iPhone app allows First Nations speakers to chat in their native tongue (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

iPhone app allows First Nations speakers to chat in their native tongue

BY JAMES KELLER, THE CANADIAN PRESS JUNE 20, 2012

VANCOUVER - Four decades ago, Pena Elliott's grandfather sat down with a
typewriter and created the written form of the native language spoken in
his First Nations community on Vancouver Island.

The standard 26-letter Roman alphabet couldn't account for all of the
intricate sounds of the language, so he created new characters by
overlapping letters and punctuation.

For example, he typed the letter T, hit the backspace and then placed
hyphen overtop. The resulting character sounds similar to "th."

"As soon as the alphabet was created, we were able to teach in schools,"
says Elliott, a member of the Tsartlip First Nation, one of the bands in
the Saanich First Nation north of Victoria.



Read more:
http://www.theprovince.com/life/iPhone+allows+First+Nations+speakers+chat+their+native+tongue/6814732/story.html#ixzz1yR7B5JKw
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