Re: A dechticaetiative language

On Monday, August 9, 2004, at 11:17 , Paul Bennett wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 17:47:39 -0400, Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
> wrote:
>
>> Rrrm... how do you pronounce "dechticaetiative"?  I've been pronouncing
>> it something like [dExt1'kejS@41v], but seeing's as how in most
>> dialects of English /x/ is not a 'real' phoneme,
It's extremely marginal. it occurs in some Scots dialects; it's also used,
  rather oddly, in the 'Welsh English' place name 'Loughor' ['lVX@(r)],
which in real Welsh is 'Llwchwr' ['KuXUr]. Some Brits use it in 'loch' and
'Bach', but most say [lQk] and [bAk].

>> i'm wondering how
>> whoever slapped the term together or first borrowed it from another
>> language pronounced it.  Or, if i pronounce it my way, would i be
>> understood?
>
> Trask has /dektI'si:ti@tIv/. Bearing in mind Trask's dictionary tends
> towards the RP-ish, I suspect there is at least one /4/ in the GA version.
I think you mean [4]; many Brits will pronounce the 2nd & 3rd /t/ in the
above word as [?].

But I guess the proper American spelling will be 'dechticetiative'. While
Brits generally retain the Latin |ae| in words like 'archaeology' &
'encyclopaedia', Americans normally write just plain |e|.

As for its origin, both the spelling and the ending suggests it's either
from a Latinized Greek word or it's a Greaco-Latin hybrid. But I can't
track down the dechticaetia- part of it (though I guess the 'dech' part is
from ancient Greek 'dekh-esthai' = to receive). As far as I can tell, it
was coined by Edward Blansitt in 1984.

Can anyone enlighten us further?

Ray
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