User talk:Jeffrey V. Merkey/Archive1

Hi, I'm wondering why the entire featured article is ddisplayed on the main page. You might want to see the main pages of some other Wikipedias for a good idea of what should probably be there - imagine a first-time visitor to Wikipedia. What would they think, finding that the only information on the main page is an article about Christmas? Shouldn't it tell them about Wikipedia, and give them links to categories or important articles?

yes, there needs to be an about page. I will make an effort to make the main page conform to wikipedia. wado.

Also, it seems that your conversion algorithm is a bit off. Many Cherokee worss are remaining unconverted, for example

iyuwakodi.

this word is the Otali (Oklahoma) dialect word for "time". It no longer maps to the sequoyah syllabary. The original word was "aleyesu" or "ayliyilisv" in the ancient dialect, but this ancient word is no longer used. Otali has drifted and many words cannot map to the syllabary any longer. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:08, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I also note you have attempted to edit the word "gantlai" out of another article. This changes the meaning of the word. I have reverted. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The ancient spelling for the generic term for animal is "ganatlai" or ᎦᎾᏝᎢ. The syllabary construct you used is wrong. Use this one if you want to remove the contractions. "Gantlai" uses a contraction with a silent (a) sound - i.e. gan(a)tlai -- the "a" is not spoken but it is still spelled this way. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. But it IS spelled this way if you are in Oklahoma - "gantlai". Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious, is it customary in Cherokee texts to mix both writing systems? I was under the impression that in texts in the syllabary, all Cherokee words were written in syllabary, although obviously you have more expertise in the area than do I.

No, it is not customary. but with language drift, since the words are no longer representable in syllabary, this is how it is. also and typically, very long sentences get created with untranslated adopted words. Discusses can take over 21,000 forms -- which form in third person is not always agreed upon due to language drift between groups or in context.

discussed:kanohelvhi

discussing:aninohesgv

discussion:kanohelvdi

discussions:dikanohelvdi

discuss:kanohedi

"kanohedi" is about the best match on this context, but still not precise.

Jeffrey V. Merkey 06:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The point of translation isn't to produce an exact equivalent. It is to adapt text from one language, into another. Trying to preserve the character of the original is one thing; using English words because the potential translations don't mean _exactly_ the same thing is bordering on pedantism. Cherokee existed in some form or another for many centuries before the arrival of the English language to the continent, it makes no sense that Cherokee should now become totally reliant on the English language. Such linguistic behavior is part of the death throes of a language. Independent linguistic developments or even occasional loanwords to refer to technical concepts for which no word exists have led to dire predictions about the futures of languages but have rarely led to anything bad; on the other hand, when the Tupi in Brazil started intermixing their language with Portuguese, all traces of Tupi but a few loanwords (and of course, related languages, as well as a creole language spoken in two or three towns) completely vanished. Sure, there are many ways you could say "discusses" in Navajo. Translation is not an exact science. Ultimately, if I translate a text to Navajo, I choose the closest equivalent possible. That's what translation is -- conversion of a text between two different lnguistic systems. Also, Wikipedia is not the Bible. As long as the translation is _truthful_, it doesn't matter if it matches 100% the original article. When we write in Navajo, we write in Navajo. The only English words we use are for proper names usually. Sometimes we leave important repeated phrases untranslated through most of the document, although we explain their meaning at the beginning or end, such as "water rights" sometimes or "privelaged information" perhaps, because these can't be translated as just two words without losing most of the meaning. However, "discusses" is not one of those words we need to explain with a whole sentence. If "John discusses cats with Mary", all it means is that "John talks about cats with Mary". It isn't a complex concept, it's a relatively simple action.

This thread is bordering on trolling at this point. Feel free to correct word usages in Cherokee you feel are relevant. I can tell you I plan to restructure A LOT of this content. In the mean time, you are free to correct whatever you like. ni-go di-s-ge-s-di. wa-do. Jeffrey V. Merkey 06:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, I'm wondering about the relatively high volume of untranslated words -- http://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%8E%A0%E1%8F%B2%E1%8E%B5 for example leaves untranslated "discusses", "processes", "boundaries", and "labour", among other words. I know that in Navajo we do sometimes use English words (for words like "computer" or "tv", they are shorter and more convenient than their Navajo equivalents), but not for such basic concepts as "discusses" or "labor".

which one? be in labor (having a baby)

of employment? working in a field?

this could be another sentence.

Jeffrey V. Merkey 06:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, with language, we are required to make complex judgements of meaning based on context. With translation, we often have to do the same thing. Occasionally, there are ambiguities and we must ask for clarification and sometimes opt for one of the alternatives without clarification, but of course this is not usually the case. Language has meaning, we are not computers. When we read sentences, they mean things to us. Our goal, as translators, is to give someone the closest possible meaning when reading the text in the target language, that they would if they were to read it in the source language.

Troll elsewhere or make corrections. Jeffrey V. Merkey 06:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

After noting your hostility to my pointing out of the basic principles of translation, even labelling it as "trolling", I became a little suspicious. What I did is not "trolling", it is telling the truth. As I believe I pointed out earlier, Cherokee is not my native language, thus I do not make corrections myself, but I have much experience with other languages and it is difficult to believe Cherokee is somehow different in how things are translated (documents translated to Cherokee from other sources do not appear to use the same method). Anyhow, I searched for your name on the Internet, and apparently, you are actually a troll. --24.251.68.181 20:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

If Cherokee is not your native language, you may wish to find something useful to do on another wikipedia. Jeffrey V. Merkey 16:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Dine bizaad yee yashti. I don't know why my IP address resolves to Georgia; I live in Phoenix, Arizona. Needless to say, even if I did live in Georgia, that would not mean I am not Navajo. We are all over this country and beyond, even though we are concentrated in the navajo nation and some cities nearby, there are Navajo speakings people in every state of the union.

Anyhow, your attempt to simply blow me off by telling me to leave is not constructive. What would, perhaps, be constructive is telling me why you started off so defensive, and why you insist on using English words when they are not necessary. I asked a friend of mine who has dealt with a lot of Cherokee documents if people use English words in translations of English documents ever, and he said it is the same as I told you, so now I am convinced that what you are doing here is incorrect. I don't know if you guys still have people who can't speak English, so this may not serve well as a suggestion, but when translating a document, it should be perfectly readable to a monolingual in the target language. Please, please, for the benefit of your own native language which you are representing here, read en:Translation. --24.251.68.181 11:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I can see you have never read the Cherokee Phoenix, our newspaper. When we encounter English words for which we have no exact translation, we use the english equivalent. We also have issues in attributing who said what in written form. It's a common practice to translate a section of text then attribute the text to the person speaking it by adding english footnotes as "person X said". This is because our language is very place and time oriented and it works well as a spoken language "face to face". It's not always apparent based upon the written form who is saying what, which has resulted in the adoption of some english constructs. The language has also drifted. Pointing me to Wikipedia translation pages doesn't make your case. The appearance of english words in the text is essentially ok to do, as it is a common practice. The preservers of our language were not scholars in universities. And unlike the dine, we never had the opportunity to be left in peace to evolve our language into the modern world. There were two generations of our people who were placed into Government run schools and any cherokee caught speaking our language were beaten or punished for doing so. As a result, it was the backwoods hillbilly types in oklahoma who ended up being the preservers of our language. unfortunately, these people were not able to carry it into the modern world, so the language never evolved to incorporate many modern concepts into our language. Cherokee people have also been bilingual with english for over 400 years -- a lot longer than the dine have been. I and others among our people are now trying to do this with wikipedia and other projects, including some high level scholars among my people. Now, as I said before, consider contributing or leave. go-li-ga-ni-hi-s-gv? (TRANSLATiON: you better understand what I am saying in a way that sticks in your head) wa-do. Jeffrey V. Merkey 15:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

First of all, do not think that the Navajo people have not undergone any sort of oppression. We may not have been under US jurisdiction as long as you, but that does not mean that nothing has been done to us. The majority of Navajo were also forced to leave our land and march to a far-off location, with many dying, and then later made to walk all the way back to the homeland again without rations. We were made dependent on livestock by the US government, the same government that later "reduced" our livestock (meaning they came onto our land and shot our sheep, leaving many families to starve), and many Navajo did go to Indian boarding schools (especially Phoenix Indian School, which actually is a source for a bit of pedagogic material in our languages), and some were forcibly adopted out to non-Indian families. Unlike the Cherokee, until very recently we did not have any scholars in universities. Besides, this is hardly about "modern concepts". We are talking here about words like "discusses". How is that a modern concept? I am confident that my ancestors "discussed" things many times, and I know that my great-aunt "discusses" many things. No, there is no exact equivalent in Navajo for the word "discusses", there is no single word with the exact same meaning, but languages are living things, so we would use the phrase which means "she talks about it" because that is what "discusses" means. I would be surprised if your ancestors did not have similar concepts. I have not read the print version of the Cherokee Phoenix, no, only their English-only online version, but in a document I saw a while back which circulated, containing translations of the UDHR in several North American Indian languages, I remember distinctly that the Cherokee text was written entirely in syllabics (It's not available online, but the Chikasaw version is, and despite a very similar history, their version is also written without the crutch of English words). About being bilingual for 400 years, that is no excuse for using 10% of your words in what is supposed to be Cherokee text in English, the Welsh, who have been largely or partially bilingual for centuries longer manage much better than that. The Greenlandic people, one of the first in the Americas to be exposed to colonization, still preserve their Greenlandic language, and while they do have many Danish loanwords, they manage to use over 90% native words. Now, so far I have only seen one contributor here, and that is you. I look in recent changes, and every day the only person writing anything at all is you. Where are these scholars? And your threat, you must keep in mind the rules of WMF projects, it is completely unacceptable to ban somebody just because you don't like them, banning is for spammers and vandals.

Blocking is also for people who troll and disrupt. Since I do not know who you are or even if you are representing yourself accurately, and since I deal with vandals all day long, trolling may get the same response, particularly if you are not contributing. So far the only contributions I have seen from this address changed a word (gantali) into something unintelligible just so you could gratify yourself by INCORRECTLY representing a drifted word in Cherokee. Your primary issue seems to be that you want to see every word in syllabary. I hate to disappoint you, but it will be a long time until we get to that point here. So tell me, how would you translate "thermophilic bacteria" into cherokee -- "little animals who live in hot water", or just use the latin derivations? How about latin based classifications for animals, like "canis lupis"? Our word is "waya" for wolf, but shouldn't the latin nomeclature be preserved since this is an international standard? I appreciate you pointing out that "discusses" is not as simple to map as people may think. In Cherokee, there are verb stem modifiers that say WHO is discussing "o-s-ti" (me and everyone), (tsi) myself, etc. ka-ne: i-s-di (he is speaking), etc. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but what is trolling and what is disruptive are very subjective. Since you're currently the only real active editor here, and there is no established policy, how you deal with vandals and possible trolls is pretty much up to you, unless someone complains that you were trying to supress them and a steward finds their claim credible. Since this is a small Wiki and you are only one person, nobody expects you to be perfect, but when it comes to borderline cases, the rule of thumb is to be able to justify any actions according to en:Wikipedia:Blocking policy or the corresponding page on another large Wikipedia (to CYA, that is). Simply saying things you don't agree with on your talkpage is hardly trolling. I have not called you names, I have not made any ad-hominem attacks, or done anythin g else against the rules of Wikipedia. As I noted in my previous response here, it would probably be easier to just ignore me if you don't like what I have to say.

Now, you seem to be very confused as to what my actual objective is. First of all, you are treating me as if I intentionally vandalized pages by replacing a word in Latin, which at the time I thought was a simple typo, into what I thought was the appropriate conversion into syllabic Cherokee. Perhaps if I had such strong and such twisted intentions as you seem to suspect, I would've consistently reverted your reversion of my work, however you gave a good explanation of why I was wrong and despite the fact that I was unsure and still not completely satisfied, I did not feel the need to revert it because you reasoning for writing it in the Latin alphabet was obviously one of a couple of possible solutions to a difficult problem, while mine was not.

My issue is not that I want to see every word in syllabary. My issue is that there are many words --- nontechnical words -- written in English. Not words like "thermophilic bacteria" -- that is something I would leave untranslated into Navajo probably (it would render the text incomprehensible; if the intended audience included people who would not understnd those terms, I would include a footnote, but wikilinks serve just as good). I am not talking about technical words and scientific terms, I am not talking about gigabytes and molecular decomposition or canides lupes, I am talking about labor, discussion, pressing, and the like, all of which are certainly non-technical (the first two are synonymous, in their most common uses, as "work" and "talking [about sth.]"). To your credit, it seems like in most new articles you have used much fewer English words.

You are welcome to simply ignore me, if you never responded to me I would never have had much to say in the first place, but if you end up blocking me, there is a possibility that you could lose your admin privelages here (I have a friend who had this happen at another project).

Please do not make pseudo-legalistic threats, they are not allowed here. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not a pseudo-legalistic threat -- I am talking about the procedures for desysopping on Wikimedia projects. If you block me to suppress my opinion, that is against the rules that cover all Wikimedia projects, and pending a review by stewards, you could possibly be desysopped for such an action (on the other hand, if they agree with you, or if I opt to just give up rather than complain about the situation, nothing will happen).

Also, I'm not sure why you continue to insist on continuing this engagement, in fact escalating the hostility, and remaining on the deffensive to tell me why I am wrong, as if I have launched an attack against the Cherokee people, rather than consider what I am saying. --24.251.68.181 20:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I have considered what you are saying. Here, let me summarize for you and tell me if I got it wrong: "I want to see ALL THE PAGES IN SYLLABARY WHETHER IT MAKES SENSE OR NOT OR WHETHER IT COMPLIES WITH SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE OR NOT because it looks better." Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You got it very, very wrong. It seems like you assumed I had some kind of crazy or bad intention before you even read my messages in the first place. When it comes to language, the concern is conveying a meaning, not "making it look pretty". That's graphic design, more specifically typography and text layout and word usage, something we don't need to concern ourcelves with much on Wikipedia. --24.251.68.181 12:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Pseudo-legalistic threats, trolling, and vandalism

You seem to grossly misunderstand policy. See en:WP:LEGAL (though not present specifically on chr:, I could find no policy pages here dealing with the topic, and the policy from the English Wikipedia is inherited from MeatBallWiki and is also found on almost every large version of Wikipedia) -- it deals specifically with legal threats, that is, threats to sue or bring other sort of legal action against (call the district attourney, advise a business to file a suit, etc.,), not "threats" of complaints to officials within the Wikimedia foundation, or as you called them, pseudo-legalistic threats. I would call that a warning, not a threat, because if I am blocked, especially since you have made such a gigantic issue over me "making legal threats", I guarantee you that this issue will show up on the page of m:User talk:Angela, m:User talk:Yann, m:User talk:Snowdog, m:User talk:Jon Harald Søby, or the user talk page of another steward who does have that capability. As I noted above, whether or not to remove your privelages is their decision rather than mine, and so I cannot threaten you but rather only warn you of the possibility. But there is a possibility. And this is not a threat, it is just a warning -- similar to the ones you gave me -- that you have to play by the rules here. Don't think nobody will notice if you do not.

You have been indefinitely blocked for continuing with the threats and harassing language. You may return in 12 months or appeal the block to a steward or the foundation. Policy on this wiki has nothing to do with the English Wikipedia and its policies. Policies on this wiki are governed by the community here and Wikimedia Foundation policies and stated goals of promoting Wikipedia in many languages. Since you are not a speaker of Cherokee, you need to come with your hat in your hand and be willing to genuinely help out here. To date, none of your edits have resulted in productive output that has improved the Cherokee Wikipedia. Your efforts here are measured by this standard, and not the rules on the English Wikipedia. Please consider assisting on the Dine Wikipedia as if you can speak and write Dine, as you would be a real asset on that project. donada gohvi. Jeffrey V. Merkey 04:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Second of all, you called my edits vandalism. Please see en:WP:-(, which is referenced (indirectly) from the roughly corresponding meta page, making it a foundation-wide definition. See the beginning of the third paragraph -- it very clearly states: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism". If you already knew that, as I am expected to assume according to en:WP:AGF (another foundation-wide policy), then your labelling of me as a vandal could be construed as a personal attack (again, policy on all WMF projects), but paradoxically, en:WP:AGF requires me to assume you did not intend any harm, and to therefore assume you did not know, which is, I believe the assumption that is intended to overcome the other (because ultimately the goal of AGF is to assume good faith).

You say I am a troll; that is not determinable by objective criteria, but if you really think that is the case, I suggest you go back and read this page from the beginning, comparing my tone to your own, and you will find that I have consistently assumed good faith on your part. Whether or not you did that, well, I will leave that for you to say. en:WP:FAITH2 (an essay rather than actual policy, but it follows as an extension of the previously cited policy) instructs me to assume that you did, so I am assuming we just had a misunderstanding; nevertheless, there is a clear difference in tone between your messages and mine, and while I admit I may have acted a little bit arrogant, I did keep a civil tone right up until your threat, with the exception of a single sentence (can you find it?), and whether you intended it or not, my perception was that you were very short with me even in your first message, and grew increasingly short in each response. Just because someone is stubborn, persistent, and you do not agree with them, does not make them a troll, what makes them is a troll is the tactics they use (I would go into detail, but there are pages on that already at the English Wikipedia as well as on meatballwiki, and possibly Meta).

My intention was never for this to degenerate into a threat (and/or warning)-slinging match; perhaps we can call a truce: if you do not block me, as you threatened/warned, I will not complain about that hypothetical block to a steward. All I ever wanted was a civil discussion. Wado (or as they say it here in Phoenix, do wa up um ni heyi) --24.251.68.181 01:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

This is amusing

ᏏᏲ! It seems you failed to mention the true intricacies of our fabulously complex policy-making process here at the Cherokee Wikipedia to our good friend, the vandalistic trolling disruptive harassing pseudo-legalic threatener, 24.251.68.181.

You told him/her that our policies are community written and are different from the English Wikipedia. Not entirely true. It's much more complex!

The real way we write policies, of course, is to have Jeffrey copy policy pages from the English Wikipedia, delete the parts he doesn't like, add new parts that suit his purposes, and then post them as law. And, of course, since this is the Cherokee Wikipedia, we write the policies in English, because, well, Cherokee couldn't ever be used for anything so important, right? Right?

Some illustrative examples are in order, I believe:

• WP:NLT is nearly a verbatim copy of en:WP:NLT, except that our friend Mr. Merkey added three short paragarphs in the middle regarding "pseudo-legalistic threats", and removed a couple of miscellaneous things that were only serving to crowd such an important policy page.
• WP:TROLL is a verbatim copy of en:WP:TROLL, except that our friend Mr. Merkey added his own parapgraph, starting with "one measurement..."
• WP:STALK is copied verbatim from en:WP:STALK.

That's what I love about our community -- the total lack of both originality AND democracy in our policymaking.

ᏩᏙ --ᎩᎹ Ꮻ ᎵᏇᏤ

ᎩᎹ Ꮻ ᎵᏇᏤ = gima wi liquetse

Block has been extended to 1 month for posting obscenity in Cherokee (ᏩᏙ -ᎩᎹ Ꮻ ᎵᏇᏤ : attempted). Jeffrey V. Merkey 18:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You have been blocked for one week for trolling. Please come back when you want to contribute articles in Cherokee. Trolling on talk pages is a waste of my time and everyone elses time. Jeffrey V. Merkey 17:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

en.wiki checkuser and AN/I account

You were blocked because our username policy does not allow usernames with the words admin or administrator in them. From our username policy WP:U: Prohibited username components include, but are not limited to words resembling the following:

• Names that imply an official role or a position with access to additional tools not available to a standard user, such as "Administrator", "Admin", "System operator", "Sysop", or "Moderator".

Please choose a different name. No one is allowed to have a name with admin or administrator in it. I replied on my talk page, but wanted to let you know here. 70.244.159.52 04:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I created another account which conforms to the enwiki username policies. thanks for the assistance. also, please remove the pages for the previous account since they do not conform to the username policies on the english wikipedia. Jeffrey V. Merkey 04:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I note you removed the pages. Thank you. I have updated the checkuser account in the main page. Jeffrey V. Merkey 05:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Please go ahead and delete the pages associated with the user account (user and talk pages -- delete them do not just blank them) and I will create another account without using these improper names. I would prefer to not have these pages exist if the account is improper and has been blocked. Thanks for the help in advance. 67.186.225.37 04:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Oh and I'm sure you've figured this out, but don't use the word checkuser in the new name :)

I did not. here is the new name. CherokeeWiki 05:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Perfect. Enjoy. pschemp | talk 05:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Sequoyah's Syllabary

Osiyo,

Tyson Taylor dawadoa. I am a multi-ethnic (Cherokee, Blackfoot, and English from my mother's side Black from both, Haitian-French Creole from my father's side) linguist/translator (English-Gilisi, French-Galvtsi, German-Datsi, Dutch-<no equiv, though Dvtsi or Nelanidi might be good creations>, Spanish-Squani and Italian-Idali). I am currently living in the Netherlands, and so much out of touch with the cherokee world. In addition to that I am only 28 years old, and have only been once to the Cherokee Nation, so of course my Cherokee is not perfect. So, I would never claim to be an expert.

That being said, I was very happy to see that someone was taking the initiative to create the Cherokee Wiki... As far as the translations go, I must say good job! It is not an easy thing to do. especially when you have to translate some of these incredibly complex things.

I could not help but read all of the argument that was going on. I too found oddity in the fact that cherokee words were not written in the syllabary and figured they were just typos or just overlooked. I would like to try to bring some light to the subject.

Sequoyah's Syllabary was never a perfect representation of the Cherokee language, but it was as close as it gets. Even the super complex Chinese writing system is not perfect to all of the different languages within China's borders for which it is used. Cherokee is, however a syllabic language for the most part. There is, however, still no standard for pronunciation or spelling. People before simply wrote the words the way they thought they sounded (much like english before standardization.). This did not and will not make a problem for a person reading the text. That is, as long as the consonants are produced well. "smile" (Note: English for instance does not have a sufficient vowel system for all of our vowels.)

example... the word "iyuwakodi"... I recently read that some people in the east do not pronounce the tla line of the syllabary as but ka. I did know however that coming from some people it sounds 'kla'. I also know from my studies of the cherokee syllabary that 'ko' is usually represented by the 'go' symbol this is of course why the 'ka' symbol was grouped with the 'ga' line when the syllabary was rearranged.

When i read the Archive, I decided to look up the word in the online dictionary in the roman alphabet it is written as you wrote it, but in the syllabary it was written with symbols for i-yu-wa-tlo-di. that was either true to what i read, or just a mistake... it would not be the first time I saw symbol mistakes there. The sound recording, of course is iyuwakdi without a vowel after the 'k' sound. In all the books i have this " language phenomenon" is usually marked as the original syllable when it is known or marked with with the "gi/ki" or "gv/kv". I myself, would most likely write 'ko' 'go', since that is what I was taught to do. and that is what is true to what would have been done in Sequoyah's time, since There were already several pronunciations for the same words. All words that are cherokee fit the syllabary, just not so easily when you are not used to writing them. But just because a word changes, does not mean it cannot be written. In English, for example "time" was originally 'tima' in Old English and then the 'a' weakened to 'time' (pronounced 'tee muh') by the Middle english period, then there was another sound shift after the spellings were becoming standardized, so we are left with a word that is pronounced 'taym' but still spelled 'time'. thus ganatlvi/ganatlai should always be spelled ᎦᎾᏝᎢ regardless of how it is pronounced, unless a new vowel sound is put into it. Otherwise, why don't we just throw out the syllabary and use roman script... because that would defeat the purpose of work that the father of Cherokee linguistic advancement did and the mission he had (to have the cherokee people literate and using a writing system of their own).

We, as cherokee people, cannot be afraid of being creative, instead we should be as our forefathers were.

Also, just because a journalist is too lazy to make the effort to properly write a cherokee word, does not mean we all should be. Nowhere does my Cherokee New Testament have english words or roman script within the scriptures... The writers took the time and effort to create words where there were none... for instance 'Greece' does not fit into the syllabary no into the phonetics of the language. Therefore 'Goi' is what they called it... coincidentally this just happens to be the cherokee word for 'grease' Sometimes, words must be created or modified... 'cow' = 'waga'not derived from english, but from spanish 'Vaca'. 'car' = 'Atsododi'(one word) 'automobile' I learned owtombil (which does not fit) or owtomquili... Cherokee nation website lists odamoquili... which fits perfectly...

Basically there needs to be a standardazation for writing. That (along with creating words, as does Irish, Welsh and every other language in the world)is what will help the language to survive. And English cannot be the only language of reference for translations and transliteration. As with 'waga', sometimes another language gives us something better to work with.

I would really like to work with someone to create names for Nations and Nationalities and have they made official words in the Cherokee Language...

howa. We need to proceed very pragmatically, and new words I have to pass by the Cherokee Nation Language committee at some point. We have some freedom, but I hate to tell you, the syllabary and otali have drifted. The Cherokee Nation is extending the Syllabary at present to add "l" sounds and "j" sounds which new appear in the language. As for the new testament (which is the only historical translation from the early 1800s that exists today -- great language reference) was written as the language was represented then. The Otali speakers (which comprise most Cherokee today) have substituted "j" sounds for "tl" sounds in spoken form and contracted about 60% of the spoken words since the new testament was published.

As far as the argument goes, maybe you were giving the guy a hard time. I did not see where he said anything offensive, he was only inquiring... We should work together to do this not be attacking each other. Had native americans worked together in the first place, and not against each other, what the outcome would have been... Now is the time to work together.

I explained it several times, and he kept asking the same question. He appeared to be trolling. Making threats is uncivil and not allowed here. He is welcome back, provided the threats and trolling stop. Your postings are constructive, however. wado. Jeffrey V. Merkey 06:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Wado ale Nvwato hiyadv!

another matter

Aquanvta, aquanvta. I just thought the whole thing was blown up bigger than it was. As a person on the outside, I saw the positives of both sides, but also the negatives. Anyway it is great that all parties can look past this... I was wondering something, however... as far as searching for articles, what will be done?

By default, I think we should preserve the english names and cherokee both. You can search with syllabary on thi site. We need to install the chr2syl extensions to make editing easier. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Internet Explorer (being as how there is no Cherokee version), does not quite allow for typing cherokee into search engines etc. Should there not at least be a way to search the articles using the roman script?

Also, if you would like me to assist you in figuring how to make sense of things so they can be translated more easily into cherokee, I am all for it. I am quite used to doing this from other translation work. I can at least make the english sentences into constructions that are more easily translated. I will of course do this by comparing to other languages which I speak.

Well, we should organize an "articles to be completed" section on the site. There are a lot of stubs needing work. Jeffrey V. Merkey 21:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)