Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

At 08:33 AM 11/10/03 +0100, you wrote:
>Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>
> > At 17:16 6.11.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > >** Should I better use the English article, or the Meghean one? Ie, "Elves
> > of
> > >the Camant", or "Elves of Chamant"?
> >
> > Elves of the Chamant, obviously ;)
> >
> > Actually, would you use the Swedish definite ending in an
> > English/French/German/Meghean/...  context?
>
>That's one of those eternal questions. It's particularly annoying with names
>that are always definite -  do I in English say "Systembolaget", "the
>Systembolag" or even "the Systembolaget"? I've heard all three, and they all
>sound wrong.
"The Systembolaget" definately sounds wrong to me (as a native English
speaker who also speaks Danish), because I can hear both of the definite
articles loud and clear and don't like the redundancy.  It doesn't seem
right to duplicate the definate marking.  My vote, if you are speaking in
English is for "the Systembolag," bacause the vast majority of English
speakers are not going to recognize "Systembolaget" as having a definite
article attatched to it.  (Though I'll conceed that "Systembolaget" sounds
*much* more natural than "the Systembolag," if only because I happen to
know how a Scandinavian word ought to be made definate.)  BTW, what is
"Systembolaget"?

>"Elves of the Chamant" feels about as sensible as "muslims of the
>Al-Andalus" -
>  I do hope no-one would say that!
IMHO, the former is about as sensible as the latter, since they both
duplicate a definate article.

Isidora

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