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Oiler Ethan Bear honours First Nation heritage with Cree nameplate


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Oiler Ethan Bear honours First Nation heritage with Cree nameplate

July 29, 2020 - 14:09 PM

It was big news in March of 2018 when Ethan Bear, who is from the Ochapowace First Nation in southeastern Saskatchewan, made his NHL debut. Two years later, Bear, a defenceman for the Edmonton Oilers, made headlines again, this time for honouring his First Nation heritage by wearing a jersey

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I think this is pretty cool. But I can see this becoming more challenging to implement when players of Asian descent want their names in their native language,  because romanization, pinyin, romanji, etc., shouldn't count as native language.

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I'm in favor of including diacriticals on player names, especially for Spanish names, but going outside the Latin alphabet altogether really takes away the function of a nameplate. 117,000 people speak Cree, for the millions who don't and aren't going to pick up an Indian syllabary with any sort of ease, it looks like...Lobi?

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On 7/30/2020 at 2:40 PM, the admiral said:

for the millions who don't and aren't going to pick up an Indian syllabary with any sort of ease

 

I think this is why it's such a great idea. People will look at it, say "What the hell is that?" and then get educated. 

 

The syllabary also looks cool as hell to those of us who only use the Roman alphabet day in and day out.

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On 7/30/2020 at 2:40 PM, the admiral said:

I'm in favor of including diacriticals on player names, especially for Spanish names, but going outside the Latin alphabet altogether really takes away the function of a nameplate. 117,000 people speak Cree, for the millions who don't and aren't going to pick up an Indian syllabary with any sort of ease, it looks like...Lobi?

 

You're right, it does defeat the purpose of a NOB, but it's a great idea for a one-off.

 

FWIW, I gave it a shot, and it's remarkably easy to learn to pronounce Western Cree syllabics.   I'm assuming his is 'western', because I couldn't get the word to pronounce right using the version that came up as default in a google search.  One thing that instantly tripped me up was that it's not literally spelling 'Bear', but rather something like 'Maskwa' (or at least that's what the syllable guide says, and a quick google search indicated that was close to what it was supposed to be.)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Cree_syllabics#:~:text=Western Cree syllabics are a,opposed to Eastern Cree syllabics.

 

Initial Vowels Final
ê [1] i o a î ô â
   
p
t
k
c
m
n
s
y ᕀ (ᐝ) [2]
th [3]
w [4]
h ᐦᐁ ᐦᐃ ᐦᐅ ᐦᐊ ᐦᐄ ᐦᐆ ᐦᐋ
hk [5]              

 

 

 

ᒪ = "MA"

ᐢ = "S"

ᑲ = "Ka"

 

The dot after the ᑲ means that you should jam a "w" in between the "K" and "A" sounds, making it "KWA" (note - I'm not 100% certain about the "A" at the end, as the rules for W are a little confusing, but I'm pretty sure it goes by the "direction" of the preceding symbol, which would make it WA, so "KWA".

 

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28 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

FWIW, I gave it a shot, and it's remarkably easy to learn to pronounce Western Cree syllabics. 

 

1 hour ago, JustForFun said:

 

I think this is why it's such a great idea. People will look at it, say "What the hell is that?" and then get educated.

 

Point proven. Nice one BBTV.

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