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Re: new Klingon spelling

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Saturday, January 3, 2004, 10:49
On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>: > > > On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 09:41:58PM -0500, Doug Dee wrote: > > > The idea of using capitals to draw attention to unexpected sounds might be > > > reasonable enough, but the implementation seems utterly random. > > > > Not at all. Let's review. > > > > a /A/ standard Romance value > > Is it? I don't speak any Romance language, but have heard most of them by > know, and the /a/'s usually sounds more like [a] than [A]. Indeed, I've met > hispanophones unable to tell [A:] from [o:].
I think what was meant was American interpretation thereof. (Incidentally, there are occasions when an /A/ is borrowed from American English into Australian English as /O/, even when this doesn't make sense (e.g. Las Vegas, probably influenced by Los Angeles).)
> > q /q/ This one is odd. Should probably be capitalized; > > perhaps Okrand was hoping its appearance without > > usually having a following 'u' would be enough to > > cause English speakers to stop and question, while > > leaving <Q> available for the affricate? > > Many Westerners seem to automatically supply an 'u' after all 'q's.
Not to mention that regardless of how it's spelt, a /w/ is sometimes added (e.g. Qantas /kwOnt@s/, an Australian airline and originally an acronym for Queensland And Northern Teritory Airline Service; the a-as-/O/ (c.f. quarantine /kwOr@n-/, what /wOt/) is more evidence of a blind w).
> I've seen > **Al-Quaeda with vomit-inducing frequency the last few years, and the Chinese
IME, if they put a <u> in, they're going to get something else wrong too, and make something like **Al Quida.
> dynasty-names 'Qin' and 'Qing' are regularly barabarized as **Quin and **Quing > (the Swedish translation of Jan Wong's "Red China Blues" has 'q' and 'qu' in > totally free variation; you even find 'Qinghai' and 'Quinghai' on the same > page!). I could go on. > > Andreas >
-- Tristan

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>