> There is no "NAGILA" in Lakota.
Joe Don Chipps replied:
> Nagi ... 'spirit or soul or ghost'; la SUPERLATIVE ... (paraphrased)
I think the usual rendition of the =la enclitic is DIMINUTIVE. So the form
means 'somewhat like a spirit; a little spirit'.
Note that -g- here is the voiced velar fricative (i.e., a gamma), not a voiced
stop. In the Buechel orthography there would usually be a dot over the g,
though the index and examples of the Buechel example omit it. The a is more
or less nasal, depending on the dialect, since it follows n.
The Dakotan root nagi is part of a good Siouan cognate set, cf. OP wana~xe
'ghost'.
b.spinella@public.ndh.com (Birgit Spinella) replied:
> so please what is then NAGI - the personality; NIYA - Life energy; NAGILA -
> the being; SICUN - the power
This is the religious terminology of Black Elk, if I recall properly, but not
all of the vocabulary he uses appears in Buechel and other dictionaries of
Dakotan dialects, which may account for the reply. I presume the term is
in contemporary use in appropriate contexts.
John Koontz