Re: new Klingon spelling

From:    dansulani <dansulani@...>
> On 5 Jan, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> > 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.
>
> 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?)
That's because in modern English, syllables with codas *and* diphthongs
are extramarked, and tend to shift to [I].  There's also the effect of the
stress:  it's on the second, not the first, syllable (unlike, e.g.,
['ajr.l@nd]), and [aj] in unstressed syllables also tends to shift to
schwa or [I].  So, in other words, even if they were tempted by our
arbitrary orthographic conventions to pronounce <Islam> as [ajs.lAm]
or some such thing, their internal grammar would work against that
pronunciation.  If ever the stress were shifted forward, the <i> would
be able to host [aj] in principle.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637