[Lexicog] Sort Order for Lakota language

[Jan F. Ullrich]

David Frank

My apology for obviously not being clear in my previous post. 

By listing the pairs of Lakota words with phonemic contrasts I was trying to
illustrate 
what I don't like about the type of sort order, not the opposite. 
I wanted to explain the reasons why some of my co-worker prefer that sort
order option.
 They simply like the fact that words that sound similarly are found near
each other and that 
native speakers who are not used to marking aspiration will find the words
where they expect them. 
Which, I think, is not necessarily true, especially in the long term, if
they get used to reading/writing h for aspiration.

> You say that some of your colleagues and co-workers prefer option C. Are 
> they native speakers? Sometimes we linguists try to impose our preferences

> and justify it by saying it is what should work best for native speakers. 
> And it is so easy to get heated up and disagreeable about orthography 
> issues. Assuming that Lokota speakers are your primary audience, I would 
> encourage you to test with them and ask their preferences to see what
really 
> works best for, and satisfying to, them. Speaking from experience, it can
be 
> very satisfying for a linguist to give up his or her own preference,
knowing 
> that you have settled on something that is the preference of the native 
> speaker audience.

Both linguists and natives speakers are involved with the LLC and with the
current dictionary project. 
Each of the three sort order options has advocates among both groups. We are
not heated up about it, 
we are simply discussing it and trying to find a consensus or figure out
what might be the "best" choice.

Best

Jan




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