fwd of Hymes re practical alphabets

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 12:42:17 +0200
From: Henry Kammler <henry.kammler at stadt-frankfurt.de>
To: David Robertson <drobert at tincan.tincan.org>
Subject: [Fwd: 'Practical alphabets' ...was...Re: CJ phonemes]

LaXay at m, Dave,

I got this from Dell Hymes. It looks like it was meant for the list.

Lush san,
Henry

Dell Hymes schrieb:

>         There is a problem not yet addressed in the exchange about
> practical alphabets.  Some Native Americans interested in Chinook Jargon
> also are interested in their Native American heritage language.  In the
> case of the Chinookan languages, upriver, Clackamas and Wasco-Wishram, the
> letters b, d,g (and g with a subposed dot, or G) are needed to write the
> voiced consonants themselves.  'cow', for example is a-duiha.  If someone
> wanted to play with that, and make it a very little 'cow' (I never heard
> this, and am making this up for the point at hand), they could say
> a-t'uiha.  Quite apart from sound symbolism of this sort, there are regular
> words that have the glottalized consonants and regular words that have
> voiced consonants.
>
>         Sincerely,
>
>                         Dell Hymes
>
> >> Na-tEmtEm, msayka kEmtEks hayash na-tIki wawa khapa ukuk!  I reckon you
> >> all can tell I love to talk about this subject!
> >
> >doesn't stir too much interest, though  ;-)
> >but i'm sure this list won't get as sleepy as SALISHAN is at the moment...
> >
> >> Ukuk tIlxam tEmtEm, tEmtEm, pi munk chxi Lush wiXEt pus munk-c!Em yaka
> >> shawash lalang.  This person thought very hard and created a good new way
> >> to write his Indian language.
> >
> >Yes. And it shows that there are probably a lot of individuals that are
> >worried about their vanishing language and that it shouldn't get lost. So they
> >do what they can within their personal sphere. There should be a way, however,
> >to join all the creative minds that go undiscovered. There's another
> >"official" orthography now, so we have to stick to it, though I imagine it
> >might make some people shy away from it because the phonetics look, er...,
> >weird.
> >
> >> WEXt nayka tEmtEm kakwa mayka; khapa ixt shawash wawa (pus ya-mILayt khapa
> >> nsayka IlI7i), dreht Lush pus <d, g, ds, b> munk-c!Em uk tEnEs-wa /t!, k!,
> >> c!, p!/.  I too think as you do that for an Indian language (from our
> >> region here), it's an excellent thing to write <d, g, ds, b> representing
> >> the sounds /t!, k!, c!, p!/.
> >
> >If there are no voiced stops there, yes.
> >
> >> Na mayka kEmtEks uk Eula Petite, ixt Grehnd Rawnd lamiyay, anqEti
> >> munk-c!Em <gkow> pus /k'aw'/, pi <towen> pus /t'u7wEn/?  Did you know that
> >> Eula Petite, an elder of Grand Ronde, wrote in Chinook Jargon <gkow> for
> >> /k'aw/ "tie someone or something up", but <towen> for /t'u7wEn/ "have"?
> >
> >No problem for a fluent speaker probably.
> >
> >> Kakwa, wEXt yaka munk ixt chxi wiXEt pus munk-c!Em ChInUk Wawa.  So she
> >> also invented a new way of writing her language.
> >
> >Who knows, maybe there are other people, too, that kept notes like that. I
> >mean, there were a lot of reasons in the past not to speak up in public about
> >one's ability to speak CJ (not necessarily in GR).
> >
> >> Xluwima ukuk:  Wik ya-munk kakwa <gkow> *kwanEsEm*.  But the difference
> >> is: She didn't *always* write e.g. <gkow>.
> >
> >Now, totally hypothetically, would that be a possibility to write GR wawa? cf.
> >"gkaw", "dtu'wen", "munk-dtsem" (???)
> >Anyway, the apostrophe is a neat little device that you even find on English
> >typewriters: c' k' p' q' t' ...
> >
> >Lush san,
> >Henry