I just got back from the Inupiaq Artic Museum at Kotzebue, Alaska. Although
I'm no Inuktitut language expert, As far as I know, the principal dialects
East and West Greenlandic (which are quite differentiated), the Polar
dialect of Greenlandic, and the Alaskan Eskimo dialects of Inupaiq, Yupik
and Alutiiq are all written in Latin characters. I belive that the 3
principal forms of the Sami languages ( a/k/a "Lappi", though this is no
longer considered correct), which live in Northern Scandanavia and the Kola
peninsula of Russia are also normally written in Latin or Cyrillic. The most
widely spoken is Northern Sami, which is written using Latin 9.
See for example:
http://www.greenland-guide.dk/gt/visit/green-10.htm#Thelanguage for a quick
discussion on language and
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/inuit.html#g1 for a little more
extensive one. This website is a gold mine for most of the unfamiliar
languages. Diacritical marks are generally avoided in favor of multiple
vowels.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/inupiaq.html has an excellent
discussion of Inpuiaq language dialects.
Certain additional characters are required: For example, the Inpaiq name for
"Nome" is "Sitnasuaq" with a line through the "n", meaning a form of "ng".
The Siberian Yupik (again, a differntiated dialect) probably a Cyrillic
character or dipthong. GeoNative identifies several Latin characters used
with lines through them or carons, see:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/inupiaq.html .They also have a Unicode
cross reference table at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9860/asr22.html
Then there are the other Artic residents of Russia, for example, the Nenets
/ Nganasan / Selkup / Khanti / Mansi / Chukchi / Koryak. See:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/nenets.html#nga and
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/koriak.html
The rest, including corrections to anything that I have said, I will leave
to the language scholars....
Clive
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter_Constable@sil.org [SMTP:Peter_Constable@sil.org]
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 8:49 AM
> To: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: Re: Language/Script list (was RE: List of languages &
> scripts)
>
>
> >- Inuktitut - Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Latin - Canada
> > I'd add "USA" (Alaska) beside "Canada".
>
> In the US, the languages from that family are referred to as Inupiat or
> Inupiaq. I'm not sure if they're written using the Cree/Inuit syllabics --
> I think they're probably just written in Latin. Either way I'm sure their
> writing systems are supported in Unicode. So, you could make the entry for
> Inuktitut / Inupiat. Also, the variety of Inuktitut spoken in Greenland is
> known there as Kalaallisut, and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't
> supported by Unicode (though I personally don't really know much about how
> they write over there).
>
> Yupik is a little more complicated: the Yupik languages spoken in the US
> are written in Latin, but in Russia they use Cyrillic, and at least one of
> them uses a Cyrillic character that is not in Unicode. (Upper & lower
> case, so two characters, actually.)
>
>
> >- Naxi - Naxi [2] - China
> > Is Naxi script encoded? If not, "[1]" should be added.
>
> Naxi script is not encoded, but I believe that's not how the language is
> written today.
>
>
> - Peter
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> Peter Constable
>
> Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
> 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
> Tel: +1 972 708 7485
> E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
>
> ?
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