Microsoft releases first Windows OS in an original American language Members of the largest remaining group of Native Americans, the Cherokee, have built the first local language pack for Windows 8, just 27 years after the launch of the original Windows. "The project started with Tracy Monteith, a Cherokee citizen in North Carolina who worked at Microsoft, who'd wanted it done for a long time …
Another example of why using free opensource software is better.
It doesn't matter it supporting something is economically worth it, there is far more change of a minority language being supported in KDE than any other desktop I have seen.
Most distro's still ship with ddate (the discordian calendar) ....
Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 62nd day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3178
There was a guy named Merkey, a real "character", who claimed to be doing a Cherokee operating system (during the SCO we-own-Linux circus). I wonder if he's found greener pastures?
Seems like the market for a Cherokee-language OS would be rather small, but then again, what do I know about it?
I guess it fell on the side of it being a name rather than a description. Like the names Oracle or Microsoft, you just leave them as is.
Otherwise, what would be the proper translation? A transliteration, like "goo guh" for Google (as in Chinese). Or an attempted description, like "forked tongue up your ..." Who would decide which company it fit best?
Not true actually when used alone 'America' does refer to the USA which is in North America, the country you mention is in South America, two separate continents from a geographical/geological/plate techtonics point of view. The two continents collided several million years back. When referring to the two together they are called 'The Americas' (plural), well at least in English (English English not Amerglish). Off hand I don't know any other country in the Americas which actually have 'America' in their name.
What practical use is speaking Cherokee in everyday life? It's about as worthwhile as leaning to speak Klingon. Stop trying to preserve it as a living language - just document everything for future academics to examine, and let the language die out.
Then stop being proud of where your many-times-great grandparent came from. It isn't important.
It is not totally frivolous if you live near Cherokee N.C. where I grew up. White people get a lot of respect from the Cherokee for even expressing interest in their culture. It helped me get some dates in high school I probably wouldn't have been allowed to go on by their parents if I hadn't been taking classes to learn the language.
So there.
I wondered about the strange characters in the screen shot, and looked up what Wikipedia says about the Cherokee language. Absolutely fascinating! It seems a Cherokee called Sequoyah developed this on his own in 1821, which Wikipedia says is "the only time in recorded history that a member of a non-literate people independently created an effective writing system."
Gnome has been available in Cherokee (as well as at least 10 other Native American tongues) since the late 1990s, KDE about the same time; there are Cherokee, Apache, and several other languages available for OpenOffice (and have been since the early 2000s), and so on -- hey, KDE and OpenOffice are available in Low German (OK, sorry for patting my own back, was involved there myself)--so what's the hullabaloo about Micro$oft finally recognising one of their home markets after not even having to invest money into it (as it seems the Cherokee did all the translation work on their own initiative)?
You've answered your own question, really. It wouldn't be news if KDE or OpenOffice added support for Burushaski, Pirahã, or Toki Pona, but for Microsoft to support a non-major language is a departure from their usual behaviour. Perhaps other languages will follow ...
I really cant see any use for an obscure language pack like this. Any useful work (websites,email,whatever productivity needs to be done) will need to be in a common language that the masses can read, unless you want to limit your audience to a few thousand indians. I presume all cherokee can speak english anyway, so really, whats the point?
Welsh is the same, its a dead, pretty useless language thats only survived this long because the welsh govt have forced it on kids at school. It serves no purpose beyond academic curiosity in the 21st century, as evidenced by all the english words the welsh need to use for modern items/concepts.
I used to suffer s4c before freesat liberated my telly, and the ridiculousness of it was evident in interviews where the presenter sometimes asked questions in welsh, and got a reply in english. So why not just use bloody english in the first place?
As an aside, there was a survey done by a tv ratings company a while back and they estimated that quite a few welsh language programs on s4c didnt receive a single viewer. I imagine cornish programming on bbc alba is much the same.
As a poster above said, document these dead languages, archive them, then let them die. Certainly dont prop them up with govt funding and forced learning at school.
I take exception to the articles title, what proof do you have that Cherokee or any other of the extant indigenous American languages are original? I think that 12-15K years ago when the 'original' human inhabitants arrived that none of them spoke any of the current languages.
Since it's a tad non-PC to call them American Indians or Native Americans nowadays, should they not be referred to as American Americans to distinguish them from the PC correct(ed) African Americans, Latin American Americans (do they speak Latin?) or European Americans? Yep, having to use American Americans should really upset the WASPs, Rednecks, and Hillbillies. Yee-haa, yippee-kai-yay or ....... Geronimo!
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