A:ñi 'ant wodalt
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For details, see "Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, Pima County Recorder, unveils new ‘I Voted’ sticker".
A tiktok video from the Pima Country Recorder's office includes a pronunciation of the Tohono Oʼodham phrase, reproduced below:
The sticker reads
"I voted"
"A:ñi 'ant wodalt"
"Yo voté"
Hashtag: Pima County Votes
But neither the webpage nor the video provides an interlinear analysis.
A bit of poking around on Wiktionary indicates that a:ñi is the first person singular pronoun. And there are several Tohono O'odham dictionaries available, but (perhaps due to spelling issues?) a few minutes of searching didn't explain the "'ant wodalt" part. It seems possible that "wod" is part of a borrowing of "vote" — maybe a more knowledgeable commenter can tell us.
As this Tucson Sentinel story indicates, the tri-lingual stickers have been around since 2022.
[h/t Malcah Yeager-Dror]
KeithB said,
October 23, 2024 @ 7:40 am
I don't know how to post a picture, but I have a billboard from Gallup NM, that says (I assume!) Merry Christmas as YÁ'ÁT'ÉÉH Késhmish
sh said,
October 23, 2024 @ 9:29 am
According to Ofelia Zepeda, A Papago Grammar, University of Arizona Press, 1983, p. 61, ’ant is the "(long form of) the 1st pers. sg. perfective auxiliary". Maybe "wodalt" is a phonetic rendering of the English "voted", so something like ’a:ñi ’ant ’voted’.
Y said,
October 23, 2024 @ 3:01 pm
Per Saxton and Saxton's 1969 dictionary, wotalt 'vote' is from Spanish votar. The phoneme written as <l> is /ɹ/.
CuConnacht said,
October 23, 2024 @ 3:02 pm
The first person singular pronoun in Hebrew is ani, proving that the native Americans are the ten lost tribes, as many have suspected.
David Marjanović said,
October 23, 2024 @ 3:37 pm
Makes sense. Yá'át'éeh is the basic greeting in Navajo; Navajo doesn't do consonant clusters a lot, so rendering the chr as k [kx] makes sense; the vowel system is just a e i o (long & short plus tones), so [ɪ] as e also makes sense; rendering the reduced vowel as i makes at least some sense; rendering stress as high tone also makes sense; turning the first [s] into sh is less obvious, but I think that's where, so to speak, the rest of the r went – and Navajo has sibilant harmony: it doesn't put s and sh into the same word, so once the first s becomes sh, the second has to follow. Also, although sh is [ʃ], not [ɕ] or something, it is completely unrounded*, so it's slightly less distant from [s] than an English sh is.
* Seriously. The first few times I heard it (here; click on "left"), I found it difficult to articulate. And it's not just that one recording by any means; for example, check these two singers out (the second appears at 3:30). Good luck finding that exact sound anywhere in Europe.
David Marjanović said,
October 23, 2024 @ 3:42 pm
I forgot to close the first <a> tag, but the two links still work individually. Also, I forgot the nasal vowels, but they're not important in this case…
David Marjanović said,
October 23, 2024 @ 3:48 pm
…in the comment that is awaiting moderation because it contains two links.
Jenny Chu said,
October 23, 2024 @ 8:37 pm
@CuConnacht Well done on solving the mystery at last with incontrovertible scientific proof!
Also, Ani is the nickname of Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, and The Phantom Broadcast was a film starring Gail Patrick, and St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, proving that indigenous Americans are actually Celts. (But of course we already knew that because of the Welsh Patagonians.)
Rakau said,
October 24, 2024 @ 3:43 am
@CuConnacht. Ra is the ancient Egyptian word for the sun. Ra is also a New Zealand Maori word (and a polynesian word) for the sun proving that Maori and Polynesians came from Egypt or perhaps that Egyptians came from New Zealand.
Peter Taylor said,
October 24, 2024 @ 4:41 am
Given that the implication is "I've just come from voting" rather than "Over my lifetime I have cast at least one vote", the Spanish would be more idiomatic with the perfect tense He votado.
HS said,
October 24, 2024 @ 8:09 pm
Not really on-topic but amusing: when I first saw this post, the first thing I noticed – literally the very first thing – was the "z" on the sticker in the photo. My eye immediately zoomed right in on it, like an eagle spotting a rabbit from half a mile away. Apparently this is a very common phenomenon amongst New Zealanders. I wonder whether it is also common amongst Arizonans (or is that Arizonians)?
@Rakau – don't forget the Kaimanawa Wall …
Michael Carasik said,
October 25, 2024 @ 3:28 am
My wife spent a great deal of time on the O'odham reservation and a fair chunk of it trying to learn O'odham. Those who are interested in the language will find the "Jan Bruckner Papers" at the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia a useful resource. She studied with Ofelia Zepeda and knew the people who invented one of the systems for transcribing O'odham.
A commenter said,
October 27, 2024 @ 3:42 pm
– 'a:ñi is the long form of the first person subject pronoun ("I"), as mentioned above.
– 'ant is composed of the first person auxiliary 'an and the perfective marker -t
— Verbal aspect is not a topic for a comment section, so treat the perfective like a past tense.
– wodalt is defined in Saxton & Saxton 1969 as "voted", as mentioned above.
— the letter l (small letter L) actually marks the retroflex lateral approximant [ ɭ ], not [ɹ]
— Borrowing from Spanish is the likely source
— Madeleine Mathiot's Dictionary of Papago Usage (1974) does not list "wodalt" or "wodalta" ("election") listed by Saxton and Saxton, which is unfortunate but unremarkable.
As a side note, O'odham also tends to delete material at the end of verbs in the perfective aspect. This process not occurring on "wodalt" probably stems from its original status as a loan word. These sources are somewhat older, and I will be discussing these points with Ofelia at some point in the future to ask about current usage of the word.
KeithB said,
October 28, 2024 @ 8:07 am
Thanks David.
"Makes sense. Yá'át'éeh is the basic greeting in Navajo; "
Yeah, I just drove along 40 this weekend and saw it on Gallup's Fire Rock Casino next to "Welcome", and outside the Navajo owned gas station near the Twin Arrows Casino.