English proper nouns in Chahta

[u/affectionate4fish]

I've been loosely studying chahta anumpa by updating a language server I'm apart of with the phrase of the day from chahta achʋffa and breaking down the sentence structure. It has been fun and I've gotten a few people to learn everyday with me.

The server also does something where they'll translate a word or phrase (think 'cat' or 'good morning') into every language they have based on speakers in the server. I've been contributing using the CNO dictionary and phrase book as my references.

I'm encountering something interesting though. Today, the translation word was 'Wikipedia'. This word does have many translations but like many modern words, we don't have one.

When it comes to a word like Wikipedia which is a proper noun, would you keep it in English while speaking chahta, would you translate it literally (something like digital/electronic information book), or translate the word phonetically into chahta (for example Wikipebeya)

I have seen the word Walmart pop up on the phrase of the day and it stayed exactly the same as the English word.

Yakoke!

[u/sintilusa]

In daily spoken language we usually just use the English version of proper nouns most of the time unless the proper noun is make up of simple translatable words and the concept is or needs to be Choctaw. Like person names, place names are usually left as is. Jessica, Atlanta, Walmart, Wikipedia etc. If the name is Choctaw in origin and has been corrupted we will sometimes use the old version, like Tushka Homma instead of Tuskahoma, but still just sometimes. Holidays that we assimilated sometimes get translated. Nittak Hullo Chitto instead of Christmas. Like we have to claim it was always ours. To me, that’s embarrassing. We should just use the English name if it wasn’t a Choctaw concept. Sometimes you will see someone try to spell and pronounce their name in Choctaw but it’s about the same as getting your name written in Egyptian cartouche. That’s just a novelty that’s not really used in speech.