Sioux language font

[Wablenica]

Hi, Leonard,

----- Original Message -----
From: Bruguier, Leonard <bruguier at usd.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 12:11 AM
Subject: Sioux language font


> hey hey folks: is there a font out there that i can use to transcribe some
> of my tapes in Dakota? any help appreciated. with respect, horse
>

The problem in LDN texts is that there are lotsa orthographies for it
(Colorado, Buechel, WhiteHat, Boas/Deloria; NetSiouan, Txakini).
There are several fonts online that can be utilized for specific LDN
characters, but the problem is in keying in these characters rather than the
choice of the fonts.
You have to install keyboard driver for specific font, or design the driver
yourself. Else you should insert the non-ABC characters by pressing some
weird keystrokes like Alt-154 (s) or recording macros in Microsoft Word or
other text editor.
Besides, you can have problems with exporting the texts into other
applications, or submitting the texts to somebody - his/her computer can be
devoid of the font or can have problems with installing it.
Personally, I prefer to use some intermediate, internal coding using plain
ABC that consistently and easily can be converted into other spellings
LATER.
E.g.: nasalized vowels - a~, i~, u~
aspirated stops: p*, t*, c*, k* (if you discern weak and strong aspiration
you should design additional markers)
others: s*, z*, h*, g*.
Using these conventions you can mix Dakota and English text and then convert
the Dakota part by some global replacements.
Other spellings are not so easy to convert: for example, if you use "ph, th,
ch, kh" for aspirated stops, you can spoil your "PHonetics, THat, CHeck"
occurences; using aN, iN, uN for nasals you can oversee sentence-initial
"ANpetu" or convert "ANOTHER" into something like "A~ot*er". :-)

However these are useful links for fonts and keyboards:
John Koontz. Siouan fonts:
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/fonts/ssfonts.htm - supports both Colorado
and Buechel
Titus Cyberbit Basic:
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/unicode/tituut.asp - Standard Unicode
compatible, has full phonetic set, plus full non-spacing diacritics, plus
vowels with nasal hooks and acute or breve accents - ready to use. The only
"minus" is the font size - ~1.7 megabytes.
And finally, Pan-Euro versions of Windows 95+ have the character sets enough
for coding in Colorado and Buechel. More about the fonts, and how to
download them here: http://www.inext.cz/siouan/checkup.htm

Good luck!
P.S. If you don't mind, a little Q.: have you observed strong (velar)
aspiration in your dialect of Dakota (in the words like thathanka, khunshi,
chanpha)

Best wishes,
Constantine