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Shiwi is the native name for the Zuni language. Ashiwi is the native term the Zuni use to refer to the populace, and it means "the People". Shiwi is literally "Zuni". (See Newman's Zuni Dictionary listed in the bibliography). Shiwi is a nominal particle that in Zuni can refer to persons, /a:w- is a (1) verbal pronominal prefix for plural absolutive or (2) a derivational prefix pluralizing particles referring to persons ("/" meaning the glottal stop and ":" referring to a glide). Before a consonant, the prefix loses its glide and becomes "/a". Ashiwi is the term used to pluralize Shiwi. In regard to cultural norms, the pluralization of Shiwi, that is, affixing /a, does not refer to a group of individuals, but the many as a single unit. See the bibliography in the article, particularly the essay by Kenneth Miner, International Journal of American Linguistics.
Reply: how do we request that the page be moved to the correct name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.46.152 ( talk) 06:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
For future reference to editors under this section. I added a link to an audio file for the Zuni language using the text "Zuni language, audio files of the Zuni Language by Zuni speaker Wells Mahkee". The owner of the link and files edited it to "Zuni language, presented by Zuni Spirits". I reversed the changes stating to the owner that they could not state their business name in the visible text. They then removed the link and expressed to me that they did not want their link on this page if they could not use their business name rather than the name of the Zuni speaker. Feedback welcome on this issue, but until then I guess the audio files cannot be listed. Amerindianarts 8 July 2005 20:24 (UTC)
I'm currently reading Nancy Yaw Davis' book, which is quite fascinating. While I expect to know more about the connection between the Zuni and Japanese languages in a few days' time, I've been studying Japanese since 1989, and currently earn my bread as a translator. I've also studied some Korean and Chinese, as well as a couple Polynesian languages (mostly Maori and Hawaiian), in addition to getting a minor in German literature in university -- basically, I'm a language geek. :) But when I was reading over this interesting article on Zuni, I tripped up a bit on the description of Japanese as an isolate. The page on the Japanese language itself does present a number of competing theories on the origins of the language, but no view of Japanese as an isolate holds much currency that I'm aware of. Just in my own studies in working to learn Korean, I find the grammatical similarities too close to be mere chance. Words (that are not borrowed from Chinese) are almost completely different, but the grammar, even to the point of some particles being identical, matches quite cleanly in many areas, enough for me to personally lean towards the first two bullet points under " History and Classification".
Perhaps this description of Japanese here in the Zuni article should be changed? -- Eirikr 09:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
They don't seem to be infringing. The page says "From Wikipedia" at the top of the page, and has a link to the Wikipedia article at the bottom of the page. Rick K 06:46, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Here is the infringing page: http://language.school-explorer.com/info/Zuni_language. There is no reference to Wikipedia on this page. You would not know that they were infringing unless you did a search for "Zuni language" on Google and saw in the results where a verbatim quote from this article was the site description. This is true for many of Wikipedia's other language articles as well. It is blatant infringement. Amerindianarts 17:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
A non-compliance complaint has been sent. Anyone wanting to see it can email me for a copy. Amerindianarts 19:19, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Google appears to have removed school-explorer from its indices. Amerindianarts 22:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
It strikes me as rather strange that this article on the Zuni language has three paragraphs discussing unsupported and completely discredited attempts to link Zuni to other language families, and two paragraphs about the "Zuni world view", against actual information on the language consisting of ... two charts.
I'd rather work on this myself instead of just griping about it, but I don't have any opportunity right now to go to the library and find one of the 39 references listed here. If someone else can add some information that actually concerns the Zuni language, I think it would improve this article a lot. Jiashudiwanjin 16:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Using "Aa" in Ashiwi is incorrect and unsupported in the references listed. If reinserted it needs a citation for a source more definitive and authoritative than those of Bunzel, Cushing, Walker, Newman, and others. "Aa" actually confounds the distinction between the Zuni plural absolutive and the designation for a particle in an artificial way that is not supported in speaking in that it reflects a distinction between the abstract, or universal, and a concrete particular that is not at all evident in the Zuni language.
"Shiwi ma" is transliterated as the "Zuni way" and refers to more than the language itself. Zuni speakers, when referring to the Zuni language, include the verb for "speaking" after "Shiwi ma" 74.142.55.239 19:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Why is nothing mentioned about the standard Zuni orthography, developed by Curtis Cook?? It uses standard latin letters, as well as Ł ł. Vowels are lengthened with a :, and ' indicates a glottal stop. It is the standard orthography used on the reservation today, and on the internet. A few phrases are available here: http://www.suduva.com/zuni_conversation.htm-- Alfredie ( talk) 00:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Update: I have placed that in, and don't know where to put all this old stuff about all the old orthography's, or if it even belongs?? feel free to incorporate at will-- Alfredie ( talk) 01:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
A writing system based on the Roman alphabet was developed for Zuni by linguist Stanley Newman (Newman 1954). This practical orthography essentially followed Americanist phonetic notation with the substitution of some uncommon letters with other letters or digraphs (two letter combinations). A further revised orthography is used in Dennis Tedlock's transcriptions of oral narratives.
A comparison of the systems is in the table below.
|
|
In Newman's orthography (used in his dictionary, Newman 1958), the symbols, ch, j, lh, q, sh, z, /, : replaced Americanist č, h, ł, kw, š, c, ʔ, and · (used in Newman's grammar, Newman 1965).
Tedlock's orthography uses ʼ instead of Newman's / except at the beginning of words where it is not written. Additionally, in Tedlock's system, long vowels are written doubled instead with a length mark : as in Newman's system (e.g. aa instead of a:) and h and kw are used instead of j and q. Finally, Tedlock writes the following long consonants — cch, llh, ssh, tts — with a doubled initial letter instead of Newman's doubling of the digraphs — chch, lhlh, shsh — and kkw and tts are used instead of Newman's qq and zz.
I wonder if anyone has done a control study - i.e. taken a random sample of languages from around the world and looked for correlations. There is no way to know if the supposed correlations between Zuni and Japanese are statistically significant without such a baseline. Anyone looking for an idea for a thesis(:
Laurence white ( talk) 21:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
tamil Himyah silver ( talk) 11:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Okay, look. I understand nobody wants to take a wild-sounding theory and say it's actually necessarily correct/give it "more credence than it [in their opinion] deserves"...however, when popular websites (Cracked, in this case -hey, don't judge, there's a reason I went looking for more information!) are covering a theory? That an entire (apparently relatively well-known) book was written on, that references the language's origins? And you remove all reference to the theory?
To the extent in fact that there isn't even a 'single sentence mentioning "so and so came up with this theory based on cognates and the basic grammar and has other evidence that she believed demonstrated that there had been contact with this culture and another one" EVEN IF it is presented as "however, this view is highly controversial and has been criticized by X, Y and Z scholars"...?
...sorry, but it smacks of a weird and rather frustrating form of censorship.
No, wait, hear me out here okay? I know that's a strong word, but; when you're looking at a theory that has been referenced in popular culture just enough that it's literally driving people to this page (and let me tell you, there is a LONG discussion dating back to 2005 up higher on this talk page, so it's clearly been driving users to this page for over ten years) it doesn't matter that you don't like it or think it's crazy and lacks good support. It should be mentioned and addressed.
Heck, ESPECIALLY if it's being cited by layman but is considered unrealistic by linguists and others who have reason to discredit it! If anything, that just makes it more important to address it :\ Here I was hoping to find something on it, see if there had been scholarly rebuttals or someone who discussed her work one way or the other that I could use WP as a summary of/jumping off point to find, and instead? There's literally nothing at all about it and I'm left wondering why, and also left with this page being pretty much useless for the main reason I looked it up today.
Since others discussed this (by which I mean, argued) up above a few years ago, I can't imagine I'm the only person looking this up entirely because of Nancy Yaw Davis' theory being mentioned somewhere popular (and supported as "hey, surprisingly plausible!" in that place, no less).
I get that there is apparently a strong argument to be made that she was wrong, BUT to not even 'bring it up in the actual article while noting that people have poked holes in her theory? Is frustrating. Because apparently, people do keep reading that book and since it's been referenced on a popular website as a "hey this is crazy but PROBABLY TOTALLY TRUE AND REWRITING HISTORYYYYY" thing you KNOW people are going to be looking this up for the same reason I am, and probably in a lot of cases with a lot less cynicism. Not mentioning it at all is providing a lack of coverage on a key component of the article's subject, even if it's just to debunk it in one sentence. It's also probably going to lead to someone naively trying to add it in again without questioning it, and then we'll probably end up with either an inaccurate or incomplete statement about its plausibility/acceptance, or an outright edit war and I'm sure no one wants that.
I don't have access to/know of any discussion on her work outside of the Cracked listicle + one source of who knows what reliability (I do not have nor can I afford access to academic journals, assuming any of actual repute has bothered to cover it), so I'm not the person do it, AND I don't remember/know how to ping someone like the person above who was arguing it with someone else (and that's assuming they're still bothering to edit Wikipedia 10+ years later), so I'm not sure how to bring in someone with the relevant experience, especially as WP of course has that really strict rule about 'original research' (meaning, any debunkings referenced need to be third-party debunkings, is my understanding?). But if someone who has the relevant knowledge of this book and any sources discussing it (including debunkings), sees this, PLEASE do everyone a favor and contribute? :\
TLDR: It's a hole in the article's coverage that I really feel should be addressed if only briefly, given Davis' book and recent popular references to it, are the reason a number of people visited this page in the first place. The only "references" cited elsewhere about her book that I have found so far seem to be supportive, from the early 1990s, but I have no idea how reliable THOSE are either (I have never heard of "Science Frontiers", but apparently it's a journal of some sort. This does not make it reputable of course, there are plenty of credulous folks out there and Native American languages are misunderstood by credulous white folk notoriously often, but I have no way of judging that off the bat, you know?). I don't think I have the knowledge of relevant sources to address it one way or the other, but it needs a nice, balanced mention (including criticism, which I don't know how to look for in a way that could be cited per Wiki rules bit which I'm sure exists somewhere, given the above discussions). The only reference I have found so far is Science Frontiers Online (No. 87: May-Jun 1993 in specific), which mentions the biological items and some vague reference to social "organization", "oral history" etc, that Davis cited in support of her theory for contact between the Zuni and 12th Century-ish Japanese, but that's about it, no discussion of the alleged similarities between Japanese and Zuni that Davis claims, and I have, again, no idea how "reliable" a source per Wiki's guidelines that would be. People more familiar with linguistics are probably better tapped to find a balanced way to cover this (apparently wacky, but popularly-referenced) theory, but the recent popularity/interest in it means it should arguably be addressed. 97.104.76.15 ( talk) 21:33, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
Hardly anything here. Learned almost nothing reading it. Wikipedia is real trash. Where can someone go to actually learn something about Zuni? 2600:1011:B00C:724:74BE:4FC6:4201:E432 ( talk) 14:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Zuni language article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Shiwi is the native name for the Zuni language. Ashiwi is the native term the Zuni use to refer to the populace, and it means "the People". Shiwi is literally "Zuni". (See Newman's Zuni Dictionary listed in the bibliography). Shiwi is a nominal particle that in Zuni can refer to persons, /a:w- is a (1) verbal pronominal prefix for plural absolutive or (2) a derivational prefix pluralizing particles referring to persons ("/" meaning the glottal stop and ":" referring to a glide). Before a consonant, the prefix loses its glide and becomes "/a". Ashiwi is the term used to pluralize Shiwi. In regard to cultural norms, the pluralization of Shiwi, that is, affixing /a, does not refer to a group of individuals, but the many as a single unit. See the bibliography in the article, particularly the essay by Kenneth Miner, International Journal of American Linguistics.
Reply: how do we request that the page be moved to the correct name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.46.152 ( talk) 06:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
For future reference to editors under this section. I added a link to an audio file for the Zuni language using the text "Zuni language, audio files of the Zuni Language by Zuni speaker Wells Mahkee". The owner of the link and files edited it to "Zuni language, presented by Zuni Spirits". I reversed the changes stating to the owner that they could not state their business name in the visible text. They then removed the link and expressed to me that they did not want their link on this page if they could not use their business name rather than the name of the Zuni speaker. Feedback welcome on this issue, but until then I guess the audio files cannot be listed. Amerindianarts 8 July 2005 20:24 (UTC)
I'm currently reading Nancy Yaw Davis' book, which is quite fascinating. While I expect to know more about the connection between the Zuni and Japanese languages in a few days' time, I've been studying Japanese since 1989, and currently earn my bread as a translator. I've also studied some Korean and Chinese, as well as a couple Polynesian languages (mostly Maori and Hawaiian), in addition to getting a minor in German literature in university -- basically, I'm a language geek. :) But when I was reading over this interesting article on Zuni, I tripped up a bit on the description of Japanese as an isolate. The page on the Japanese language itself does present a number of competing theories on the origins of the language, but no view of Japanese as an isolate holds much currency that I'm aware of. Just in my own studies in working to learn Korean, I find the grammatical similarities too close to be mere chance. Words (that are not borrowed from Chinese) are almost completely different, but the grammar, even to the point of some particles being identical, matches quite cleanly in many areas, enough for me to personally lean towards the first two bullet points under " History and Classification".
Perhaps this description of Japanese here in the Zuni article should be changed? -- Eirikr 09:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
They don't seem to be infringing. The page says "From Wikipedia" at the top of the page, and has a link to the Wikipedia article at the bottom of the page. Rick K 06:46, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Here is the infringing page: http://language.school-explorer.com/info/Zuni_language. There is no reference to Wikipedia on this page. You would not know that they were infringing unless you did a search for "Zuni language" on Google and saw in the results where a verbatim quote from this article was the site description. This is true for many of Wikipedia's other language articles as well. It is blatant infringement. Amerindianarts 17:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
A non-compliance complaint has been sent. Anyone wanting to see it can email me for a copy. Amerindianarts 19:19, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Google appears to have removed school-explorer from its indices. Amerindianarts 22:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
It strikes me as rather strange that this article on the Zuni language has three paragraphs discussing unsupported and completely discredited attempts to link Zuni to other language families, and two paragraphs about the "Zuni world view", against actual information on the language consisting of ... two charts.
I'd rather work on this myself instead of just griping about it, but I don't have any opportunity right now to go to the library and find one of the 39 references listed here. If someone else can add some information that actually concerns the Zuni language, I think it would improve this article a lot. Jiashudiwanjin 16:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Using "Aa" in Ashiwi is incorrect and unsupported in the references listed. If reinserted it needs a citation for a source more definitive and authoritative than those of Bunzel, Cushing, Walker, Newman, and others. "Aa" actually confounds the distinction between the Zuni plural absolutive and the designation for a particle in an artificial way that is not supported in speaking in that it reflects a distinction between the abstract, or universal, and a concrete particular that is not at all evident in the Zuni language.
"Shiwi ma" is transliterated as the "Zuni way" and refers to more than the language itself. Zuni speakers, when referring to the Zuni language, include the verb for "speaking" after "Shiwi ma" 74.142.55.239 19:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Why is nothing mentioned about the standard Zuni orthography, developed by Curtis Cook?? It uses standard latin letters, as well as Ł ł. Vowels are lengthened with a :, and ' indicates a glottal stop. It is the standard orthography used on the reservation today, and on the internet. A few phrases are available here: http://www.suduva.com/zuni_conversation.htm-- Alfredie ( talk) 00:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Update: I have placed that in, and don't know where to put all this old stuff about all the old orthography's, or if it even belongs?? feel free to incorporate at will-- Alfredie ( talk) 01:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
A writing system based on the Roman alphabet was developed for Zuni by linguist Stanley Newman (Newman 1954). This practical orthography essentially followed Americanist phonetic notation with the substitution of some uncommon letters with other letters or digraphs (two letter combinations). A further revised orthography is used in Dennis Tedlock's transcriptions of oral narratives.
A comparison of the systems is in the table below.
|
|
In Newman's orthography (used in his dictionary, Newman 1958), the symbols, ch, j, lh, q, sh, z, /, : replaced Americanist č, h, ł, kw, š, c, ʔ, and · (used in Newman's grammar, Newman 1965).
Tedlock's orthography uses ʼ instead of Newman's / except at the beginning of words where it is not written. Additionally, in Tedlock's system, long vowels are written doubled instead with a length mark : as in Newman's system (e.g. aa instead of a:) and h and kw are used instead of j and q. Finally, Tedlock writes the following long consonants — cch, llh, ssh, tts — with a doubled initial letter instead of Newman's doubling of the digraphs — chch, lhlh, shsh — and kkw and tts are used instead of Newman's qq and zz.
I wonder if anyone has done a control study - i.e. taken a random sample of languages from around the world and looked for correlations. There is no way to know if the supposed correlations between Zuni and Japanese are statistically significant without such a baseline. Anyone looking for an idea for a thesis(:
Laurence white ( talk) 21:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
tamil Himyah silver ( talk) 11:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Okay, look. I understand nobody wants to take a wild-sounding theory and say it's actually necessarily correct/give it "more credence than it [in their opinion] deserves"...however, when popular websites (Cracked, in this case -hey, don't judge, there's a reason I went looking for more information!) are covering a theory? That an entire (apparently relatively well-known) book was written on, that references the language's origins? And you remove all reference to the theory?
To the extent in fact that there isn't even a 'single sentence mentioning "so and so came up with this theory based on cognates and the basic grammar and has other evidence that she believed demonstrated that there had been contact with this culture and another one" EVEN IF it is presented as "however, this view is highly controversial and has been criticized by X, Y and Z scholars"...?
...sorry, but it smacks of a weird and rather frustrating form of censorship.
No, wait, hear me out here okay? I know that's a strong word, but; when you're looking at a theory that has been referenced in popular culture just enough that it's literally driving people to this page (and let me tell you, there is a LONG discussion dating back to 2005 up higher on this talk page, so it's clearly been driving users to this page for over ten years) it doesn't matter that you don't like it or think it's crazy and lacks good support. It should be mentioned and addressed.
Heck, ESPECIALLY if it's being cited by layman but is considered unrealistic by linguists and others who have reason to discredit it! If anything, that just makes it more important to address it :\ Here I was hoping to find something on it, see if there had been scholarly rebuttals or someone who discussed her work one way or the other that I could use WP as a summary of/jumping off point to find, and instead? There's literally nothing at all about it and I'm left wondering why, and also left with this page being pretty much useless for the main reason I looked it up today.
Since others discussed this (by which I mean, argued) up above a few years ago, I can't imagine I'm the only person looking this up entirely because of Nancy Yaw Davis' theory being mentioned somewhere popular (and supported as "hey, surprisingly plausible!" in that place, no less).
I get that there is apparently a strong argument to be made that she was wrong, BUT to not even 'bring it up in the actual article while noting that people have poked holes in her theory? Is frustrating. Because apparently, people do keep reading that book and since it's been referenced on a popular website as a "hey this is crazy but PROBABLY TOTALLY TRUE AND REWRITING HISTORYYYYY" thing you KNOW people are going to be looking this up for the same reason I am, and probably in a lot of cases with a lot less cynicism. Not mentioning it at all is providing a lack of coverage on a key component of the article's subject, even if it's just to debunk it in one sentence. It's also probably going to lead to someone naively trying to add it in again without questioning it, and then we'll probably end up with either an inaccurate or incomplete statement about its plausibility/acceptance, or an outright edit war and I'm sure no one wants that.
I don't have access to/know of any discussion on her work outside of the Cracked listicle + one source of who knows what reliability (I do not have nor can I afford access to academic journals, assuming any of actual repute has bothered to cover it), so I'm not the person do it, AND I don't remember/know how to ping someone like the person above who was arguing it with someone else (and that's assuming they're still bothering to edit Wikipedia 10+ years later), so I'm not sure how to bring in someone with the relevant experience, especially as WP of course has that really strict rule about 'original research' (meaning, any debunkings referenced need to be third-party debunkings, is my understanding?). But if someone who has the relevant knowledge of this book and any sources discussing it (including debunkings), sees this, PLEASE do everyone a favor and contribute? :\
TLDR: It's a hole in the article's coverage that I really feel should be addressed if only briefly, given Davis' book and recent popular references to it, are the reason a number of people visited this page in the first place. The only "references" cited elsewhere about her book that I have found so far seem to be supportive, from the early 1990s, but I have no idea how reliable THOSE are either (I have never heard of "Science Frontiers", but apparently it's a journal of some sort. This does not make it reputable of course, there are plenty of credulous folks out there and Native American languages are misunderstood by credulous white folk notoriously often, but I have no way of judging that off the bat, you know?). I don't think I have the knowledge of relevant sources to address it one way or the other, but it needs a nice, balanced mention (including criticism, which I don't know how to look for in a way that could be cited per Wiki rules bit which I'm sure exists somewhere, given the above discussions). The only reference I have found so far is Science Frontiers Online (No. 87: May-Jun 1993 in specific), which mentions the biological items and some vague reference to social "organization", "oral history" etc, that Davis cited in support of her theory for contact between the Zuni and 12th Century-ish Japanese, but that's about it, no discussion of the alleged similarities between Japanese and Zuni that Davis claims, and I have, again, no idea how "reliable" a source per Wiki's guidelines that would be. People more familiar with linguistics are probably better tapped to find a balanced way to cover this (apparently wacky, but popularly-referenced) theory, but the recent popularity/interest in it means it should arguably be addressed. 97.104.76.15 ( talk) 21:33, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
Hardly anything here. Learned almost nothing reading it. Wikipedia is real trash. Where can someone go to actually learn something about Zuni? 2600:1011:B00C:724:74BE:4FC6:4201:E432 ( talk) 14:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC)