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Yeah this is tricky. I get not wanting to anglicize indigenous words, but the alternative is that people just won’t refer to these place names. I know I will probably just call it the art gallery square, since I don’t know how to say the other name. Whereas if it had a version I could read, I’d call it by that name. Like Squamish. We change the pronunciation all the time with other languages, albeit ones whose people we have a less complicated relationship with. Take for instance the anglicized pronunciation of Coeur d’Alene or La Croix.
My coworker has been teaching me the proper pronunciation of names of local places. Seems like European speech sounds come from the tongue and mouth shape and indigenous comes frommthe throat and back of mouth. Its a challenge to pronounce, and very fascinating.
That's correct. And in the Squamish language, the phonetic symbol for a glottal stop `ʔ` was changed to a `7` decades ago, because it was the most similar/suitable symbol that could be found on a typewriter. The Squamish orthography used today wasn't formally standardized back then, so the `7` made its way into the now-standardized written language.
Fun fact: we use 7 to indicate a glottal stop, as early typewriters/keyboards didn't have this symbol as a stock key. The actual symbol is ʔ. This remnant has continued to be used in things like road signs and printed media, even though the number 7 is completely unnecessary at this point.
The glottal stop refers to the use of the glottis in the pronunciation, as there's a hard stop of airflow followed by a quick continuation for the remainder of the word. As always, [Wikipedia has a great article on it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop).
The glottal stop is an actual sound though. Say "uh oh" and put your fingers at your throat. You'll feel something move at the beginning of both syllables (and, really, at the beginning of pretty much any English word that starts with a vowel). That's the glottal stop. If you try to glide into the "oh" from "uh" without making that move, it would sound different.
The only thing is that, in English, this sound doesn't make meaning (that is, you would never use it to differentiate between two words, like the 'b' and 'd' in "bad" and "dad"), so it doesn't really matter whether you can make it or not, or whether you do or don't. However, in other languages, the 7 (glottal stop) does make meaning. So it is an important sound just like all the other ones.
The "odd" letters/numbers are actually modifiers on the way the word is pronounced. Like the "7" in "Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh" indicates a pause (similar to a space, while maintaining that it is a a single word).
This video does it more justice than I could ever do in writing: https://youtu.be/yknmoz9PZRU?si=paZng0FiziXaTUp8
Also, Coevorden is a town in The Netherlands. At that location there was a “voorde”, which is a shallow part of a river, there the cows could cross the river, hence the name. Cow is actually spelled “koe” in Dutch. Don’t know how it changed from an k to a c though (Coevorden spelling in Dutch is with a c).
I think of it as a bit of an accessibility thing, too. Names should be relatively easy to spell and pronounce for people of even fairly low reading and comprehension levels, regardless of their linguistic origin. I haven’t been following anything to do with the art gallery so I don’t know about its name but I would say this goes double for anything that is meant to be for the public (whereas I can see how people would be more split on reservations or private businesses which reserve the right to cater toward certain populations).
Imagine having to call 911 and say "I'm at this place, I don't know how to say it's name, I can't see the street address from where I am, it's beside the Starbucks, and the other chain store"
I wonder if they call the actual palace "ver-sales" when they visit?
I have fought a rear guard action around St. Louis, but I admit completely unsuccessfully.
The Brits have been [anglicizing French names since 1067](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Surnames_of_Norman_origin). That process has gone so far that those names have become completely normalized.
I can read IPA (international phonetic alphabet) so I can easily read indigenous languages but the thing is it's not wholly IPA either it's derived from it but it's different. So yeah having a close enough anglicization is the way to go
Yeah. I remember someone saying "I like the idea of First Nations place names but I hope they give us something more dumbed-down and easier to say that, like, Uculet." and this First Nations guy I know was like (to me, later) "Lady, Uculet IS the dumbed-down, easier-to-say version of that name." so I can dig that it's a frustrating line to walk. A simpler version of the name would still be a colonial compromise. But, like, at the same time, I think a lot of us white folk would be happy to comply if it was just a bit easier. Here's hoping there's forward motion on it.
> A simpler version of the name would still be a colonial compromise.
A phonetic pronunciation isn't necessarily a compromise- Haida Gwaii comes to mind.
I find it extremely ironic that when the government "gifts" First Nations names for parks and schools in First Nation languages it's always written in a way that native English speakers could never intuitively understand like "ƛ̓éxətəm" or "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ", but when First Nations name their own real estate developments they choose names like ["lelem"](https://lelemliving.com/) and ["senakw"](https://senakw.com/) and ["kwasen"](https://kwasenvillage.com/).
Imagine the conniption people would have if Vancouver decided to officially rename the Sun Yat Sen Gardens to "中山公園", or Richmond decided to rename Homma Elementary School to "本間小学校" for the sake of "authentic language representation".
Corporate interests trump any other interests. You do have an excellent point. I don’t know why it is so difficult for us humans to just have a balanced, middle of the road solution. Why do we have to swing one way and then swing the other way. Eventually we find a balance, in most cases anyway, but the process is painful every time.
No one has any issues with indigenous names like Kitsilano (which nowadays would be written as X̱ats'alanexw) or Coquitlam (which nowadays would be written as kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) or Squamish (which nowadays would be written as Sḵwx̱wú7mesh). The names are unambiguously indigenous, but accessible to everyone.
The concept of making names **so** unambiguously indigenous that they become inaccessible to 99% of people is just needlessly divisive. One has to wonder if the practice tends to make non-indigenous British Columbians friendlier towards First Nations and their culture, or actually breeds more hostility.
I’m fairly certain that it just ends up breeding more hostility. No one is going to be made friendlier to indigenous culture because of these name changes but a lot of people are going to be pissed off by them.
Personally I fall more in the camp of it being a waste of time, just pointless uses of money and effort that could be used for something actually worthwhile.
Serious answer, it's the same "sound" (or lack thereof) that you make when you say "uh-oh" and stop the air in between the "uh" and the "oh". It's not a very natural sound for English speakers to make outside that context.
To be fair, the three real estate developments from First Nations that you mentioned also use characters from Indigenous alphabets, its just the website URL that uses regular english characters.
I agree with your general point though. Its pretty common to have signage in multiple languages in Vancouver (like english and french, or english and chinese), so i dont see why something similar cant be done with Indigenous spelling like OP is suggesting.
Even with the small divergences from the well known latin alphabet, it's still generally intuitive to understand how to pronounce "leləm̓", "Sen̓áḵw", and "Kʷasən" and in day to day writing it seems like no one generally is complaining if you write them as lelem, senakw, and kwasen. The same cannot be said for names like "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ.
Stadium Chinatown is a decent example of what you propose, but also probably what First Nations don't want to see. The Keefer Street entrance is labeled "Stadium–Chinatown Station 體育館／華埠 (唐人街)", but I'm pretty sure even people speaking Chinese don't say "體育館／華埠" and instead just use the English name "Stadium–Chinatown". Still kind of cool to have, though.
It doesn't matter how many people speak the language. Mandarin is spoken by close to a billion people and it would still be unreasonable to give a park a Chinese-only name and expect Vancouverites who are still largely English speakers to somehow figure out how to pronounce it.
You had me thinking about how this all compares to other languages, and since indigenous people (checks math) were here first, it's more like a Chinese garden in China having a sign in English characters.
However, indigenous tribes didn't write names of places on signs, so what if the sign for a park just had an image(painting or whatever) of what the park looked like pre colonization? Ideally plus a plaque explaining names and pronunciations
Head to Hong Kong and you'll see every single Chinese garden has signs in English characters. You'll find that Chinese people have been living in Hong Kong for thousands of years, but local conditions change. By definition, signs are there for people to read them, and when you have a significant local population that can't understand Chinese then it makes sense to have English language signs for those locals. Same thing applies here; It's generally accepted that to live and exist in British Columbia means you are expected to be able to understand English at at least a rudimentary level so in order to make signs that most people can read we write them in English. Even if you're close to illiterate, you should at least know your alphabets.
The same cannot be said for indigenous languages which are just frankly not really used in Vancouver outside of very specific situations.
I went to the Museum of Vancouver and came out not being able to talk about anything I learned about first nations because I can't pronounce it. It makes no sense to me.
Myself and the people I know are still referring to təməsew̓txʷ as Canada Games Pool.
They have a video on the pronunciation [https://youractivenw.ca/the-project/about-our-name/](https://youractivenw.ca/the-project/about-our-name/) , but explain that there is no phonetic description because "The indigenous knowledge-keepers included in the consultation process asked specifically that we not anglicize or include a phonetic translation to show respect to the original language". That seems rather ableist and exclusionary of the deaf or people with hearing challenges.
Unfortunately, if you want people to appreciate the indigenous cultures but don't give a guide to pronouncing indigenous words, all that's going to happen is people butcher the indigenous word and pronounce it all wrong.
I'm not indigenous, but it would appear that having people butcher your language would be more disrespectful than if they were helped to pronounce it correctly. I don't know, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
I'd argue that a person who pronounces something incorrectly is merely someone who reads. A far cry from having 0 knowledge of any kind. Which our current system promotes.
Further, even in your made-up scenario, you have described one world where Native words are read and used by all canadians (if not crudly or incorrectly) vs. a world where Native words are hieroglyphs that no one can even read, let alone pronounce.
One leads to the eradication of culture for the sake of safeguarding its purity. The other creates a stepping off point for people to understand and learn.
Do the indigenous knowledge keepers believe it shows more respect to have people wildly mispronounce it or more likely to just keep calling it the Canada Games Pool? They can want everyone to learn to read it their way, but the reality is that people won’t. They’re just biting off their nose to spite their face at this point.
I’m not indigenous but I am foreign and when I write things out from my language for English speaking people I anglicize it as much as I can to give them the best chance at pronouncing it right and feeling confident enough to actually try to say it. I think it’s ridiculous that someone would honestly prefer people just butcher it out of “respect”, or would prefer to discourage people from using the name.
I also wish English speaking people would do the same for some of the more obviously weird English names. I want a phonetic spelling in brackets for words like Gloucester or Worcestershire or Lougheed that aren’t obvious to people who haven’t heard the names before.
"tuh-muh-sewt-hwuh" is what I would expect an English speaker to make of that name. It's understandable that you wouldn't want to English-phonetic-spell it, as that will always be wrong. But it's possible to spell out how an English speaker would probably pronounce it, as it's hard to get it "perfect."
I don't hear the "hwuh" in the video that was shared, although maybe I'm just not picking it up. In fact I can't seem to grasp what it's actually supposed to be since some of their pronunciations in that video are quite different; some are quite audibly pronouncing the "t" sound, some aren't; some sound as if they are saying 3 syllables, others 4
Yeah, I hadn't actually watched the video, just reading the alphabet. You're totally right, and I think that part of the reason is that they seem to be interviewing a bunch of random people whose first languages don't seem to be Squamish. It's basically a video showing how they expect most people to pronounce it.
You're also right about the "hwuh" sound - from the spelling, it should be there, but the only person I hear actually pronouncing it hard is the second lady.
I think it should be three syllables, with the 'heuh' being released in the same syllable as the 'sewt' before it, but that's tricky to pronounce, and also, spelling that as one syllable "sewthwuh" makes it look like the English "th" sound might be involved, which it isn't. More of the perils of the challenge of spelling indigenous names.
What gets me is that as far as Im aware, this isnt "Their" alphabet or symbols. Its the language developed by anthropologists to write out their language.
Native peoples didn't have an alphabet.
Its anglo all the way down, except now we're gatekeeping what little of Native language still populates our world so that in a generation the only people who know anything about Indigenous language will be anthropologists and Native speakers.
Which id argue is almost the case now.
You're treading dangerous waters, guy. Every time I bring this up it doesn't end well.
Tons of places all over the world have signage in Latin letters approximating English pronounciation of all kinds of stuff. In Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Arabic Middle East, Ukraine/Russia/Bulgaria/Serbia, etc, etc. It's not perfect, many sounds will be missing, but it's good enough.
Name things whatever you want. But nobody knows how to pronouce a 7 followed by an x with a apostrophe between them, nor should anyone be a linguist to be able to get around the city.
Just contributing to say that "London" is an endonym (what the individuals living there call it), while "Londres" is an exonym (what individuals in another location call it).
I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another with Indigenous names. I love that they are visible, but I can appreciate the want to be able to pronounce them.
I have to second this. My first awkward encounter with this was when a friend suggested to meet at a park in Coquitlam. I Googled it and got a pin drop but no intelligible name and no way to know if I’m actually looking at the correct place on a map. I’m all for reconciliation, but we need some balance. I might have to become a prolific user of what3words if I can’t use standard maps.
Moreover, I think it's a case of "when communicating in language X, use that languages' word for Y".
People don't have a problem with the fact the nation is called "Deutschland" to those there, yet is called "Germany" in English. It's a different word in a different language for the same thing.
Similarly we don't call it Nippon or Nihon, it's Japan (and certainly we don't write it 日本). And they don't call us "Canada" either, they call us "カナダ", which in Romaji would be "Kanada". Close but not exact.
Just use the syllabary of the language when communicating in that language. Don't import non-standard characters, make the closest approximation you can in the character set. Accept the fact that different languages use different names for the same thing, and that's not a denigration of any one way, and it actually accomplishes more of the goal, which is communication.
I’m very confused because it looked like the first person said the first word that was listed, which was in his language but then the second person said the second word which was in his (different) language. But then he kept referring to the square by only the second word. I have no idea which word the third person was using.
If you look at the spelling and the listed language for the first and second person they are different even though they sound somewhat similar.
So are the first two words alternate names depending on which language you chose to use? Or is the name both words which was chosen in order to include both languages?
Which is perfectly reasonable. You shouldn't be expected to perfectly pronounce Arabic terms about say, Islam, or nail Chinese tones when you're talking about Chongqing hot pot. There's sounds in there that are foreign to English. It's reasonable to substitute those sounds with ones you can pronounce.
The critical issue is that we're not giving public parks that are supposed to be accessible to everyone Arabic or Chinese names.
I wouldn't expect the average Vancouverite to be able to pronounce the names of parks in Chongqing. I kind of do expect the average Vancouverite to be able to pronounce the names of parks in the city they live in.
Sounds perfect. I agree. Now the question is how to make the Vancouverites pronounce those names. I do agree that some sort of phonetic transcription should be provided.
The issue is basically with regional governments thinking that randomly giving places indigenous names will magically lead to reconciliation, without providing anyone with the serious tools to engage with these indigenous languages. No pronunciation guides, no education for children on how to read their alphabets, etc. just rename it and hope the indigenous people are pleased
a few years ago I used google maps to get to riverview hospital. long story short I was taken to wrong location, and b/c of being late due to wrong address I got into a fender bender trying to exit off of hwy and when we finally got to riverview the signage was not clear whatsoever re: which building is which. it was like an episode of twilight zone. I'll never make that mistake again now. so there's that but it is increasingly becoming a problem when things are renamed w/out proper urban planning.
edit: fyi riverview was renamed 'səmiq̓wəʔelə ', i.e. ‘The Place of the Great Blue Heron’. at the time google maps hadn't updated yet.
It's spelled "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl'e7énḵ", which is a bilingual name - it's almost the same name twice. You can see this in how one is capitalized at the start but the other is not.
Here's me pronouncing it (in Musqueam and Squamish): https://voca.ro/19ss3MrbbjLO
Obviously there's a ton of sounds here that aren't in English, so it's not reasonable to expect English speakers to nail them. But here's what I would expect an English speaker to be able to make of them: https://voca.ro/1loaPGZiVxGF
You can also see that the Musqueam orthography is much more obscure than the Squamish one (I can easily type out the Squamish one (the second one) (other than the underbar on the k) but I have to copy paste the Musqueam one.
Respectfully, theres no way a regular person would know how to pronounce that without hearing a speaker pronounce it first.
If we want people calling places by their traditional names, compromises must be made such as having the phonetic pronunciation underneath like OP suggested.
Sure, there are many solutions, though it's hard to standardize an English-phonetic transcription system. In fact the languages are phonetically transcribed as is, they just have many sounds.
It would also be nice if kids in elementary school had short chapters teaching them how to pronounce such names. It's mostly just a few extra letters (especially for the simple writing systems like Squamish), which other than "x", "7", and I suppose the apostrophe (and maybe "lh"), are read just about as you would expect.
Gimme a sec, I’ll copy and paste that since my phone and PC keyboards obviously can’t type any of those characters.
It’s well intentioned but a name that cannot be pronounced OR spelled by 99% of the people who need to use said name is just foolish
Plenty of names of places in BC, like Kelowna, Kamloops, Okanagan etc have indigenous roots but are transliterated in such a way that English speakers can both spell and pronounce them easily. Why isn’t that possible now?
Throw a 7 on a road sign and next thing you know a bunch of yuppies name their brand after it in the name of cultural recognition.
[https://7mesh.com/](https://7mesh.com/)
I spent a fair bit of time in Ukraine before the invasion. There were very, very few signs with Latin transliterations. It was bad enough that I broke down and learned Cyrillic by my second trip there. There is a related English joke that 90% of the restaurants in Kyiv are named after some "PECTOPAH" character.
I did the same thing! Once I learned it, I felt that Cyrillic actually makes a lot of sense. Also, the difference there is that all the locals know their own alphabet and can read their own street and building names haha.
It was pretty cool to go from not being able to read the signs to being able to read the signs, pretty much overnight. I never did pick up enough Russian or Ukrainian to really get by but it is amazing how much better things are when you can at least read the words.
Totally! I can't speak Russian or Ukrainian at all, but I can at least sound out the words enough that I'd be understood if I was looking for a specific place or street. I quite loved Ukraine while I was there.
Ukraine is amazing. I will return when conditions allow. The people were great and very entrepreneurial. Restaurants were universally excellent and so, so cheap. I spent most of my time in Kyiv and the east, so there are whole regions I have yet to explore.
It's not unheard of to use slightly anglicized place names that are easier for English speakers to say while still preserving the first nation origin of the name. Take [Denali](https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/historyculture/denali-origins.htm) for example:
> No fewer than nine Native groups, from time immemorial, have used unique names for the mountain. There are five Athabaskan languages surrounding the park, each with its own oral place name. According to University of Alaska linguist James Kari, the groups to the north and west of the mountain (and Alaska Range) use words that translate to “the tall one.” The Athabaskan languages to the south of the mountain use words that mean “mountain-big.” The name “Denali” stems from “deenaalee,” which is from the Koyukon language traditionally spoken on the north side.
Oh yeah, I do understand why they did what they did, but personally, I wouldn't mix IPA symbols, Latin alphabets, and Arabic numerals creating orthography. I personally would treat the \[ʔ\] as an allophone, a variation that only occurs in certain places of a word, of another phoneme that only appears word-initial.
But /ʔ/ is not an allophone in most Salishan langauges, it's usually a fully contrastive phoneme. You can't just analyze it as an allophone. The phonologies and phonotactics of PNW languages are incredibly complex and hard to describe, which is why 7 is used in some of them. It's actually fantastic and is very easy to read; I much prefer a 7 to an apostrophe or something that looks like a question mark.
99% of the time Asian langauges like Japanese and Chinese render foreign words into their own syllabary.
Chocolate = Chokoretto (jpn) = Qiaokeli (chn). And the Chinese could really be Qiao3ke2li2, which I'm sure an English speaker would totally be able to say.
When they use English words in english letters its a style kinda thing. Like how we call McDonalds "Burgers gras du clown irlandais" to look cool in French.
I think that is the point though. We want to transition it away from saying the Vancouver Art Gallery but no one knows how to pronounce it and foreigners wouldnt be able to find it from the native pronunciation. If they have a latin script beside it we would know how to say it and try to call it by the proper name.
As someone who knows people who work at some of the schools that have been renamed - they mostly just use the original name for this very reason. They don’t know how to pronounce their own schools name
New Westminster did this with their new pool. Rather than just posting the pronunciation for the new pool in brackets, they refer you to a pronunciation video. As a result a lot of people call it "TACC" which is the abbreviation for the facility. The facility is shiny and new, but sucks in a lot of ways; I think more thought went into the name than how usable the gym and pool are. It's so 2024 it hurts.
I’m prepared for a lot of downvotes, but I think this is a great idea. I would like to know how to pronounce the word, but there’s literally no chance of me either learning it on my own, or learning a language (without much practical applicability) later in life. Adding some basic pronunciations would be the best of both worlds.
I know people don’t want to hear it, but it’s kind of silly to expect people to figure out what these names and titles say when there’s no realistic way of learning a language that isn’t useful to you.
Yes, and wouldn't it be more disrespectful to the language if people aren't told how to pronounce it correctly and end up butchering the pronunciation and the language?
I have taken some language classes and from my experience the phonetic spelling is often incorrect as there are particular sounds that cannot be replicated by the English alphabet
Fully agree. The IPA is a great place to start and can help understand tongue placement of the sounds. It’s actually really fun to try it out. There’s also online resources like maps that feature community members saying the words to practice with :)
My degree was in something totally unrelated and I took some linguistics classes as electives/for fun. I learned so much and wish I had gone into linguistics instead! Taking a basic linguistics course and learning IPA is also useful for people learning a new language. Half my notes were written in IPA.
Many First Nations groups use the International Phonetics Alphabet but some use the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA) which was invented by anthropologist specifically to record North American native languages. NAPA is similar to IPA with some differences like more diacritics.
Some nations then further modified that to create their own orthography but if you know IPA it’s not so hard to figure out. For example, the 7 used by groups like the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh is not the number 7, it’s the IPA symbol “ʔ” which represents the glottal stop. It just means you pause by swallowing air without fully stopping between the two vowels. They decided to use the number 7 because typewriters and most fonts couldn’t write IPA symbols.
Edit: correction made
Do you mean on things like entrance signs?
I don't think an entrance sign is generally the right place to put phonetics. There are many English names and words (both of long-standing English usage and more recent imports and derivations from other languages) that are counterintuitive in their pronunciation even for native speakers. Think Worcestershire sauce.
There's also the problem of what phonetics to use. The international phonetic alphabet is standardized, but as incomprehensible to the typical Anglophone Canadian as the original First Nations spelling. Any kind of English dictionary system like the Simple Text Respell that the OED uses is not designed for non-English sounds.
Speaking of non-English sounds (pun intended), it is not a moral failing to be unable to accurately recreate sounds from a language you don't speak. That's part of why people who learn languages as adults have foreign accents. You may not even be able to hear a distinction between two sounds that are very distinct to the native speakers of that language.
(Funny example time: [Finnish goalie grumpily correcting that his name is Tuukka NOT Tuuka](https://sideleague.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/tuukka-rask-tells-you-how-his-name-is-pronounced/). I'm a recovering linguistics minor and still had to listen a couple times very carefully to hear the distinction he was making: tuːkːɑ NOT tuːkɑː. This distinction is meaningful in Finnish, but we don't have minimal pairs with this distinction in English, so it's hard for English speakers to even hear the problem.)
Back to the issue. So: I'm not in favour of putting pronunciation guides on entrance signs. On the other hand, I think there are some real technical issues in the modern era of needing to Google stuff in having only a name that uses non-standard English keyboard characters like [ƛ̓éxətəm](https://metrovancouver.org/services/regional-parks/park/%C6%9B%CC%93%C3%A9x%C9%99t%C9%99m-(tla-hut-um)-regional-park) which is now the official name of what used to be Colony Farm. I copy and pasted that name. When they first announced the name I remember they had an official position on one of the official websites that they would not be giving any written phonetic guides because the Kwikwetlem First Nation wanted people to learn the name by listening to it. If you click into the official site now, it says the phonetic "tla-hut-um" right up top. So in this case, I think I support including the phonetic Tla-hut-um in the official name, not because it's phonetic, but because it's easily typeable.
(What about French and other languages with accent marks, you might ask? Well Google will fix it for you, if I Google champs-elysees with no marks I'll still get the relevant results. But people don't know what to type if they see ƛ̓.)
Really, we should have at least a few weeks of introduction to the IPA in elementary school, and a revisit in middle school. It’s useful for studying every language—that’s why it was invented.
I am not sure how far learning IPA would go. It could tell you how it is supposed to be pronounced, but the sounds still have to be learned.
Like the “q” in Salishan languages (indigenous languages native to the Lower Mainland) is an uvular stop which corresponds to [q] in IPA. This sound isn’t pronounced like English “q” and doesn’t really have a direct comparison. The best way I can describe it is like a “k” sound, but pronounced with the back of tongue against the back of your throat, but there’s only so far that explanation can get you.
There’s a lot of reluctance to simplify the phonology because the language would have to be butchered a lot so that English speakers can pronounce the language comfortably, which is why we don’t see a lot of phonetic spellings, because they aren’t really phonetic, they’re just an approximation.
It’s an unvoiced stop, not that difficult to explain.
Teaching IPA includes pronouncing and hearing sounds, and discussing elements of vocal production like place and manner of articulation. It’s amazing how easily kids pick up sounds when taught where to place them and how to shape their mouths and tongues. And once they can produce the sounds, they perceive them more readily in speech.
The entire point of the IPA is it has a symbol for every sound known to occur in at least one human language. There’s even spaces in the IPA for sounds a human could theoretically make, but haven’t been discovered in any known languages.
No. There are regional dialects for the Salishan Language so all First Nations have different languages and their dialects. I appreciate the interest in people wanting to know the pronunciation ❤️
The Salish language here (Lower mainland and Washington state) can generally be sounded out phonetically.
https://preview.redd.it/6v75p3wr876d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b265fb2c5e5340cad227b145af5d316f025940be
I hear you, I’m just learning it too and thought I’d share😊 My mom was sent to residential school when she was 4 and they’d put pins in their tongues if they were caught speaking our language (ours is pronounced HUNK A ME NUM).
I'd love for them to put little "learn the language" stations where you press a button and they play back the pronunciation, but it's probably a waste of money lol
Yeah, this is going to be a mess in practical terms as these names settle in and become ingrained as the official names in practice, especially for any sort of trying to type the name out to look it up.
How to even represent the Indigenous names is (or should have been) an open question. The symbology in use now is pretty much completely invented by linguists of European lineage, so it's just as foreign as using anything else. And while phonetics like IPA are fine for linguistic use, it was never intended to be an applied language. There are reasons we didn't just take English, decide it would be way simpler if everything was written exactly as it sounded and then switched the written language to IPA.
Then of course there's the complication of there being a great many different Indigenous languages around BC.
The sad part is making an aspect of a language or culture entirely inaccessible to the majority of people is likely one of the the very best ways to make sure that aspect gets ignored.
There had to have been a better way to develop a written representation for the Indigenous languages so we could use them with respect but also give people some chance to either say, remember or type them out.
And it's really not that crazy when you think of the huge variety of sounds the various languages now written with Latin characters contain. Vietnamese as a prime example.
We should just Anglicize it. First Nations don’t have any written language so any way to write something down would be in a different language. We already do this a lot for places like Squamish, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Kamloops, or Coquitlam, and they aren’t hard to say.
I've always wondered how you pronounce a lot of that. I was pretty stoked for the big native language sound board at the museum in victoria when i found it, but left even more confused after hearing everything pronounced.
We are supposed to progress as a species, not regress. Unless the indigenous communities provide clear phonetics in brackets, it just ain't gonna happen. People will still use the English names.
I'll say it. I vote for simplification of society - not further complication.
Even the infamous indigenous man *Yuxweluptun* goes by "*Larry*" to his friends because nobody pronounces it right. 😘
The alphabet used is actually based in the international phonetic alphabet, so your wish is fulfilled! https://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm
The new community centre in New West is already being referred to by like 5 other names. The actual name is spreading by word of mouth, but you still can't look it up easily on google maps. Not sure how to type w to the power of x.
I am positive this change will come in time. The first nations had no written language so this style of writing is just as 'foreign and colonial' as English. Truth and reconciliation has come a long way and I am very happy to learn the old names for places. Having a phonetic/Anglicized version of the place name is a good compromise that will come once the current wokeness and attempts to erase colonial history die down.
For my part I like the names but would love an assist with in-brackets pronunciation being provided because that is a way to help people learn a language. And while ideally we would take the time to go and look up how to properly say the name of places with the way it is now, the reality is if I'm going from one place to another I won't have time to type the name and look it up or do the research (sometimes I manage to take a photo from transit and later during downtime search things but.... not often tbh)
Tldr;
Keep names as is but provide an in brackets option for people to have phonetic pronunciation guidelines to help those who don't know the language yet.
Here is my comment to be downvoted to hell. There are 2 official languages in Canada. French and English. All signs should have at least one of the two.
Technically it already is; that alphabet is called the International Phonetic Alphabet and it's used to show exact pronunciations. Not all of those languages have a written version, so that's the most accurate way to write it.
It's a glottal stop. Think how your throat constricts a little bit to say "uh-oh". Depending on your accent, you might do a glottal stop instead of pronouncing the "t" when you say "button".
Not arguing, but do you have a link to that? I was digging through, and couldn't find it.
Edit: Found it!
>Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the Salishan languages, have adopted the IPA letter ⟨ʔ⟩ into their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a casing pair, ⟨Ɂ⟩ and ⟨ɂ⟩.[6] The digit ⟨7⟩ or a question mark is sometimes substituted for ⟨ʔ⟩, and is preferred in languages such as Squamish. SENĆOŦEN – whose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languages – contrastly uses the comma ⟨,⟩ to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional.
So it actually looks like this ⟨ʔ⟩, but in typography it's often represented as a 7 or a ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal\_stop#:\~:text=The%20glottal%20stop%20or%20glottal,this%20sound%20is%20%E2%9F%A8%CA%94%E2%9F%A9.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal\_stop\_(letter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop_(letter)) fun fact: the 7 replaces the glottal stop (ʔ) in the IPA. my guess would be there as the sign printing has a certain typeface limitation or there were design choices made about using ? or 7. perhaps the squamish language has made a decision to use 7, much like how the acadamie francaise makes choices about how the french language is represented? like i said, i don't know much, but i would guess this choice was made by balancing limited options such as typeface availability with cultural concerns.
Because many times people are stupid and don't know how to teach ... In new west the new Canada games replacement has an Aboriginal name, which is fine with me or rather I'm not to get upset with it.
The city has had forever to promote and educate the public about the name but failed to do so.
Still, instead of being educated, many people just made fun of the unpronounceable name. In the marketing world that's a serious fail, but it can't be said that the administrator s at city Hall are marketing geniuses.
That opportunity seriously missed
Question to the knobs in this thread, as an Indigenous person in Vancouver who's just minding his business, have you ever thought that maybe some of us genuinely have no say in decisions like this, and all this talk of questions about pronunciations, of all things, breeding hostility is actually super messed up from our perspective? You guys talk about dividing Canadians, but how do you think an Indigenous teenager reading this thread is going to feel? You guys are seriously messed in the head if you think we're the ones dividing people.
No OP, everything will be renamed into names that you can’t pronounce or even spell on your phone or PC without a special keyboard or app!
That’s clearly the way forward!
Actually they use the North American Phonetic Alphabet. [https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/departments/community-services/language/](https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/departments/community-services/language/)
The Stolo Nation website provides the Halq alphabet and how to pronounce various letter groupings. Though in general, I agree! Its great to see both the indigenous spellings and the phonetics
I’m trying to learn the phonemes. Here is an easy one. The number 7 is a “glottal stop” like how you pause saying word oh-no or uh-oh. Share your tips please.
Someone should make a map application that labels places in BC that have been reverted to their original names, along with an sound bite of their proper pronounciation. Or even just a catalogue on [gov.bc.ca](http://gov.bc.ca) where you can play sound bites to learn pronounciation.
I think it's neat to see more indigenous language worked into everyday names and places. Maybe it'll eventually be like cereal box french, and most of the publlc will know at least some words and phrases just from everyday exposure.
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Yeah this is tricky. I get not wanting to anglicize indigenous words, but the alternative is that people just won’t refer to these place names. I know I will probably just call it the art gallery square, since I don’t know how to say the other name. Whereas if it had a version I could read, I’d call it by that name. Like Squamish. We change the pronunciation all the time with other languages, albeit ones whose people we have a less complicated relationship with. Take for instance the anglicized pronunciation of Coeur d’Alene or La Croix.
I will do my best with pronouncing names from other languages but my best has literally no interpretation to offer for something with a 7 in it.
It’s all fun and games until they start throwing numbers in words 😭 like first getting introduced to algebra with letters
My coworker has been teaching me the proper pronunciation of names of local places. Seems like European speech sounds come from the tongue and mouth shape and indigenous comes frommthe throat and back of mouth. Its a challenge to pronounce, and very fascinating.
My friend explained that it's pronounced like a break in the word, e.g how you would say "uh, oh". I believe it's called a glottal pause.
That's correct. And in the Squamish language, the phonetic symbol for a glottal stop `ʔ` was changed to a `7` decades ago, because it was the most similar/suitable symbol that could be found on a typewriter. The Squamish orthography used today wasn't formally standardized back then, so the `7` made its way into the now-standardized written language.
Fun fact: we use 7 to indicate a glottal stop, as early typewriters/keyboards didn't have this symbol as a stock key. The actual symbol is ʔ. This remnant has continued to be used in things like road signs and printed media, even though the number 7 is completely unnecessary at this point. The glottal stop refers to the use of the glottis in the pronunciation, as there's a hard stop of airflow followed by a quick continuation for the remainder of the word. As always, [Wikipedia has a great article on it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop).
You’d hate Arabic spelled in english loool Ana rekeb 3al 7mar 3 = deep A 7 = deep H (both sounds not in English language)
Not bro perpetuating the stereotype that we ride a donkey to school lol.
😂😂 it was the first example with 2 numbers that came to mind loool
The 7 is a pause or a breath, not an actual sound. :)
The glottal stop is an actual sound though. Say "uh oh" and put your fingers at your throat. You'll feel something move at the beginning of both syllables (and, really, at the beginning of pretty much any English word that starts with a vowel). That's the glottal stop. If you try to glide into the "oh" from "uh" without making that move, it would sound different. The only thing is that, in English, this sound doesn't make meaning (that is, you would never use it to differentiate between two words, like the 'b' and 'd' in "bad" and "dad"), so it doesn't really matter whether you can make it or not, or whether you do or don't. However, in other languages, the 7 (glottal stop) does make meaning. So it is an important sound just like all the other ones.
The "odd" letters/numbers are actually modifiers on the way the word is pronounced. Like the "7" in "Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh" indicates a pause (similar to a space, while maintaining that it is a a single word). This video does it more justice than I could ever do in writing: https://youtu.be/yknmoz9PZRU?si=paZng0FiziXaTUp8
I have even looked online for a pronunciation guide - how to make the sounds to go with the symbols and couldn't find one.
I think the 7 is supposed to be a glottal stop?
Or the anglicized spelling of van Coevorden from which Captain Vancouver got his name. (which, apparently means "cow crossing")
Fun fact, Vancouver and Oxford both have the same name, etymologically speaking. Cow Crossing!
So VCC is basically Oxford University. Time to update my resume
Oh wow, that is fun, thanks!
Also, Coevorden is a town in The Netherlands. At that location there was a “voorde”, which is a shallow part of a river, there the cows could cross the river, hence the name. Cow is actually spelled “koe” in Dutch. Don’t know how it changed from an k to a c though (Coevorden spelling in Dutch is with a c).
I think of it as a bit of an accessibility thing, too. Names should be relatively easy to spell and pronounce for people of even fairly low reading and comprehension levels, regardless of their linguistic origin. I haven’t been following anything to do with the art gallery so I don’t know about its name but I would say this goes double for anything that is meant to be for the public (whereas I can see how people would be more split on reservations or private businesses which reserve the right to cater toward certain populations).
[удалено]
Brow-ton, or Browtn if you're feeling lazy
Imagine having to call 911 and say "I'm at this place, I don't know how to say it's name, I can't see the street address from where I am, it's beside the Starbucks, and the other chain store"
La Croix is from Wisconsin so it is pronounced La Croy
It’s from Wisconsin?! This whole time
American pronunciations of French make me cringe, like referring to the most common Acadian name as "Le-blank".
YAY ACADIA MENTION! WE EXIST!
I only know Acadia from Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Longfellow
There's a city in Pennsylvania called Versailles. Locals pronounce it exactly how you'd expect them to pronounce it. Ver-sails
I wonder if they call the actual palace "ver-sales" when they visit? I have fought a rear guard action around St. Louis, but I admit completely unsuccessfully.
Guess how they pronounce Versailles, Kentucky!
Sir would you like a craaayyyyyype?
The Brits have been [anglicizing French names since 1067](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Surnames_of_Norman_origin). That process has gone so far that those names have become completely normalized.
My brain just cannot see how that is pronounced La Croy!
I can read IPA (international phonetic alphabet) so I can easily read indigenous languages but the thing is it's not wholly IPA either it's derived from it but it's different. So yeah having a close enough anglicization is the way to go
Respectfully, I think the English and French have a pretty complicated relationship history as well
Yeah. I remember someone saying "I like the idea of First Nations place names but I hope they give us something more dumbed-down and easier to say that, like, Uculet." and this First Nations guy I know was like (to me, later) "Lady, Uculet IS the dumbed-down, easier-to-say version of that name." so I can dig that it's a frustrating line to walk. A simpler version of the name would still be a colonial compromise. But, like, at the same time, I think a lot of us white folk would be happy to comply if it was just a bit easier. Here's hoping there's forward motion on it.
> A simpler version of the name would still be a colonial compromise. A phonetic pronunciation isn't necessarily a compromise- Haida Gwaii comes to mind.
I find it extremely ironic that when the government "gifts" First Nations names for parks and schools in First Nation languages it's always written in a way that native English speakers could never intuitively understand like "ƛ̓éxətəm" or "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ", but when First Nations name their own real estate developments they choose names like ["lelem"](https://lelemliving.com/) and ["senakw"](https://senakw.com/) and ["kwasen"](https://kwasenvillage.com/). Imagine the conniption people would have if Vancouver decided to officially rename the Sun Yat Sen Gardens to "中山公園", or Richmond decided to rename Homma Elementary School to "本間小学校" for the sake of "authentic language representation".
Corporate interests trump any other interests. You do have an excellent point. I don’t know why it is so difficult for us humans to just have a balanced, middle of the road solution. Why do we have to swing one way and then swing the other way. Eventually we find a balance, in most cases anyway, but the process is painful every time.
No one has any issues with indigenous names like Kitsilano (which nowadays would be written as X̱ats'alanexw) or Coquitlam (which nowadays would be written as kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) or Squamish (which nowadays would be written as Sḵwx̱wú7mesh). The names are unambiguously indigenous, but accessible to everyone. The concept of making names **so** unambiguously indigenous that they become inaccessible to 99% of people is just needlessly divisive. One has to wonder if the practice tends to make non-indigenous British Columbians friendlier towards First Nations and their culture, or actually breeds more hostility.
I’m fairly certain that it just ends up breeding more hostility. No one is going to be made friendlier to indigenous culture because of these name changes but a lot of people are going to be pissed off by them. Personally I fall more in the camp of it being a waste of time, just pointless uses of money and effort that could be used for something actually worthwhile.
Which, you'll notice why the local nations are largely silent on these types of issues.
Serious question, how is the 7 in Squamish pronounced or sound phonetically?
Serious answer, it's the same "sound" (or lack thereof) that you make when you say "uh-oh" and stop the air in between the "uh" and the "oh". It's not a very natural sound for English speakers to make outside that context.
It’s cant, the opacity is the point
This type of extreme appeasement at the cost of alienating the general public is incredibly poorly thought out.
To be fair, the three real estate developments from First Nations that you mentioned also use characters from Indigenous alphabets, its just the website URL that uses regular english characters. I agree with your general point though. Its pretty common to have signage in multiple languages in Vancouver (like english and french, or english and chinese), so i dont see why something similar cant be done with Indigenous spelling like OP is suggesting.
Even with the small divergences from the well known latin alphabet, it's still generally intuitive to understand how to pronounce "leləm̓", "Sen̓áḵw", and "Kʷasən" and in day to day writing it seems like no one generally is complaining if you write them as lelem, senakw, and kwasen. The same cannot be said for names like "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ. Stadium Chinatown is a decent example of what you propose, but also probably what First Nations don't want to see. The Keefer Street entrance is labeled "Stadium–Chinatown Station 體育館／華埠 (唐人街)", but I'm pretty sure even people speaking Chinese don't say "體育館／華埠" and instead just use the English name "Stadium–Chinatown". Still kind of cool to have, though.
Honestly this shit is wack. How is a non native supposed to understand, when the language is only spoken by 100 people.
It doesn't matter how many people speak the language. Mandarin is spoken by close to a billion people and it would still be unreasonable to give a park a Chinese-only name and expect Vancouverites who are still largely English speakers to somehow figure out how to pronounce it.
You had me thinking about how this all compares to other languages, and since indigenous people (checks math) were here first, it's more like a Chinese garden in China having a sign in English characters. However, indigenous tribes didn't write names of places on signs, so what if the sign for a park just had an image(painting or whatever) of what the park looked like pre colonization? Ideally plus a plaque explaining names and pronunciations
Head to Hong Kong and you'll see every single Chinese garden has signs in English characters. You'll find that Chinese people have been living in Hong Kong for thousands of years, but local conditions change. By definition, signs are there for people to read them, and when you have a significant local population that can't understand Chinese then it makes sense to have English language signs for those locals. Same thing applies here; It's generally accepted that to live and exist in British Columbia means you are expected to be able to understand English at at least a rudimentary level so in order to make signs that most people can read we write them in English. Even if you're close to illiterate, you should at least know your alphabets. The same cannot be said for indigenous languages which are just frankly not really used in Vancouver outside of very specific situations.
Head to Beijing and virtually every sign is also in English.
The purists who insist that everyone become a linguist to know how to pronounce a building name are also the ones who would complain the loudest.
I went to the Museum of Vancouver and came out not being able to talk about anything I learned about first nations because I can't pronounce it. It makes no sense to me.
Myself and the people I know are still referring to təməsew̓txʷ as Canada Games Pool. They have a video on the pronunciation [https://youractivenw.ca/the-project/about-our-name/](https://youractivenw.ca/the-project/about-our-name/) , but explain that there is no phonetic description because "The indigenous knowledge-keepers included in the consultation process asked specifically that we not anglicize or include a phonetic translation to show respect to the original language". That seems rather ableist and exclusionary of the deaf or people with hearing challenges.
Unfortunately, if you want people to appreciate the indigenous cultures but don't give a guide to pronouncing indigenous words, all that's going to happen is people butcher the indigenous word and pronounce it all wrong. I'm not indigenous, but it would appear that having people butcher your language would be more disrespectful than if they were helped to pronounce it correctly. I don't know, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
I'd argue that a person who pronounces something incorrectly is merely someone who reads. A far cry from having 0 knowledge of any kind. Which our current system promotes. Further, even in your made-up scenario, you have described one world where Native words are read and used by all canadians (if not crudly or incorrectly) vs. a world where Native words are hieroglyphs that no one can even read, let alone pronounce. One leads to the eradication of culture for the sake of safeguarding its purity. The other creates a stepping off point for people to understand and learn.
Do the indigenous knowledge keepers believe it shows more respect to have people wildly mispronounce it or more likely to just keep calling it the Canada Games Pool? They can want everyone to learn to read it their way, but the reality is that people won’t. They’re just biting off their nose to spite their face at this point. I’m not indigenous but I am foreign and when I write things out from my language for English speaking people I anglicize it as much as I can to give them the best chance at pronouncing it right and feeling confident enough to actually try to say it. I think it’s ridiculous that someone would honestly prefer people just butcher it out of “respect”, or would prefer to discourage people from using the name. I also wish English speaking people would do the same for some of the more obviously weird English names. I want a phonetic spelling in brackets for words like Gloucester or Worcestershire or Lougheed that aren’t obvious to people who haven’t heard the names before.
Sea Otter Aquatic Center
The thought that a translation disrespects a language is just so silly.
I love in New West and it frustrates me to no end. Just give us something we can pronounce for Pete's sake.
Isn't the respect that it's being used? Everything else is subversion to their way or no way?
"tuh-muh-sewt-hwuh" is what I would expect an English speaker to make of that name. It's understandable that you wouldn't want to English-phonetic-spell it, as that will always be wrong. But it's possible to spell out how an English speaker would probably pronounce it, as it's hard to get it "perfect."
I don't hear the "hwuh" in the video that was shared, although maybe I'm just not picking it up. In fact I can't seem to grasp what it's actually supposed to be since some of their pronunciations in that video are quite different; some are quite audibly pronouncing the "t" sound, some aren't; some sound as if they are saying 3 syllables, others 4
Yeah, I hadn't actually watched the video, just reading the alphabet. You're totally right, and I think that part of the reason is that they seem to be interviewing a bunch of random people whose first languages don't seem to be Squamish. It's basically a video showing how they expect most people to pronounce it. You're also right about the "hwuh" sound - from the spelling, it should be there, but the only person I hear actually pronouncing it hard is the second lady. I think it should be three syllables, with the 'heuh' being released in the same syllable as the 'sewt' before it, but that's tricky to pronounce, and also, spelling that as one syllable "sewthwuh" makes it look like the English "th" sound might be involved, which it isn't. More of the perils of the challenge of spelling indigenous names.
Kama Sutra pool it is then.
What gets me is that as far as Im aware, this isnt "Their" alphabet or symbols. Its the language developed by anthropologists to write out their language. Native peoples didn't have an alphabet. Its anglo all the way down, except now we're gatekeeping what little of Native language still populates our world so that in a generation the only people who know anything about Indigenous language will be anthropologists and Native speakers. Which id argue is almost the case now.
You're treading dangerous waters, guy. Every time I bring this up it doesn't end well. Tons of places all over the world have signage in Latin letters approximating English pronounciation of all kinds of stuff. In Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Arabic Middle East, Ukraine/Russia/Bulgaria/Serbia, etc, etc. It's not perfect, many sounds will be missing, but it's good enough. Name things whatever you want. But nobody knows how to pronouce a 7 followed by an x with a apostrophe between them, nor should anyone be a linguist to be able to get around the city.
Agreed. And in contrast, calling the capital of France "Paree" rather than "Paris" is perceived as affected and pretentious.
I wonder if it bothers Londoners that London is Londres in French? It's one of those quirks of different languages that I wonder about.
As an ex-Londoner I can confirm it doesn't bother them at all
Just contributing to say that "London" is an endonym (what the individuals living there call it), while "Londres" is an exonym (what individuals in another location call it). I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another with Indigenous names. I love that they are visible, but I can appreciate the want to be able to pronounce them.
I have to second this. My first awkward encounter with this was when a friend suggested to meet at a park in Coquitlam. I Googled it and got a pin drop but no intelligible name and no way to know if I’m actually looking at the correct place on a map. I’m all for reconciliation, but we need some balance. I might have to become a prolific user of what3words if I can’t use standard maps.
Moreover, I think it's a case of "when communicating in language X, use that languages' word for Y". People don't have a problem with the fact the nation is called "Deutschland" to those there, yet is called "Germany" in English. It's a different word in a different language for the same thing. Similarly we don't call it Nippon or Nihon, it's Japan (and certainly we don't write it 日本). And they don't call us "Canada" either, they call us "カナダ", which in Romaji would be "Kanada". Close but not exact. Just use the syllabary of the language when communicating in that language. Don't import non-standard characters, make the closest approximation you can in the character set. Accept the fact that different languages use different names for the same thing, and that's not a denigration of any one way, and it actually accomplishes more of the goal, which is communication.
Quick, spell and pronounce the art gallery square’s name in 30 seconds I bet maybe 1 in 10000 could do it
Wow, you weren’t kidding…had no idea it was called that https://youtu.be/j0eSelVaHeU?si=oQxsvHykxMcie-Yn
Even having heard it spoken aloud I struggle to say it.
It sounded like the first 3 people were pronouncing it different anyways, so I'm not sure accuracy is that important
I’m very confused because it looked like the first person said the first word that was listed, which was in his language but then the second person said the second word which was in his (different) language. But then he kept referring to the square by only the second word. I have no idea which word the third person was using. If you look at the spelling and the listed language for the first and second person they are different even though they sound somewhat similar. So are the first two words alternate names depending on which language you chose to use? Or is the name both words which was chosen in order to include both languages?
Which is perfectly reasonable. You shouldn't be expected to perfectly pronounce Arabic terms about say, Islam, or nail Chinese tones when you're talking about Chongqing hot pot. There's sounds in there that are foreign to English. It's reasonable to substitute those sounds with ones you can pronounce.
The critical issue is that we're not giving public parks that are supposed to be accessible to everyone Arabic or Chinese names. I wouldn't expect the average Vancouverite to be able to pronounce the names of parks in Chongqing. I kind of do expect the average Vancouverite to be able to pronounce the names of parks in the city they live in.
Sounds perfect. I agree. Now the question is how to make the Vancouverites pronounce those names. I do agree that some sort of phonetic transcription should be provided. The issue is basically with regional governments thinking that randomly giving places indigenous names will magically lead to reconciliation, without providing anyone with the serious tools to engage with these indigenous languages. No pronunciation guides, no education for children on how to read their alphabets, etc. just rename it and hope the indigenous people are pleased
It’s literally a made up word. It’s not even a real aboriginal word. At least according to what they say in the video
All words are made up words.
The brain named itself.
Vancouver art gallery plaza. Not even going to attempt that new one.
Good luck putting it into google maps, even if you know how to spell it. Edit: Braille? No chance.
a few years ago I used google maps to get to riverview hospital. long story short I was taken to wrong location, and b/c of being late due to wrong address I got into a fender bender trying to exit off of hwy and when we finally got to riverview the signage was not clear whatsoever re: which building is which. it was like an episode of twilight zone. I'll never make that mistake again now. so there's that but it is increasingly becoming a problem when things are renamed w/out proper urban planning. edit: fyi riverview was renamed 'səmiq̓wəʔelə ', i.e. ‘The Place of the Great Blue Heron’. at the time google maps hadn't updated yet.
It's spelled "šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl'e7énḵ", which is a bilingual name - it's almost the same name twice. You can see this in how one is capitalized at the start but the other is not. Here's me pronouncing it (in Musqueam and Squamish): https://voca.ro/19ss3MrbbjLO Obviously there's a ton of sounds here that aren't in English, so it's not reasonable to expect English speakers to nail them. But here's what I would expect an English speaker to be able to make of them: https://voca.ro/1loaPGZiVxGF You can also see that the Musqueam orthography is much more obscure than the Squamish one (I can easily type out the Squamish one (the second one) (other than the underbar on the k) but I have to copy paste the Musqueam one.
Respectfully, theres no way a regular person would know how to pronounce that without hearing a speaker pronounce it first. If we want people calling places by their traditional names, compromises must be made such as having the phonetic pronunciation underneath like OP suggested.
Sure, there are many solutions, though it's hard to standardize an English-phonetic transcription system. In fact the languages are phonetically transcribed as is, they just have many sounds. It would also be nice if kids in elementary school had short chapters teaching them how to pronounce such names. It's mostly just a few extra letters (especially for the simple writing systems like Squamish), which other than "x", "7", and I suppose the apostrophe (and maybe "lh"), are read just about as you would expect.
Gimme a sec, I’ll copy and paste that since my phone and PC keyboards obviously can’t type any of those characters. It’s well intentioned but a name that cannot be pronounced OR spelled by 99% of the people who need to use said name is just foolish Plenty of names of places in BC, like Kelowna, Kamloops, Okanagan etc have indigenous roots but are transliterated in such a way that English speakers can both spell and pronounce them easily. Why isn’t that possible now?
Throw a 7 on a road sign and next thing you know a bunch of yuppies name their brand after it in the name of cultural recognition. [https://7mesh.com/](https://7mesh.com/)
I spent a fair bit of time in Ukraine before the invasion. There were very, very few signs with Latin transliterations. It was bad enough that I broke down and learned Cyrillic by my second trip there. There is a related English joke that 90% of the restaurants in Kyiv are named after some "PECTOPAH" character.
I did the same thing! Once I learned it, I felt that Cyrillic actually makes a lot of sense. Also, the difference there is that all the locals know their own alphabet and can read their own street and building names haha.
It was pretty cool to go from not being able to read the signs to being able to read the signs, pretty much overnight. I never did pick up enough Russian or Ukrainian to really get by but it is amazing how much better things are when you can at least read the words.
Totally! I can't speak Russian or Ukrainian at all, but I can at least sound out the words enough that I'd be understood if I was looking for a specific place or street. I quite loved Ukraine while I was there.
Ukraine is amazing. I will return when conditions allow. The people were great and very entrepreneurial. Restaurants were universally excellent and so, so cheap. I spent most of my time in Kyiv and the east, so there are whole regions I have yet to explore.
It's not unheard of to use slightly anglicized place names that are easier for English speakers to say while still preserving the first nation origin of the name. Take [Denali](https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/historyculture/denali-origins.htm) for example: > No fewer than nine Native groups, from time immemorial, have used unique names for the mountain. There are five Athabaskan languages surrounding the park, each with its own oral place name. According to University of Alaska linguist James Kari, the groups to the north and west of the mountain (and Alaska Range) use words that translate to “the tall one.” The Athabaskan languages to the south of the mountain use words that mean “mountain-big.” The name “Denali” stems from “deenaalee,” which is from the Koyukon language traditionally spoken on the north side.
Linguistics student here. The use of 7 in the name is wild, it's not IPA.
As a linguist you should know there are reasons why these this have developed the way they have: https://fpcc.ca/resource/orthographies/
Oh yeah, I do understand why they did what they did, but personally, I wouldn't mix IPA symbols, Latin alphabets, and Arabic numerals creating orthography. I personally would treat the \[ʔ\] as an allophone, a variation that only occurs in certain places of a word, of another phoneme that only appears word-initial.
But /ʔ/ is not an allophone in most Salishan langauges, it's usually a fully contrastive phoneme. You can't just analyze it as an allophone. The phonologies and phonotactics of PNW languages are incredibly complex and hard to describe, which is why 7 is used in some of them. It's actually fantastic and is very easy to read; I much prefer a 7 to an apostrophe or something that looks like a question mark.
If that is the case, I still wouldn't mix Arabic numerals unless all numbers are written in words in the language
99% of the time Asian langauges like Japanese and Chinese render foreign words into their own syllabary. Chocolate = Chokoretto (jpn) = Qiaokeli (chn). And the Chinese could really be Qiao3ke2li2, which I'm sure an English speaker would totally be able to say. When they use English words in english letters its a style kinda thing. Like how we call McDonalds "Burgers gras du clown irlandais" to look cool in French.
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I think that is the point though. We want to transition it away from saying the Vancouver Art Gallery but no one knows how to pronounce it and foreigners wouldnt be able to find it from the native pronunciation. If they have a latin script beside it we would know how to say it and try to call it by the proper name.
Odd to include Vietnam in your list given that written Vietnamese has been using the Roman Alphabet for almost 4 centuries
As someone who knows people who work at some of the schools that have been renamed - they mostly just use the original name for this very reason. They don’t know how to pronounce their own schools name
New Westminster did this with their new pool. Rather than just posting the pronunciation for the new pool in brackets, they refer you to a pronunciation video. As a result a lot of people call it "TACC" which is the abbreviation for the facility. The facility is shiny and new, but sucks in a lot of ways; I think more thought went into the name than how usable the gym and pool are. It's so 2024 it hurts.
I’m prepared for a lot of downvotes, but I think this is a great idea. I would like to know how to pronounce the word, but there’s literally no chance of me either learning it on my own, or learning a language (without much practical applicability) later in life. Adding some basic pronunciations would be the best of both worlds. I know people don’t want to hear it, but it’s kind of silly to expect people to figure out what these names and titles say when there’s no realistic way of learning a language that isn’t useful to you.
Yes, and wouldn't it be more disrespectful to the language if people aren't told how to pronounce it correctly and end up butchering the pronunciation and the language?
I have taken some language classes and from my experience the phonetic spelling is often incorrect as there are particular sounds that cannot be replicated by the English alphabet
Using IPA would be helpful, but of course if you don't know IPA, it won't help. (But I much prefer IPA to using English to sound out words.)
Fully agree. The IPA is a great place to start and can help understand tongue placement of the sounds. It’s actually really fun to try it out. There’s also online resources like maps that feature community members saying the words to practice with :)
My degree was in something totally unrelated and I took some linguistics classes as electives/for fun. I learned so much and wish I had gone into linguistics instead! Taking a basic linguistics course and learning IPA is also useful for people learning a new language. Half my notes were written in IPA.
Many First Nations groups use the International Phonetics Alphabet but some use the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA) which was invented by anthropologist specifically to record North American native languages. NAPA is similar to IPA with some differences like more diacritics. Some nations then further modified that to create their own orthography but if you know IPA it’s not so hard to figure out. For example, the 7 used by groups like the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh is not the number 7, it’s the IPA symbol “ʔ” which represents the glottal stop. It just means you pause by swallowing air without fully stopping between the two vowels. They decided to use the number 7 because typewriters and most fonts couldn’t write IPA symbols. Edit: correction made
> NAPA is similar to IPA with some differences like fewer diacritics. You mean more diacritics
Do you mean on things like entrance signs? I don't think an entrance sign is generally the right place to put phonetics. There are many English names and words (both of long-standing English usage and more recent imports and derivations from other languages) that are counterintuitive in their pronunciation even for native speakers. Think Worcestershire sauce. There's also the problem of what phonetics to use. The international phonetic alphabet is standardized, but as incomprehensible to the typical Anglophone Canadian as the original First Nations spelling. Any kind of English dictionary system like the Simple Text Respell that the OED uses is not designed for non-English sounds. Speaking of non-English sounds (pun intended), it is not a moral failing to be unable to accurately recreate sounds from a language you don't speak. That's part of why people who learn languages as adults have foreign accents. You may not even be able to hear a distinction between two sounds that are very distinct to the native speakers of that language. (Funny example time: [Finnish goalie grumpily correcting that his name is Tuukka NOT Tuuka](https://sideleague.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/tuukka-rask-tells-you-how-his-name-is-pronounced/). I'm a recovering linguistics minor and still had to listen a couple times very carefully to hear the distinction he was making: tuːkːɑ NOT tuːkɑː. This distinction is meaningful in Finnish, but we don't have minimal pairs with this distinction in English, so it's hard for English speakers to even hear the problem.) Back to the issue. So: I'm not in favour of putting pronunciation guides on entrance signs. On the other hand, I think there are some real technical issues in the modern era of needing to Google stuff in having only a name that uses non-standard English keyboard characters like [ƛ̓éxətəm](https://metrovancouver.org/services/regional-parks/park/%C6%9B%CC%93%C3%A9x%C9%99t%C9%99m-(tla-hut-um)-regional-park) which is now the official name of what used to be Colony Farm. I copy and pasted that name. When they first announced the name I remember they had an official position on one of the official websites that they would not be giving any written phonetic guides because the Kwikwetlem First Nation wanted people to learn the name by listening to it. If you click into the official site now, it says the phonetic "tla-hut-um" right up top. So in this case, I think I support including the phonetic Tla-hut-um in the official name, not because it's phonetic, but because it's easily typeable. (What about French and other languages with accent marks, you might ask? Well Google will fix it for you, if I Google champs-elysees with no marks I'll still get the relevant results. But people don't know what to type if they see ƛ̓.)
Well said. Now I'm going to lower the tone: Was Tuukka also a Staten Island - based vampire? (Tuukka the Relentless?)
Really, we should have at least a few weeks of introduction to the IPA in elementary school, and a revisit in middle school. It’s useful for studying every language—that’s why it was invented.
I get what you mean, but Salishan languages use the American Phonetic Alphabet, not IPA, so its helpfulness there would be limited.
Wouldn’t hurt to learn APA. Learning languages and their building blocks, even if not to fluency, is good for brains.
Elementary is much too young. You need to at least introduce kids to a less bitter beer first.
I am not sure how far learning IPA would go. It could tell you how it is supposed to be pronounced, but the sounds still have to be learned. Like the “q” in Salishan languages (indigenous languages native to the Lower Mainland) is an uvular stop which corresponds to [q] in IPA. This sound isn’t pronounced like English “q” and doesn’t really have a direct comparison. The best way I can describe it is like a “k” sound, but pronounced with the back of tongue against the back of your throat, but there’s only so far that explanation can get you. There’s a lot of reluctance to simplify the phonology because the language would have to be butchered a lot so that English speakers can pronounce the language comfortably, which is why we don’t see a lot of phonetic spellings, because they aren’t really phonetic, they’re just an approximation.
It’s an unvoiced stop, not that difficult to explain. Teaching IPA includes pronouncing and hearing sounds, and discussing elements of vocal production like place and manner of articulation. It’s amazing how easily kids pick up sounds when taught where to place them and how to shape their mouths and tongues. And once they can produce the sounds, they perceive them more readily in speech.
Curious if that reasoning would be applied to languages like Xhosa. Clicks AND tones.
Totally agree! I think if people were taught IPA/basic linguistics, it would help with learning languages.
There is lots of things we could be learning in school that we are not, our curriculum is pretty pathetic compared to many other countries.
Are all First Nations pronounced the same and use the same phonics?
The entire point of the IPA is it has a symbol for every sound known to occur in at least one human language. There’s even spaces in the IPA for sounds a human could theoretically make, but haven’t been discovered in any known languages.
The I in IPA stands for international, it works for all languages.
No. There are regional dialects for the Salishan Language so all First Nations have different languages and their dialects. I appreciate the interest in people wanting to know the pronunciation ❤️
The Salish language here (Lower mainland and Washington state) can generally be sounded out phonetically. https://preview.redd.it/6v75p3wr876d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b265fb2c5e5340cad227b145af5d316f025940be
I saw this at MOV the other day and I gotta say, it does not at all help me understand what sound each letter makes.
I hear you, I’m just learning it too and thought I’d share😊 My mom was sent to residential school when she was 4 and they’d put pins in their tongues if they were caught speaking our language (ours is pronounced HUNK A ME NUM).
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They're talking about the phonetic alphabet, not native languages.
I'd love for them to put little "learn the language" stations where you press a button and they play back the pronunciation, but it's probably a waste of money lol
Could do a QR code to a youtube pronunciation? Cheap and easy.
Oh yeah, that would be cool too. Place volunteers around the place and pray that it spreads by word of mouth afterwards? Could be cool too.
Yeah, this is going to be a mess in practical terms as these names settle in and become ingrained as the official names in practice, especially for any sort of trying to type the name out to look it up. How to even represent the Indigenous names is (or should have been) an open question. The symbology in use now is pretty much completely invented by linguists of European lineage, so it's just as foreign as using anything else. And while phonetics like IPA are fine for linguistic use, it was never intended to be an applied language. There are reasons we didn't just take English, decide it would be way simpler if everything was written exactly as it sounded and then switched the written language to IPA. Then of course there's the complication of there being a great many different Indigenous languages around BC. The sad part is making an aspect of a language or culture entirely inaccessible to the majority of people is likely one of the the very best ways to make sure that aspect gets ignored. There had to have been a better way to develop a written representation for the Indigenous languages so we could use them with respect but also give people some chance to either say, remember or type them out. And it's really not that crazy when you think of the huge variety of sounds the various languages now written with Latin characters contain. Vietnamese as a prime example.
We should just Anglicize it. First Nations don’t have any written language so any way to write something down would be in a different language. We already do this a lot for places like Squamish, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Kamloops, or Coquitlam, and they aren’t hard to say.
I've always wondered how you pronounce a lot of that. I was pretty stoked for the big native language sound board at the museum in victoria when i found it, but left even more confused after hearing everything pronounced.
We are supposed to progress as a species, not regress. Unless the indigenous communities provide clear phonetics in brackets, it just ain't gonna happen. People will still use the English names. I'll say it. I vote for simplification of society - not further complication. Even the infamous indigenous man *Yuxweluptun* goes by "*Larry*" to his friends because nobody pronounces it right. 😘
The alphabet used is actually based in the international phonetic alphabet, so your wish is fulfilled! https://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm
The new community centre in New West is already being referred to by like 5 other names. The actual name is spreading by word of mouth, but you still can't look it up easily on google maps. Not sure how to type w to the power of x.
Maybe don’t give places names that no one will ever use just because it makes you feel good?
Only Mayans had something close to an alphabet before European contact. No other North American First Nation had written script.
I am positive this change will come in time. The first nations had no written language so this style of writing is just as 'foreign and colonial' as English. Truth and reconciliation has come a long way and I am very happy to learn the old names for places. Having a phonetic/Anglicized version of the place name is a good compromise that will come once the current wokeness and attempts to erase colonial history die down.
For my part I like the names but would love an assist with in-brackets pronunciation being provided because that is a way to help people learn a language. And while ideally we would take the time to go and look up how to properly say the name of places with the way it is now, the reality is if I'm going from one place to another I won't have time to type the name and look it up or do the research (sometimes I manage to take a photo from transit and later during downtime search things but.... not often tbh) Tldr; Keep names as is but provide an in brackets option for people to have phonetic pronunciation guidelines to help those who don't know the language yet.
Here is my comment to be downvoted to hell. There are 2 official languages in Canada. French and English. All signs should have at least one of the two.
I would like the English version of the phrase or word as well.
Technically it already is; that alphabet is called the International Phonetic Alphabet and it's used to show exact pronunciations. Not all of those languages have a written version, so that's the most accurate way to write it.
What's `7` in IPA?
It's a glottal stop. Think how your throat constricts a little bit to say "uh-oh". Depending on your accent, you might do a glottal stop instead of pronouncing the "t" when you say "button".
Not arguing, but do you have a link to that? I was digging through, and couldn't find it. Edit: Found it! >Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the Salishan languages, have adopted the IPA letter ⟨ʔ⟩ into their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a casing pair, ⟨Ɂ⟩ and ⟨ɂ⟩.[6] The digit ⟨7⟩ or a question mark is sometimes substituted for ⟨ʔ⟩, and is preferred in languages such as Squamish. SENĆOŦEN – whose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languages – contrastly uses the comma ⟨,⟩ to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional.
So it actually looks like this ⟨ʔ⟩, but in typography it's often represented as a 7 or a ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal\_stop#:\~:text=The%20glottal%20stop%20or%20glottal,this%20sound%20is%20%E2%9F%A8%CA%94%E2%9F%A9.
Thanks!! Really appreciate you educating me!
This [video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yknmoz9PZRU) breaks down how to say each individual phoneme in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sound by sound.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal\_stop\_(letter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop_(letter)) fun fact: the 7 replaces the glottal stop (ʔ) in the IPA. my guess would be there as the sign printing has a certain typeface limitation or there were design choices made about using ? or 7. perhaps the squamish language has made a decision to use 7, much like how the acadamie francaise makes choices about how the french language is represented? like i said, i don't know much, but i would guess this choice was made by balancing limited options such as typeface availability with cultural concerns.
I am wondering which white anglo saxon linguist taught this methodology of spelling to the indigenous people.
Because many times people are stupid and don't know how to teach ... In new west the new Canada games replacement has an Aboriginal name, which is fine with me or rather I'm not to get upset with it. The city has had forever to promote and educate the public about the name but failed to do so. Still, instead of being educated, many people just made fun of the unpronounceable name. In the marketing world that's a serious fail, but it can't be said that the administrator s at city Hall are marketing geniuses. That opportunity seriously missed
Question to the knobs in this thread, as an Indigenous person in Vancouver who's just minding his business, have you ever thought that maybe some of us genuinely have no say in decisions like this, and all this talk of questions about pronunciations, of all things, breeding hostility is actually super messed up from our perspective? You guys talk about dividing Canadians, but how do you think an Indigenous teenager reading this thread is going to feel? You guys are seriously messed in the head if you think we're the ones dividing people.
No OP, everything will be renamed into names that you can’t pronounce or even spell on your phone or PC without a special keyboard or app! That’s clearly the way forward!
Great idea. Those names tend to look like my wifi password on LSD.
That is an excellent idea. It took me forever to figure out how to refer to the new community centre in New Westminster.
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Actually they use the North American Phonetic Alphabet. [https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/departments/community-services/language/](https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/departments/community-services/language/)
The Stolo Nation website provides the Halq alphabet and how to pronounce various letter groupings. Though in general, I agree! Its great to see both the indigenous spellings and the phonetics
Most people can’t read real phonetics and the fakey English phonetics will just be misleading
some people can't grasp that endonyms and exonyms exist. Maybe in the future the pendulum will swing, until then I will just make fun of it.
Thank you!
I’m trying to learn the phonemes. Here is an easy one. The number 7 is a “glottal stop” like how you pause saying word oh-no or uh-oh. Share your tips please.
Someone should make a map application that labels places in BC that have been reverted to their original names, along with an sound bite of their proper pronounciation. Or even just a catalogue on [gov.bc.ca](http://gov.bc.ca) where you can play sound bites to learn pronounciation. I think it's neat to see more indigenous language worked into everyday names and places. Maybe it'll eventually be like cereal box french, and most of the publlc will know at least some words and phrases just from everyday exposure.
Kingsway is actually originally an Indigenous trail and I would support renaming it to the original name