Re: new Klingon spelling

dansulani wrote:

>On 5 Jan, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
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>>From:    Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
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>>>Quoting Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:
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>>>>In college, i remember seeing an anti-war protest where the protesters
>>>>were chanting slogans like "no war in EYE-RACK!".  It took a Lot of
>>>>self-control to not go over and say "yo, if you care so much about
>>>>[3IrA:q], at least TRY to say their name properly!"
>>>>
>>>>
><snip>
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>>In the case of Iraq, the quality of the two vowels had no original
>>basis in the pronunciation of the foreign tongue; they were simply
>>guessed at through the medium of writing. That is, the English
>>speakers' ignorance of Arabic lead them to arbitrarily assign
>>values based not on anything to do with their internal grammar of
>>English, but with the social conventions associated with English
>>orthography.  Thus, there is a real sense in which some toponyms
>>have natural deviations from their source, and others which are
>>*unnatural* deviations from their source.
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>    How then would  the people who pronounce | Iraq | with an initial [aj]
>pronounce  | Islam | ? I have never heard [ajsl&m], [ajslam], [ajzl&m],
>or any other version beginning with [aj]! Why would there be
>a difference between the two words? One should think that the
>English speakers would have the same ignorance of Arabic in each case.
>(Or maybe people do pronounce it that way and I have just never heard it?)
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Actually, according to the rules of English spelling, when you have a
vowel letter followed by a single consonant and then another vowel
letter, the first is lengthened.  Pronouncing Iraq as [ajr&k] is
perfectly sensible, within English.  However, when there are two
consonants in a row, the vowel remains short.  I think we should spell
Iraq 'Irrack', but I may be in the minority.  If we really wanted, for
some reason, to make people say [ajsl&m], It should be spelt Iselam.

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