota
2. An ethno-linguistic group composed of various languages spoken by Native American tribes in the Great Plains, sharing linguistic similarities
3. A cluster of languages native to various tribes in North America predominantly around the Great Plains ; the Indigenous peoples who speak these related languages across several tribal groups

Etymology: The word "Siouan" is a modern scientific coinage, not an ancient one. It was formed in English from "Sioux," itself a shortened form of "Nadouessioux," a term from the Ojibwe-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region, used by French traders and explorers for their rivals to the west. The "-an" ending, as in "Sioux" plus "-an," simply marks a language family, much as "Romance" or "Germanic" do for other groups of languages. The label was applied by linguists and anthropologists to the whole family of related languages spoken across the Plains, the Great Lakes and the Southeast, including Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Crow, Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) and Catawba. Scholars recognised these languages as related long after the peoples themselves had been separated by distance and history. The family name therefore describes a grouping made by researchers, not a single shared identity among its speakers.