Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

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