Tintin Forums

Cherokee Tintin Book Titles

Siyo nigadawu(Hi everybody!)
I'm going to be posting a list of Cherokee language book titles sometime soon. If you guys want to read the syllabics I'll put up,you'll need an Aboriginal Sans Serif font for it---a web search for "Cherokee Unicode Font" will give you one or two of them to pick from.

First of all, let me start by introducing you to the Tsalagi Didetloquasdodi--the Cherokee Syllabic System. It was created by Sequoya in the early 1800s, in Vonore, Tennessee, USA--which is right where my family is from. He took twelve years (!) to create the syllabic system, and it's one of the easiest systems to learn. I hope this little Tintin experiment will be informative. If anyone has any questions, just drop me a line at RaoShirui@aol.com.
Wado (Thanks!)
Courtney

And here we go, hiniginali'i (my friends)...Remember, these are in Cherokee Unicode, as well as romanized Cherokee.

Tintin in the Congo---Tintin Anigvnagehiyi--ᏘᏅᏘᏅ ᎠᏂᎬᎾᎨᎯᏱ
Note: this is literally "Tintin in the Black-people-place. Agvnage means black person in Cherokee.)

Tintin in America---Tintin Amayeliyi--ᏘᏅᏘᏅ ᎠᎹᏰᎵᏱ (Amayeli means Island--in the old days, we considered the world a giant island, hence the name for America.)

Cigars of the Pharaoh--Digogasdi Ugvwiyuhi
Etsidv'no-ᏗᎪᎦᏍᏗ ᎤᎬᏫᏳᎯ ᎡᏥᏛᏃ

Tintin and the Broken Ear---Tintin ale Ga'leni Uyotsv-ᏘᏅᏘᏅ ᎠᎴ ᎦᎴᏂ ᎤᏲᏨ

The Black Island--Amayeli Gvnage--ᎠᎹᏰᎵ ᎬᎾᎨ

King Ottokar's Sceptre--Ugvwiyuhi Otoka'li Utseli Atasi--ᎤᎬᏫᏳᎯ ᎣᏙᎧᎵ ᎤᏤᎵ ᎠᏔᏏ (Atasi is Cherokee for "large club." In the old days, our Principal Chief carried a yellow wooden one as a status symbol.)

The Crab with the Golden Claws--Tsisdvna Dalonigesdodi-ᏥᏍᏛᎾ ᏓᎶᏂᎨᏍᏙᏗ (Tsisdvna is literally "crayfish-we don't have crabs in Tennessee, as it's landlocked.)

More to come!!!

[Edited by moderator to combine 4 consecutive posts. Polite note to Danagasta; please use to the edit function if you wish to add to your post, thanks]

Have the books been translated into Cherokee or are these your translations?

Rik

These are my translations. The translator would have to be certified by either the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians or the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Then, the translations would have to be certified by the Nation, and only then could they actually be printed.
Cherokee is an extremely difficult language to learn if your first is a European one(it's tonal, like Chinese), and it's because of this that nobody has really asked to have the books translated into Tsalagi. As for myself, I'd absolutely give my entire frontal lobe to have them translated formally.
Courtney

Courtney - Just out of interest, what are the numbers that can speak/read Cherokee today? This is just curiosity and not a marketing question!

Best -
Garen.

Siyo Garen!
Well, to be honest, I can't get an exact number as of yet. So far though, the documented estimate of fluent speakers is 20,000. That's usually just the people who grew up speaking it alongside English. Most others, who are also in the tens of thousands, are like myself (Cherokee people whose families didn't speak Cherokee but learned later on) and interested people who aren't Cherokee, but like the language anyway.
In my case, my father, who was full Cherokee, grew up in a time where it was frowned upon to speak anything but English. That's why I didn't learn it until I was 12, and I've spent eleven years trying to perfect it.

Did you try the font yet? I hope it works.
Courtney

we don't have crabs in Tennessee, as it's landlocked

The Crayfish with the Golden Claws! So if I read you right it's because there simply isn't a Cherokee word for crab?

And out of interest what was the Cherokee for pharaoh which you used above? (as I don't expect there really is one).

And the font works fine :)

That's really interesting, thanks for translating those ! The font works fine for me, too.

How do you say "The Adventures of Tintin" in Cherokee ? Also, how would you translate certain words that obviously wouldn't exist in Cherokee, such as 'Calculus', 'Castafiore' and 'Picaros' ? Is it a simple substitution using the Roman letters into the Cherokee script, or is it more complicated (I'm guessing it is) ?

Well, Cherokee has another word order than English---so if you were to say The Adventures of Tintin, you'd use this:

Aninelv'ododi Utseli Tintin
ᎠᏁᎸᎣᏙᏗ ᎤᏤᎵ ᏘᏅᏘᏅ

Anelv'ododi is "adventure", and -ni-is added for pluralization. Utseli means "it is his/hers" (Cherokee has no words for he or she, and neither do nouns or verbs) Tintin is actually transliterated from Tsalagi' to English as Tinvtinv, but many speakers tend to omit an v (read it as "uh..."), so Tintin is the natural pronunciation.
For "Calculus," you could use the word for both the math and the little calculator, "Asesdiyi"ᎠᏎᏍᏗᏱ or the closest we have to "Tournesol" which is "Ahutsilv" ᎠᎱᏥᎸ.
I would need to know what Picaros meant to translate it correctly, and Castafiore could easily be put in as Kasvtahutsilv
ᎧᏒᏔᎱᏥᎸ---kasvta is meaningless, and "ahutsilv" is the translation for "fiore (flower.).
Courtney (Danagasta ᏓᎾᎦᏍᏔ, that is.)

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EDIT Posted: Jun 23, 2005 18:04:20 Edited by: Danagasta

For "Pharaoh", I used two Cherokee words:
ugvwiyuhi ᎤᎬᏫᏳᎯ, which means "president, ruler, king", and so forth. Etsitv'no ᎡᏥᏛᏃ is phonetic for Egypt and the "no" is the equivalent of "of" or "related to."

Cherokee has a lot of technical terms, but not so many historical terms. As for "calculus," the term does most assuredly exist, as we had schools that rivaled and even surpassed those of our white neighbors.

Oh wow, I just had to fix JavaScript, now the Edit function works!!! Happy!

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[Moderator note: good to know the 'edit' function is working for you, Courtney! Just a gentle reminder: do try and avoid creating consecutive posts. You should be able to edit your posts that are less than 2 days old and not already edited by a forum staff member.]