Chuck Hoskin Jr. fondly recalls Cherokee students watching How to Train Your Dragon in their mother tongue, a stark contrast to the past where indigenous languages were often stifled.
The Cherokee Nation, with only around 1,500 active speakers, is racing against time to pass on their heritage. Apple’s inclusion of Cherokee in iOS and recent additions like Blackfoot and Nez Perce have been crucial.
But the process is complex. Unicode, the digital Switzerland of language standardization, must first recognize a script before it appears on our screens. This takes years of research and community involvement.
When a script is encoded, Apple and others must add font support. For languages like Nez Perce, which do not use capital letters, Apple reimagines the keyboard to suit the culture, adding adaptive vowel keys for efficiency.
Yet, not all Indigenous communities are comfortable. Maya scholar Genner Llanes-Ortiz warns of past exploitation, highlighting the importance of language sovereignty and data ownership.
