Re: Nuuchahnulth dictionary

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Sun May 29 2005 - 11:14:51 CDT

  • Next message: William J Poser: "Nuuchanulth and other languages of British Columbia"

    At 17:23 +0200 2005/05/29, Philippe VERDY wrote:
    >...This kind of combining glotal stop modifier is apparently not
    >encoded as such in Unicode, and various symbols are used, and I'm
    >not sure that the current characters used (spacing apostrophe, or
    >combining comma above) to represent this mutation (consonnant +
    >/-uh/) are well serving the language.

    One should not exclude the possibility that there is a script which
    is not used in print because of the lack of proper symbols.

    >Anyway this alphabet is the choice of the native nation that
    >promotes the language. I can't critic it, but may be they are
    >seeking for help to find a stable alphabet with a stable orthography
    >for it, so the existence of a dictionnary is an important step.

    I have sent an email to a person of their site.

    >... I note also a mutation of many vowels (see also examples in the
    >health services advertizing inserts), as if the correct vowels were
    >not well represented either with the "enhanced" Latin script, or
    >with its simplified romanization.
    >Are there missing vowels for this language?

    The situation might be similar to that of math, namely, that one may
    use what is available fro printing, and not correct. This calls for a
    more interactive mode, when attempting to add a proper script for
    such a language to Unicode. Doing this for such ethnical minority
    groups, will though be very important for their self-esteem, as well
    serving to preserve a cultural heritage to mankind.

    -- 
       Hans Aberg
    


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