Chiwere Popular Orthography

[Lance Foster]

I have a question for the folks working with Chiwere.

I am running into real difficulty with coming up with an orthography that is
acceptable to the speaking community. There is an absolute resistance to a
standard orthography.

I just got back from Hawaii and learned how the missionaries decided to
standardize the v/w sounds as w, and the t/k sounds as k. They used to spell
Hawaiian in so many different ways it was a real mess. I also learned that
much was done to alter the grammar (on Niihau they still speak an old form,
sounds and grammar, very different from the revitalized version of Hawaiian).
Whatever you say about the accuracy of the missionaries' system, it certainly
has helped in its standardization, as far as the revitalization of the past
couple of decades.

Now Chiwere is in such an awful state that I think we need to look at a
similar standardization. Perhaps this will not work perfectly as far as the
scholarly system, but it must be acceptable to the community or it will not
be used. I for one feel the ideal system is one symbol for one sound, and to
keep to meaningful sounds rather than alternative pronunciations. I also
really don't dig the awful hyphenation that many in the community keep using
(the Lewis and Clark look). The community hates the use of the x. They
totally cannot abide such things as eths and thetas.

So what ideas do you have? For popular use? Jimm and Lila had a nice system,
but the community hated such things as using "x" for the "ach" sound.

should it be the old "th" vs "dh" thing? but of course that gets back to the
"one symbol for one sound" thing. I'm just flumboozled, and several of us are
trying to figure this out. Bob? John? Jimm? Louanna?

--
Lance Michael Foster
Email: ioway at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~ioway
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