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Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 11, 2000, 21:57
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote: > > Lucky Utakassí speaker. Though could í by itself work? (My "real" > > family name is pronounced /i/, but the stupid English transliteration > > gets said as /li/--not that it matters.) > > Interesting. Yes, Í by itself would be acceptable. > > So, how'd /i/ get turned into /li/, do you know?
Simple. "Ee" or "I" looks Very Strange as a surname in American English (I bet British and Australian and Indian and other Englishes, too), so Koreans often transliterate /i/ as Rhee, Lee, Li, Yi, Yee or other variations when they're filling out silly things like immigration forms or birth certificate whatevers. Then they accept most Americans' resulting and understandable attempts to render the names as written in English, and go on saying /i/ to each other.
> > In "Alas, Lirette" (F&SF Jan. 2001, forthcoming) > > That's your story? I'll have to look for that magazine then.
It's occasionally findable on newsstands in Ithaca, but I don't know about the rest of the world in general. :-/ YHL