USAGE: Cool Idioms (was; Bibliography)

On Sat, 27 Mar 1999 19:59:04 -0600 Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
writes:
>Danny Wier wrote:
>Which reminds me, does anyone have city names or other proper
>names that they spell unphonetically, because of some conhistorical
>or concultural tradition? I know there are quite a few British cities
>whose names would stump most any American (Leicester, e.g., IIRC,
>is /lEst@/)...
>
>=======================================================
>Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
Well, the Rokbeigalm are infamous for being lazy in the pronounciation of
names while in general caring that the rest of the language comes out of
their mouth correctly (probably due to the large number of individual
sounds).  Because of this, names and other words evolve differently.

For instance, for some inexplicable reason the phoneme _hh_ [H] dropped
out of the Rokbeigalmki language, but remains in exclamations and names.
The disappearing _hh_ left a new feature, tilde-lengthened vowels that
remained when the same vowel appeared on both sides of the [H].
_gurahhat_ ("awe") /guraHat/ >>> _gura~t_ /gura::t/.

The name of the Rokbeigalm's Homeland at the present-time of ElendorMush,
when Stiigiyus lives, means "island of peace".
The official (archaic-style) name is _itahhal^osednun_.
/itaHal'osEdnun/.
_itahhal_ = "island"
_^o_ = construct-case binder
_sednu_ = "peace"
_-n_ = singular suffix; "sednun" means "an instance of peace" as opposed
to the concept of "peace" itself.

Because of grammar and pronounciation shifts, it should have changed to
_^ita~l^sednu_. /i'ta::l sEd'nu:/.
_ita~l_ - the _hh_ dropped out, leaving a tilde-lengthened /a/.
_^_ - the "smitchik" (circumflex) which had previously been on the _o_ of
the construct-case binder is now placed over the first letter of each
word, since the _o_ binder disappeared.  A noticeable stress appeared on
the last syllable of each word instead of the accented _o_.
_sednu_ - the _sednu_ ~ _sednun_ distinction changed once the use of _-n_
fell away.  Now, _sednu_ is the "tangible" form, and the "concept" form
is _sednu-tzat_ /'sEdnu(ts)at/.  _tzat_ by itself means "existence".

However, those loveable Rokbeigalm still weren't satisfied.
Itahhalosednun is commonly known "today" as _tolosed_, /'tolosEd/, which
actually isn't Rokbeigalmki at all, but Elvish:

_tolo_ = "island"....strikingly similar to _ita~l_, and shorter to
say....so why not switch? :)
_sed_ = "rest".....pretty much the same thing as "peace", and one less
syllable....so what's the difference? :)

Although in an ironic twist, it happens to be the Elvish minority among
the Rokbeigalm who continue to use the original name, because they live
forever, so they remember how it was "back in the good old days".


-Stephen (Steg)
 "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom"


PS-  in the course of writing this letter, i was just getting on after
typing the phrase "...for all intensive purposes..." when my brother
informed me that the actual phrase is "for all intents and purposes".
Weird....

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