Sami

A. Vine andrea.vine@sun.com
Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:02:00 -0800


Jumping into the fray - no simply responses to John's note

I actually have no opinion on, nor publications to support using, Sami vs.
Saami.  I have only the interesting comment that the country/people/organization
of origin in another language specifying the name in "English" does not
necessarily hold sway over the English name.

Whether the name used in a particular context is the English name or the name
transliterated into Latin letters with an assumed English-style pronunciation is
a different question.

Andrea

P.S.  Dictionaries are nice to support your example when they agree with you. 
But they don't always reflect usage, especially not in a timely manner.  Oxford
is a dictionary.

P.P.S. English - Germanic, sort of, but hardly categorically.

John Clews wrote:
> 
> In message <200202171557.QAA10825@dkuug.dk> Michael Everson writes:
> 
> > John this has been argued a thousand times. The preferred form of the
> > word, as found on page 1644 of the New Oxford Dictionary of English
> > (2001) is "Sami", with no accent.
> 
> Well, the New Oxford Dictionary of English may represent use in the
> UK in times past, but it does not necessarily represent English use
> worldwide, or even an international source. When it boils down to it
> it's a proprietary usage. Well used, I grant you, but it remains
> proprietary, and it is not explicitly accepted as a standard (UK or
> wider) in the same way that other reference sources (e.g. Duden in
> German speaking countries) is.
> 
> "Saami" certainly appears in some American general usage dictionaries
> and encyclopedias.
> 
> > "Saami" does not appear in this dictionary,
> 
> which remains Oxford University Press's problem, rather than the rest
> of the world's problem. Generally - and certainly with the start of
> the Oxord Dictionary series of publications - they always prided
> themselves on recording various usages.
> 
> > and in any case should be avoided because people may
> > hypercorrect it to Såmi, confusing it with equivalences like Ålborg
> > and Aalborg.
> 
> The councils for Saami speakers in Norway, Sweden and Finland have
> recommended the use of the term "Saami" and they, more than anybody,
> are all used to needing to deal with specific uses of the string "aa"
> in words.
> 
> If the Saami and non-Saami speakers in Norway, Sweden and Finland can
> cope with it, and indeed recommend it, I don't see why anybody should
> propose over their heads that they have to think that what is done by
> a UK publisher, just because we on standards committees think we know
> better, particularly when the term that they recommend is already in
> widespread use in various English language publications worldwide,
> in both linguistic and more general publications.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> John Clews
> 
> --
> John Clews,
> Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
> 8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
> Email: Scripts@sesame.demon.co.uk
> tel: +44 1423 888 432;
> 
> Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
> Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes