[Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion

Wed Jul 12 16:45:15 UTC 2006

Oldak Quill wrote:

>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "Википедию" which transliterates as
>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
>
>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>The name should be:
>>
>>ᏗᎪᏪᎵ ᎦᏣᏄᎳ
>>
>>(digoweli gatsanula)
>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>>
>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>>
>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
>>language, and was synthesized.
>>
>>Just a suggestion...
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>  
>
Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the 
name can create something you do not intend.

Let's look at it:

Wi-gi-que-di-ya

wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
gi - to combine
que - incomplete verb root about an animal
di - plural for a non living object
ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or 
topic)

Not to mention "di" is always at the start of a pural word, "gi" is a 
modifier always at the end of a word, que isn't a word at all, and "wi" 
is a tense modifer always at the end of word.

Translation:

"Something very negative in the past was put together for (??? - 
something that resembles a contraction of the word nesgi which means 
keep your hands off of it) , and there were a bunch of them (di) that 
dwell in a large area.

In other words, its current name implies "negative place to keep your 
hands off of and there's a whole bunch of us here".

Based on the edit history of the site, seems to have been the course 
followed.  Perhaps we should change its name?

Jeff