Chiwere Popular Orthography

[Lance Foster]

You have a point, but for some letters that could be written as a single sound
(say c for ch, or ñ for ny) are written two lettered, while the x could be kh
and probably be more acceptable to the community (for some reason the x really
sticks in their craw).

If it was going to be consistent I would say "ce" for "che", and "mañi" for
"manyi", if I decided to stick with "x", to be consistent with the one
sound=one letter.

I think for a beginner-level the "kh" may be easier to deal with (I know some
really want the hyphens but I put my foot down on that one). One thing to
support the "just make'em learn linguistic notation" is what do you do with the
eng sound? "ng" is insufficient, as how does one differentiate shunge
(SHOONG-ay) from shunge (SHOONG-gay)? And then there is the nasal thing, with
hi vs hin. In that case do I go with a superscript "n" which may be more
understandable (if a bit sloppy) than the subscript hook (which I always dug)
or the tilde over the "i" which looks really sloppy in the IPA font I just
downloaded.

One more thing I gotta ask. It's been many years (about 1981) since I took
linguistics, so what symbol is used to designate the "hm" sound (the one where
you say "m" while breathing out through your nose?) Or the "hn" sound?

And for IO, what is the best choice in the IPA fonts for the flapped r/l? For
"pipe" I have seen rahnuwe, lahnuwe, and even danuwe! And for wori "relative",
it is usually said/heard/spelled wodi!

Lance

So: baxoje, ci, che, mañi,

"Rankin, Robert L" wrote:

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

--
Lance Michael Foster
Email: ioway at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~ioway
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Baxoje Ukich'e: The Ioway Nation (http://www.ioway.org)