Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood finally gets a library

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

long game, as in trying to teach future generations of salish their own language, who would likely be the only people wanting to learn this language earnestly.

And they'll still be trying to learn it with or without one library name. They'd be better served with a dedicated First Nations literature shelf inside it.

Originally Posted by mezzanine

http://www.musqueam.bc.ca/language

Duly noted. But a similar situation exists with the Chinese dialects, and yet there's Pinyin.

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Look, I will likely call it "strathcona library" for the rest of my life. but if the VPL ignores musqueum orthography this renaming business is an empty gesture, even if it stymies regular use of place names by non-musquem.

If everybody knows it as "Strathcona Library" and completely ignores the Musqueam name, then it's already an empty gesture.

Which is worse, everyone slightly mispronouncing it, or ten people pronouncing it correctly? One makes Salish commonplace, like "potlatch" or "skookum" or "chinook;" the other confines it to the same path as Hebrew or Norse or Ancient Greek...