FW: Error Condition Re: RE: Chiwere Popular Orthography

[Rankin, Robert L]

If you go down far enough, you'll find my message.  Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: listproc at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:listproc at lists.colorado.edu]
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 11:02 AM
To: rankin at KU.EDU
Subject: Error Condition Re: RE: Chiwere Popular Orthography



Dear user, every time you send email to list SIOUAN the system analyzes
the first line of your message in order to catch misdirected requests.
It appears that the first line in your message may have been such a request:

JOIN THE (ALREADY VERY LARGE) CLUB! I SYMPATHIZE AND HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM

The first word, "JOIN", matches one of ListProc's command words, and as
a result your mail was not distributed to the list. If your intent was to
send
a request please resend it to the command processor
listproc at lists.Colorado.EDU (not siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU).

If your intent was to post a message to this list please rephrase the first
line of your message so that it does not look like a request and resubmit it
to siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU, and please accept our apologies for the
inconvenience.

If you need further assistance please contact the owner(s)
john.koontz at colorado.edu .

Your entire message is copied below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>>From rankin at ku.edu Mon Apr 16 10:01:59 2001
Received: from duck.mail.ukans.edu (duck.mail.ukans.edu [129.237.35.84])
	by hooch.colorado.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3/ITS-5.0/standard) with ESMTP id
KAA14292
	for <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>; Mon, 16 Apr 2001 10:01:59 -0600
(MDT)
Received: by duck.mail.ukans.edu with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
	id <2Y429B1C>; Mon, 16 Apr 2001 11:01:58 -0500
Message-ID:
<5823BD992D67D3119F630008C7CF50FC0A44148C at skylark.mail.ukans.edu>
From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Chiwere Popular Orthography
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 11:01:48 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"


> 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.

Join the (already very large) club! I sympathize and have the same problem
with Kaws who desperately want to stick with English spelling conventions.
It is a universal problem and one to which I have no solution. If there are
essentially no native speakers, it probably won't be possible to get people
to agree. Period. No matter what you do, folks will revert to their own
private spellings to "clarify" what you give them.

I happen to be one of those curmudgeonly guys who thinks that "teacher knows
best." And as the author of your materials, you are in a strong position to
be a little insistent. It's obvious that people are going to want to be able
to use Jimm's dictionary, so I think that is the system I'd use myself.
Linguists use X for the velar fricative because the Greeks use it that way,
and when linguists ran out of Roman letters, they went to the Greek alphabet
for more symbols. You can try to get agreement from your users, but I have
to be pessimistic about your chances.

When we are taught Spanish in high school, we don't get a choice about how
to spell [x]. They just tell us we're gonna have to learn that it's spelled
with <j> most of the time and <g> in front of i or e. Sometimes you just
have to try to use your influence to impose a solution.  Good luck!

Bob