野的巴冷美

原文是那瓜在2013年4月5日寫的，我今晚才看到。謝謝那瓜。

明信片畫冊的故事 (5) Yedda Palemeq與開往布拉格的夜車

今天要跟大家分享的故事，是以排灣族的Yedda Palemeq為主角的『開往布拉格的夜車』。

在去荷蘭之前，我跟Yedda並不認識。等在Leiden認識了，才知道Yedda在台大外文系及外文所時，曾跟鮑曉鷗教授（José Borao）學了六年西班牙文，而我則是花了兩年時間，才把鮑教授的大作《西班牙人的台灣體驗 1626-1642：一場文藝復興時代的志業及其巴洛克的結局》譯成中文，說來，也算是有點淵緣。後來我們一起上荷文課及其他課程，Yedda都表現得很好，而且是『穩定的很好』。不像我，因為bipolar的關係，有時大腦會突然shut down，然後就這個也聽不懂，那個也看不懂了。我向Yedda解釋我的狀況，因此當我有這『症狀』發生時，她就會代為解釋：『There is nothing wrong. She’s plugged out. That’s it.』

Satellite Event of the 13th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics

Published in Aboriginal Education World 67 (February, 2016): 82-85.

Sequoyah and the Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet （2012）

Writing Systems for Taiwan Indigenous Languages （原住民族語言書寫系統） are announced officially in 2005 by Council of Indigenous Peoples and Ministry of Education. These symbols are developed by linguists, indigenous language experts/teachers and authorities based on Roman letters, though it must not be ignored that both Mandarin phonetic symbols and Japanese scripts were once candidates promoted by different forces at different times.

Sometime during the early decades of 1800 (circa 1809), a man remembered by Washington Post in 1899 as 'Cadmus of Cherokees' (Note: In Greek mythology, Cadmus was the founder of Thebes and the creator of Phoenician alphabets) single-handedly created a writing system  for his native language.

With the help of his six- to ten- year old daughter Ahyokeh, who was his best pupil and assistant, he completed the syllabary in 1821 and convinced the Cherokee Council as well as his people by demonstration of the truth of his invention.

This man was Sequoyah or George Guess (Gist). According to a Cherokee writer and a self-claimed descendant of Sequoyah in 1971, Traveller Bird, the name Sequoyah was Sogwili in Taliwa and it meant 'horse' (Sequoyah and the Invention, p. 78).