Posted on 10/14/2016 9:40:29 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Residents in the nation’s northernmost community have voted to change the name of the Alaska town to its traditional Inupiat Eskimo name.
A slight majority of voters in the largely Inupiat city of Barrow approved efforts to change the community’s name to Utqiagvik (oot-GHAR-vik) in their local election Oct. 4. The vote was tight, with 381 in favor of the name change and 375 against it.
“Basically, it reinforces the cultural identity of the people,” said Mayor Bob Harcharek, who is not Native. He noted that early day missionaries set up schools in the area where students were forbidden to speak in their native language and were punished if they did so. “It caused some social psychological problems.”
Barrow City Council member Qaiyaan Harcharek, the mayor’s son, introduced a local ordinance in August that began the process ratified by voters. The younger Harcharek is Inupiat on his mother’s side. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
They’ll be sorry.
And it was never spelled correctly again
As long as the new name doesn’t have the words “brass monkey” in it, I guess I’m okay with this. I can change it on my globe and atlas with a Sharpie.
Barrow was pretty muuch destroyed by vampires in the movie ‘Thirty Days of Night’.
If they think changing their name will help ... vampires are pretty smart. Duh.
Sing along
I mushed from point Utqiagvik in a blizzard of snow
I don’t think even Johnny Horton could make that sound right.
Did the vampires make ‘em do it?
(I wonder who’ll catch that reference)
Dang.
Too late.
Blood beards. Smart but messy are the vampyres.
Did you get the impression they were Slavic bloodsuckers? Barry might want to have Josh work that into the next war-war press release.
Eventually, the townspeople will settle on a pronunciation that they can handle. It most likely will be some loose phonetic cobbling of sounds, not exactly as the Eskimos would say it. One can be compassionate to the plight of the Eskimo without using their language. This is pretentious. At very least, there should be a word in that language that is easier on the eyes, tongue and ears. Maybe it will be part of tourist’s lore; pronounce the name of the city correctly in two tries, and you get a free fishing permit for the weekend!
Or a little Igloo paperweight.
Sounds like something you do when you drink too much.
See post 5.
More PC BS. This is Barrow not some stupid name that no one can spell or pronounce with out a guide, just like the mountain is Mt. McKinley, not Denali.
“’Inupiat’? Who do they think they’re foolin’?” chuckle the vampires, as they descend again on Barrow.
I don’t think “PC” means what you think it means, in this case.
Diseased liberal infestations caused it.
Nothing like pushing children to learn a stone age language to catapult those children into the future...of total welfare dependency and rampart alcoholism.....
Ya - this is really going to make a difference...Not.
Stupid move. Utqiagvik is no Denali.
I live a few hundred miles just due south of Barrow, and I like this a lot. It’s a cool sounding name, keeping Inupiaq alive as a language, and after all, the folks up there have been sovereign much longer than the United States. And a community can call itself whatever the hell they want.
When it's springtime in Utqiagvik it's 40 below !
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