microsoft

[Keola Donaghy]

Indigenous Languages and Technology <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU> writes:
>Hmmm, here in Apache land we don't call them apostrophs. Also, people are
>very sensitive about the tonality. They don't want Apache to look like
>English (and quite frankly, I don't blame them. I would have made a bad
>twin.).
>
>Personally, I find the anglicization of Native langauges because people
>are
>rude and technologically lazy to be quite offensive. I don't mean you, of
>course, Sean. I know how much pressure you can be under trying to please
>everyone, and I have so! much! real! life! experience! trying to deal with
>all the levels.

The Puku'i-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary sorts everything by the English sort
order. Our Mamakai Kaiao Dictionary (more recently coined terms from our
lexicon committee) sorts the Hawaiian->English using the Hawaiian sort
order - vowels (aeiou), Hawaiian consonants (hklmnpw and the glottal),
then the rest of the latin consonants in their normal order. Macron-vowel
combinations are considered a secondary sort, i.e., if works are idential
except for the presence of a macron over a vowel, the word without the
macron is placed first. This is how the sorting fuction works in Apple OS
X's sort algorithm for Hawaiian. You can see how this works on our
dictionary site: http://wehewehe.org/ - search for the word "maka" and
you'll see the variations with macron and without.

I occassionaly hear from people who feel that this makes it difficult to
find words. They eventually get used to it, and realizing that in doing it
this way we're freeing the language from the bonds of English in one more,
subtle way.

Keola

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Keola Donaghy
Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies
Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani             keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu
University of Hawai'i at Hilo           http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donaghy/
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