Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

On Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 05:57:27PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:
[snip]
> > 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.
[snip]

Hmm. *Could* it, by any chance, be a borrowing from Chinese pronunciation?
"Lee" is a common chinese surname... if the Korean /i/ actually comes from
"Lee" then it's not surprising that it's transliterated as "Lee" in
English instead of the Korean pronunciation /i/.


T