Sioux

Sioux is the cover term for the varieties of the Dakotan dialect complex, with three well defined dialect areas: Stoney, currently spoken in southwestern Alberta; Assinibone, in southern Saskatchewan and northern Montana; and Sioux, spoken widely in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and in southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Intelligibility between these dialect areas is low, although speakers can communicate after a while with some difficulty, and they are perhaps best considered emergent languages. Sioux is further divided into three major dialects, Santee-Sisseton (Dakota), Yankton-Yanktonai, and Teton (Lakota), between which there is a fair degree of mutual intelligibility. Ethnologue distinguishes four Dakota languages: Assiniboine [asb], Dakota [dak], Lakota [lkt], Stoney [sto].