Stoney language
Siouan language of Canada
Stoney—also called Nakota or Nakoda, Isga [ˈiʃɡɑ] (in the Alexis dialect) or Îyethka [ĩˈjes̪kə] (in the Mînî Thnî dialect), and formerly Alberta Assiniboine—is a member of the Dakota subgroup of the Mississippi Valley grouping of the Siouan languages. The Dakotan languages constitute a dialect continuum consisting of Santee-Sisseton (Dakota), Yankton-Yanktonai (Dakota), Teton (Lakota), Assiniboine, and Stoney.
Stoney is the most linguistically divergent of the Dakotan dialects and has been described as "on the verge of becoming a separate language." Ullrich considers Stoney and Assiniboine distinct languages, saying "The Nakoda language spoken by the Assiniboine is not intelligible to Lakota and Dakota speakers, unless they have been exposed to it extensively. The Stoney form of the Nakoda language is completely unintelligible to Lakota and Dakota speakers. As such, the two Nakoda languages cannot be considered dialects of the Lakota and Dakota language." The Stoneys are the only Siouan people that live entirely in Canada, and the Stoney language is spoken by five groups in Alberta.
No official language survey has been undertaken for every community where Stoney is spoken, but the language may be spoken by as many as a few thousand people, primarily at the Mînî Thnî community (renamed from Morley in 2024). On the other hand, in 2026, Deanna Two Young Men, a teacher of the language at Nakoda Elementary School in Mînî Thnî, reported that "many students have minimal knowledge of the Stoney language. They can understand it, but they can’t speak it". She was actively engaged in revitalizing the language.
Relationship to Assiniboine
Stoney's closest linguistic relative is Assiniboine.
“Stoney language” enters the record as siouan language of Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stoney, language and Siouan can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3033570. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stoney language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.