Re: Cheyenne and international standards
Greg Dubs (coyotl@well.sf.ca.us)
Tue, 31 May 1994 20:46:40 -0700
The discussion of fonts for Amerindian languages has been interesting. If
anyone wants to put any ideas into practice, I think it is cardinal to
discuss all this with the relevant tribal commissions or committees before
doing any concrete planning at all. There have been some very difficult and
unfortunate incidents of academics trying to plan orthographies for these
languages without intimate direction from the tribes concerned. Said
academics have been known to become arrogant and overbearing and dismissive
of tribal concerns when tribal members have questioned the appropriateness
of outsiders deciding such things. I realize the discussion so far has been
highly speculative, but unless those most directly interested in these
things are involved from the beginning, it could be most unfortunate. There
do not seem to be many postings from tribal academics or tribal linguists
here, perhaps we need to discuss access to the internet by formal and
informal tribal language commissions.
Greg Dubs
Dept. of Genetics
Stanford University School of Medicine
dubs@darwin.stanford.edu
coyotl@well.sf.ca.us