F.Y.I. Re: Pawnee Language Program

[goodtracks at peoplepc.com]

I didn't want to be the one to comment.  It was enough to simply present it 
as is, including errant justifications.  I may be mistaken but the director 
is said to have studied or majored in linguistics.
It's another unfortunate example, as was presented for the Osage last year 
from the "Inlonshka" Dances, when the community programs invent their "own" 
orthography and resist education to change English applications for Native 
language.  I may make comments from my own experiences, if I gather my 
example documents and thoughts for a presentation.  But this weekend, it is 
off to GreyHorse Iroshka Dances.
The list and conference rarely gets any material in regard to Caddoan 
languages/ linguistics, so the information was offered here in lieu of 
anything else, as applied linguistics in motion.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROOD DAVID S" <rood at spot.Colorado.EDU>
To: "siouan at lists.colorado.ed" <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: F.Y.I. Re: Pawnee Language Program


>
> This is such an incredible leap backwards, completely without any
> justification from language learning research, that I want to cry.  If
> the "old Pawnee spelling" is accurately reproduced here, in the
> three sample words, there are examples of one letter for two different
> sounds, two spellings for the same sound, simplification of consonant
> clusters in the direction of English, and writing that totally obscures
> morpheme boundaries.  No one can possibly use this consistently (cf. new
> spelling -tiks and piks for what is a long vowel in the first word but
> short in the second, while the same short vowel is written "ee" in the
> open syllable of ksi).  I hope for the sake of the children that they will
> concentrate on getting them to speak and forget about writing, if this is
> how they plan to write.
>
>