A description of Hidatsa-Mandan culture, including a grammar and vocabulary of the language, was published in 1877 by Washington Matthews, a government physician who lived among the Hidatsa at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

The double /aa/ in the name indicates a long vowel and the diacritics a falling pitch pattern.

Hidatsa is a pitch-accent language that does not have stress so all syllables in [tsaɡáàɡawia] are pronounced with roughly the same relative emphasis.

In faithful rendering of the name Cagáàgawia to other languages, it is advisable to emphasize the second, long syllable, not the /i/ vowel, as is common in English.

[6] Primary stress in Hidatsa is predictable and occurs on the first quantity sensitive iamb of the word.

There is evidence of this within some minimal and near-minimal pairs in the language: Hidatsa has ten consonant phonemes: Unlike the Mississippi Valley Siouan languages, Hidatsa does not have the glottalized or the aspirated stops of Proto-Siouan.

[8] In Hidatsa, the usage of different words creates a division between masculine and feminine.

The word 'kedapi' by itself means "bull" but designates the maleness of any of the lower animals in its suffix form, with or without the interposition of the adverb 'adu'.

[9] Nouns of the feminine gender: 'mia' ('woman'), kaduḣe ('old woman'), the terms used for female relations ('idu', 'itakiṡa', etc.)

The word 'mika', meaning" a mare," the designation for females of the lower animals, with or without the interposition of 'adu'.

[9] Hidatsa nouns do not change forms to mark the difference between singular and plural.

The indefinite tense is shown by the simple form of the verb, with or without the incorporated pronouns, and it is used for both past and present time.

[12] Most adverbs of place are formed from nouns by adding the suffixes 'du', 'ha', 'ka', 'koa', and 'ta', these correspond to prepositions in English.

They do not undergo a change of form to denote different modes and tenses.

Two kinds of possessions are indicated in Hidatsa: intimate (or non-transferable) possession, such as parts of the body, relationships, and anything else that cannot be relinquished; examples are the words 'idakoa' ("his friend or comrade") and 'iko'pa' ("her friend or comrade").

The position of a word in a sentence and the conjugation of the verb that follows usually show whether it is in the nominative or the objective case.

"[17] Research by linguist Victor Golla in 2007 found that out of an ethnic population of 600, only 200 people are able to speak Hidatsa.

[18] Revitalization is still possible since a good number of speakers are of child-bearing age, but emphasis on Hidatsa-language education must be stressed while that is still the case.