Talk:Ɂejëre Kʼelnı Kuę́ 196I

The question mark in "?Ejere"

The following discussion ensued at User talk:Hwy43 in response to this edit summary at List of Indian reserves in Alberta. I am posting this here for future reference as there could very well be more edits such as this that attempt to remove the leading question mark from the name of the Indian reserve. Hwy43 (talk) 06:25, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Yup, it's even on my trusty old Alberta Sustainable Resource Development map. I can't believe it. 117Avenue (talk) 06:25, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

And I saw the same on the provincial website as well when I did a web search a half hour ago (which I can no longer find). The First Nation's website refers to it as Pejere K’elni Kue Indian Reserve No. 196I. The letter "P" and the symbol "?" are similar in shape (maybe I'm feeling a tad creative in interpretation). I wonder if it is a question mark because there is not an letter within our alphabet that can be used to pronounce the name. Another one of life's mysteries... Hwy43 (talk) 06:44, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

With only one source I too first assumed that the question mark was used by the AANDC website for a character it couldn't render. But then I googled ?ejere K'elni Kue, and there's plenty of results. 117Avenue (talk) 18:39, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The question mark is used in Latin-alphabet transcriptions of Dene languages to represent a glottal stop, probably because of its resemblance to the IPA symbol. In other languages the sound is more usually represented by an apostrophe or opening single quote; in some Polynesian languages there’s a special character for the purpose called the ʻokina, identified in Unicode as a “turned comma”.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 05:03, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you ‎Odysseus1479 for shedding light on this! Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 06:32, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

On Wikipedia we are not limited to the Latin alphabet. Should we be using ʔ instead of the Latin question mark? Google produces one result. 117Avenue (talk) 06:43, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

(←) Ideally I should think so, especially if the question-mark version is retained as a redirect: few users will have their keyboards configured to have the character at their fingertips—and surprisingly few seem to be aware of the system accessories or app-specific shortcuts for accessing extended character sets. BTW, according to this Dene pronunciation guide, “ ʔ ” is only used at the beginning of words or after vowels; after consonants it’s “ ’ ”.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 07:10, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

A few more observations from further reading of some relevant policies, in no particular order:

• You can’t get to the article by simply typing the question mark, because the server then takes the rest of the article name for a query it doesn’t understand, and sends you to the Main page. Instead you have to type “%3F”. (See the technical naming convention on question marks.)
• Typing either “ ʔ ” or “%CA%94” will now get you here via the redirect. I suggested above that this should be the article title, but now I’m not so sure: there could be problems with printability, although IIANM there’s a method for making redirection to printer-unfriendly names optional.
• According to Use English there is no preference for or against “accents or other diacritics”, but it’s unclear to me whether or not this includes entirely non-Latin characters like the glottal stop. Just above, though, it’s recommended that any variant forms be listed at the beginning of the lead. Here, assuming the question-mark version remains primary, these should probably comprise the glottal-stop and “P” versions.
• I notice that the ‘Canadian supplement’ to the MOS has a section discussing French names, but nothing on aboriginal languages. Should it, or are those principles equally applicable?

—Odysseus1479 (talk) 19:37, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I read MOS:CA#French names as an interpretation of Use English, so I believe that it applies to other languages. 117Avenue (talk) 06:48, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with 117Avenue - MOS:CA#French names is simply a clarification of well established principles for the Canadian context, and those principles also have broader application. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I suggest a note be added to the top of this article to indicate (perhaps with a source) that the question mark is correct. 70.72.211.35 (talk) 19:02, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

An explicit note is superfluous. Instead, a pre-existing ref from later in the article has been replicated to follow the IR's name for verification, just like there is for the alternate spelling later in the same sentence. Hwy43 (talk) 03:24, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

ɂejere K'elni Kųe 196I

With very extensive Unicode fonts available on nearly all platforms, I think it's time to revisit the title of this page. According to Natural Resources Canada's geographical names database, the correct spelling of this place is ɂejere K'elni Kųe 196I. The first character is not properly a question mark but actually U+0242 LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP. Are there any objections to moving the page to this title? Indefatigable (talk) 23:32, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

The glottal stop, revisited

While cleaning up Alberta's Indian reserve pages and their titles (mostly by creating 60 new stubs and removing the phrase "Indian reserve" from those titles that contained it, as the number attached to every reserve's name serves as disambiguation enough), I was unsure how to deal with this one, so I contacted the Smith's Landing First Nation through their Facebook page. They replied within an hour, forwarding me a document called "Reserve Sites.docx". Here is its full text:

Dog River - Łı̨ Dezé
Birch Lake - K’ı Kué
Border Town – Tthebacha Náre
Fort Fitzgerald – Tthebatthıe
Pine Lake – Ts’u Nedhé
Leland Lake – Ts’u K’adhe Kué
Myers Lake – Hokédhe Kué
Charles Lake – Ts’u Kué
Hay Camp - ʔejëre K’elnı Kuę́
Salt River – Tthejëre Ghaı̨lı̨

Because of the lack of metadata attached, I'm still unsure how to properly cite this interaction, but it looks like SLFN has now adopted standard Dënesųłiné (Chipewyan) orthography. This would make a lot more sense than the basket of spellings seen elsewhere on the Internet, so reflecting this, I've edited all SLFN reserve pages to use these spellings. I've also added a bit of article text about the ʔ character, hopefully preventing future attempts at removing it.

Only one problem remains: the pair of combining characters used to create the ę́ in ʔejëre K’elnı Kuę́ 196I doesn't render correctly at the top of the page! (Although it renders fine in the actual article text.) This is a problem common to many other Dene languages: try loading the Tlicho Government's Tłı̨chǫ Unicode Words page in the wrong web browser. Although these orthographies aren't as well-supported as they could be, they still seem to have been widely adopted in digital resources created by the relevant First Nations. Because of this, I would personally suggest leaving the combining character as-is and hoping (as the Tłı̨chǫ and Dënesųłiné themselves seem to be doing) that a future Unicode update adds a true ę́ character. If a standing Wikipedia policy forbids such broken combining glyphs, though, I wouldn't oppose a change made for technical reasons.

Awmcphee (talk) 23:36, 16 August 2019 (UTC)