Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: pleased

Google Now Supports Cherokee

I was delighted to discover that Google now supports searching in the Cherokee language.  Cherokee is one of the most successful native languages today.  Most are nearly dead.  I am particularly encouraged by examples where native languages interface with explicitly modern things.
Tags: cyberspace theory, ethnic studies, linguistics, news
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  • 8 comments
raindrops

raindrops

March 31 2011, 02:59:39 UTC 10 years ago

This makes me happy.
the_vulture

the_vulture

March 31 2011, 03:54:43 UTC 10 years ago

This is a pleasant assurance of the benevolence that Google appears to strive for.
lyonesse

lyonesse

March 31 2011, 10:42:20 UTC 10 years ago

:) i was super happy to hear this too. the american languages are fascinating! cherokee looks like a good candidate for preservation. (salish, which i sort of studied in grad school, has i think only about twenty native speakers left.)

in writing my chapter i came across a lot of nahuatl (unsurprising as it still has about 1.5 million speakers) and of course navajo is the other famous holdout (200k speakers?) google doesn't seem to support either, though i was pleased to find quechua support :)
ysabetwordsmith

Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

April 2 2011, 20:27:01 UTC 10 years ago

>>the american languages are fascinating! cherokee looks like a good candidate for preservation. (salish, which i sort of studied in grad school, has i think only about twenty native speakers left.)<<

I love them too. Lakota -- another personal favorite -- is also doing well compared to some others.

>>in writing my chapter i came across a lot of nahuatl (unsurprising as it still has about 1.5 million speakers) and of course navajo is the other famous holdout (200k speakers?) google doesn't seem to support either, though i was pleased to find quechua support :) <<

I used Quechua as partial inspiration for one of my constructed languages.
lyonesse

Re: Yes...

lyonesse

April 3 2011, 13:24:12 UTC 10 years ago

oh cool, what did you use from quechua?

i had read an interesting account of mazatec (which is tonal) being used in a whistled form to communicate across mountains -- i snatched that factoid up for a conlang of my own :)
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

April 3 2011, 18:24:16 UTC 10 years ago Edited:  April 3 2011, 18:27:31 UTC

>> oh cool, what did you use from quechua? <<

The phoneme set is similar, though not identical. The spelling includes some of the same consonant blends, like "tl." Some of the plurality is related. And one linguistic joke that almost nobody will get, unless they've read the original borrowing from Spanish to Quechua: "chinga" for "broken."

>> i had read an interesting account of mazatec (which is tonal) being used in a whistled form to communicate across mountains -- i snatched that factoid up for a conlang of my own <<

I've read about Silbo Gomero:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero_language
I included a reference to that in my poem La Silbadora:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/1479981.html
daev

daev

March 31 2011, 22:03:49 UTC 10 years ago

The American languages are beatiful, and I am glad that Google is helping to make Cherokee so visible. It's a pity that where we live (east-central Illinois) is devoid of them. (The Illinois confederacy had entirely moved west of the Mississippi well before the U.S. arrived, and the Potawatomie nation used this area as a hunting resource but did not settle.)

I learned a little Cherokee years ago, working my way through Holmes & Sharp's Beginning Cherokee. Not long ago I was at the Cowboy Monkey in downtown Champaign, during a break between two bands playing, and while milling around outside with everyone else I spotted a girl with a tattoo on her back, quite long, written in the Cherokee syllabary. So I happily come up to her and start yakking away ... only to discover that she didn't speak the language. I was so embarrassed I had to move to the other side of the stage for the next set. :-)
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

March 31 2011, 22:15:32 UTC 10 years ago

>> It's a pity that where we live (east-central Illinois) is devoid of them. (The Illinois confederacy had entirely moved west of the Mississippi well before the U.S. arrived, and the Potawatomie nation used this area as a hunting resource but did not settle.) <<

Those are from the Algonquin language family. This state is Iroquois territory too, though. Disputed territory makes for interesting history.

>> I learned a little Cherokee years ago, working my way through Holmes & Sharp's Beginning Cherokee. <<

Cherokee (primarily Kituwah), Lakota, and Plains Indian Sign are the native languages I've explored the most, though I'm far from fluent in any of them. I can recognize a fair number of words that are common in the sources I explore. (Amusingly, this means I can often translate a fair bit of Lakota dialog in movies, since most of it says the same things. It doesn't take me long to pick up the likes of "The buffalo are gone" or "The white men are coming, run for your lives!") Beyond that I've encountered Dine/Navajo and several others.