Talk:Yahgan people

Comment
I have a website building up regarding yaghan culture. I've used MediaWiki to let non-techie user to add/review content.

It's definitive URL is http://yaghan.pviojo.net, and should be always up.

Under the contents section in the navigation bar is the site itself. I haven't even changed the look yet, so any additions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Since this is a non-profit project, I took some content directly from Wikipedia, and put some placeholders for some of the topics that the site must hold.

Any contributions would be greatly appreciated.

Kilroytech 14:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe the citation you're looking for for #17 is "The Wonders of Life on Earth" by the editors of Time-Life, 1960. I was just reading the chapter on the Yaghan (entitled "Man in His Most Savage State") last night and there is a picture of a Yaghan woman purported to be 90 years old. See http://www.amazon.ca/Wonders-Earth-Lincoln-Editors-Barnett/dp/B002J1LUHK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1359482211&sr=8-3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mqdudley (talk • contribs) 18:03, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Jemmy Button's quote
What's the source of the Jemmy Button quote that appears at the bottom of the 'European contact' section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.112.109.245 (talk) 16:42, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Who decided this spelling?
I've been studying Yahgan language for almost 20 years, and have a complaint.

Someone, at some point, seems to have made a decision to spell the name of this people YAGHAN here on Wikipedia, when only a tiny minority of writings about them use this particular spelling (and this is a *correction* by someone unfamiliar with the original rendering).

Missionary Thomas Bridges coined the name Yahgan (hg not gh) after Yahgashaga (lit. Yahga Channel) which he deemed the geographical center of the territory occupied by the people, who had no proper name for their own ethnic group.

He used a modified form of then somewhat current phonetic alphabet by the English phonetician Alexander Ellis to write the language. When transliterated into standard English alphabetical writing, 'long' -a- is then spelled -ah- as in the exclamation. Thus Yahgan is how Bridges rendered the name for the larger reading public.

But apparently the cluster -hg- was reinterpreted, by someone who was unaware of this fact, as a misspelling of -gh-, and has been kept up in less educated circles. I've seen this sort of hypercorrection before- in the University of California library system somebody 'corrected' Yuman language to HUMAN language, out of ignorance.

I don't know why Wikipedia continues to use the -gh- form when it is historically incorrect as well as nearly absent from relevant literature. This goes both for this page as well as the Yahgan language page.

I also don't know how to change the page name myself, and have no idea what if anything this would do to content.

So, editors, I'm asking you to do this, and also correct the redirects. I can provide any amount of literature evidence of what I'm claiming above required. Thanks very much for your attention.

Jess Tauber 69.121.117.192 (talk) 15:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * the article states: originally and correctly spelled Yahgan. But google delivers 75,000 hits for Yaghan and only 33,000 for Yahgan. That could be the reaso to name it "Yaghan". I don't see any problem to change the name of the article. Simply click on "move" (top of page) and give the new name and the reason. Dont forget to add a reference in the article. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 23:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't advise using "Google hits" to justify misspelling of any ethnic group. Kortoso (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Esteban Lucas Bridges, who was apparently the authority on these people and their language, spelled it Yahgan. I'd advise going with that.

Population figures.
The current population of Yaghans are given as 100 in 2000 CE and 1685 two years later. Clearly these can't both be right. The article also states only one full blooded Yaghan left alive as of 2012. Clarification might be in order for the figures given.1812ahill (talk) 19:50, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Yaghan
This is the most common spelling, that's why I performed the move. I made a basic Google books search and this spelling outnumbered that for Yahgan. Bedivere (talk) 14:00, 28 November 2023 (UTC)