Re: CHAT: (no subject)

Where did you find this?  Is it on the web anywhere?

>Ha!  I found a sample of Choctaw text.: the first few paragraphs of one of
>the Oklahoma Choctaw Constitutions, what year I can't say.
I've looked at the English versions from 1983 and 1979, and neither of them
seem to match this Choctaw text.

 I changed the
>underlined vowels to vowels with tildes (since Latin-1 lacks i-tilde, I
>rendered nasal i as i~)
It must be a pretty recent rendition to have underlined nasals.  But it has
other features I find rather bizarre, such as _aivlhpiesa_: the sequence <ie>
would be phonetically [ii:] (short i followed by long i).  Hard to see that as
a real pronunciation.

There are lots of Chickasaw cognates in there that I can spot without the use
my dictionary.  _hattak_ "man, person" _nana_ "something"  (probobably
"whether" in this context); _oklah moma_ should be "all people" _nittak nãna_
"some day" (I'm not sure about the "some", perhaps should be "what"); _bvnna_
"want" etc, etc, etc.


>
>Submitted for your approval...
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>ATIKEL I
>
>Aivlhpiesa Makosh Ulhpisa
>
>Nana isht ilklaivlhpiesa moma ishahumicha, Kvfamint yoka keyu hosh ilvppa ka
>tokma atobacha aivlhpisa chi~ mako yakohtnashke.
>
>SEK 1.  Hattak yuka keyu hokvtto yakohmit itibachvfat hielikvt, nan isht
>imaivlhpiesa atokmvt itilawashke: yohmi kã hattak nana hohkia.  keyukmvt
>kanohmi hohkia okla moma nana isht aim aivilipiesa, micha isht aimaivlhtoba
>he aima kã kanohrni [sic] bano hosh isht ik iniavlhpieso kashke.  Amba mõma
>kvt nãna isht iniachukma chi~ ho tiksuvli hokmakashke.
>
>SEK 2.  Oklah moma hatokmvt, nãna kvt aivlpiesa hinla kvt afoyoka hõ mvtli
>hatokma kõ, nãna kvt vlhpisa na Okla moma kvt isht imachukmã chi~ kã ãpisa
>he vt imaivlhpiesa cha kafanmint yuka keyll [sic] ikbashke, yohmi tok osh
>ishahut isht a inahãya hinla kvt otani hokmã.  nittak nãna hohkia nãna hõ
>apihinsa tok vt kobafi, keyukinvt mosholichi cha i~lã ikbi bvnna hokmvt
>imaivhpiesashke.
>The basic vowels I see are: a e i o u v.  The polyphthongs in the text: ai
>aiv aivi ia ie uv.
I find these very strange, and I am a bit suspicious of them.  I have a
dissertation on Choctaw in front of me right now, and I can't see any vowel
sequences like these anywhere in it.  It is on syntax though.  They certainly
wouldn't be possible in Chickasaw (especially aivi), nor would some of the
consonant sequences, like <lkl>.

  Nasal vowels are ã, i~ and õ.  Also, <ah> and <oh> (and
>possibly <ih>, not cited in the sample) word-finally or before consonants
>can be found, so there could be aspirated vowels as well.
Now that I've got a reference on this: /h/ at the end of a word is a
consonant.  Words that are written as vowel final have a non-phonemic glottal
stop -- words cannot be phonetically vowel final in other words.  Chickasaw
has
reverse this position: glottal stops are phonemic, and they usually have
dropped the final -h, but some people still pronounce it.

>I'll convert this list to how they'd be written in Choctaw: h k kw l m n s t
>tl ts w y.  /kw/, /tl/ and /ts/ may occur, but not as a single phoneme.
>Even more problematic, Cherokee does not have b, ch, f, lh, p or sh!  I
>could map Cher /kw/ to Choc <p> (hey, Proto-Celtic /kw/ did become
>Brythonic/Gaulish /p/, didn't it?!), /tl/ to <lh>, and /ts/ to <ch>.  But
>I'm left with b, f and sh, so I'd have to come up with diacritics (like the
>Japanese voiced consonant marker <"> and the /h/-to-/p/-shift marker <°>.  I
>could make /kw/ map to /f/ then use these Japanese diacritics to make /b/
>and /p/!  Finally, I have <sh> left over.  So I'll map Cher <ts> to Choc
><sh>, and add the _maru_ used for Japanese pV syllables to mark <ch>.
>
>My last problem is how to mark consonants without vowels, and the only
>vowelless consonant symbol in Cherokee is <s>.  So I'll borrow the Indic
>_virama_ (which varies according to scripts from Devanagari to Javanese)
>which cancels out the short /a/ vowel in a Ca alphasyllable.  Devanagari has
>a diagonal stroke below, so I want an underline <_> to go below the glyph.
>(The Japanese shift marks go on the upper right corner of the syllable.)
>
>For nasalization and aspiration of vowels, I'd also borrow Indic symbols:
>_anusvara_ (a dot above) and _visarga_ (two dots to the right, like a
>colon).  But what am I to do with the real colon...
Since aspiration is not a property of the vowels (see above) you only need
one.

>I'll try and find someone with a scanner so I can display my own written
>version of what I'd call the "Sequoyah Oklahoma syllabry" (well, I'm the
>great-grandson of a Mississippi Choctaw, so it's not to be used exclusively
>in the State of Oklahoma).  But this is a private experiment, not a major
>crusade; however, I'd like to see what would happen if I tried to write and
>display it.  Eventually, I'd like to apply this to all of the "Five
>Civilized Nations" langauges.
This system looks like it might work for Chickasaw as well.  We'll see once I
have more time.