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# Lakota Language and Emacs
Grant Shangreaux
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<https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--31-lakota-language-and-emacs--grant-shangreaux.org>
When I began learning Lakota, the language of my ancestors, there was
no way for me to type it on a computer without using non-free
software. Additionally, the only software I could find supported just
one of the proposed orthographies for the language.
As an Emacs user, I knew that free software offered the ability for
many types of languages to co-exist in the same program and went
looking for how to enable an input mode for Lakota in Emacs. This
talk will discuss how Emacs enabled me to define input modes for
multiple Lakota orthographies using the Quail multilingual input
package.
I will also discuss some of the ethical and cultural considerations I
went through when publishing the package. Lakota and many other
indigenous languages were actively suppressed for many years, and are
in danger of extinction. The language is being recovered now, but
much of the available educational material comes from non-indian
people. Before publishing an input mode for Emacs, I wanted to ensure
that I included an orthography developed by Lakota people, not only
the suggested orthography present in most of my educational material.
Additionally, the choice of where to publish the source as an Emacs
package was important, since some corporations have been known to
support ongoing oppression against indigenous descended peoples.
<!-- from the pad --->
# Questions
## Q4: Did you write the company backend to complete on Lakota words?
With a Lakota dictionary file, one could probably leverage other
company methods for completion.
Seems to be company-dabbrev, it happens automatically when typing in
Org mode at least. Unfortunately the only digital Lakota dictionary
I'm aware of is non-free, so I'm not sure what to do about that.
- Yeah, I'm not sure, but the dictionary files needed would really
just be word-lists, so maybe there is a way to find or produce
something of this sort.
## Q3: Why did you decide on e.g. a' for á? In my country's input method (which is Dutch, and in French, German, etc.) the default is to put the accent first, so 'e -> é.
For me, this was my first experience with it and it made more sense in
my head to have the modifier come after. Its possible I read about
postfix notation in a tutorial I found (and lost) that demonstrated
Quail input modes. The X11 input has it as a prefix, so I may change
it in the future. I'd like to consult with other Lakota speakers and
tribal members, however, as it seems worthwhile trying to get
consensus from native speakers on usage.
## Q2:Can you give us a demo of you typing in either Lakota input method?
The demo starts at 02:06 in the Q&A video.
## Q1: Advantages of using Emacs Input Methods over something like xcompose?
→ Compose <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg/Keyboard_configuration#Configuring_compose_key>
Ah yes, I found something about this when making the X layout, but it
was not immediately apparent. Emacs was easier for me to inspect and
learn about than X, easier to iterate on as I was learning how it all
worked. Emacs can re-eval the layout definition and give live
feedback, while X required a restart to try different things. Emacs is
also cross platform, so anyone can easily install this. also, sharing
an X config seemed more difficult to me, I don't know how to tell
someone to install it properly :(
# Notes
- <https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Input-Methods.html>
- Quail:
[lisp/international/quail.el](https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/international/quail.el?h=emacs-27.1)
- <https://git.sr.ht/~shoshin/lakota-input.git>
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