Re: Introducing Paul Burgess and his radioactive imagination!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Gaughan" <kmgaughan@...>

> Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
>
> > Etabnannery [correct my spelling--and forgive me
> > for forgetting the name of its inventor!] is another term for a writing
> > system [usually in the roman alphabet] whose characters are fiendishly
> > un-phonetic or multi-purpose--to wit: modern Irish--or
>
> Ah, no! ModI orthography is maggelic, but hardly etabnanneric. There's a
> rather predictable system in there, it's just to the untrained eye it
> doesn't seem that way... :-)
It could be that I don't quite understand the Etabnanneric.  You seem to be
saying that Etabnannery is an unpredictable system of spelling, rather than
(what I had thought) one in which a limited set of characters serves double
and triple duty to represent the sounds of its language and whose laws are
complicated and have to be learned.  What I find difficult about Old Irish,
as opposed to Middle Welsh, which by comparison is blessedly phonetic and
regular, is that its initial and medial mutations are not represented (as
they are in Welsh--"m" is M whether it's /m/ or /v/), and you have to
remember a fairly detailed set of rules to be able pronounce anything.  This
spelling system is only partially helped by the modern Irish use of front
and back vowels to indicate broad and slender consonants (a fiendish system
of pronunciation already!), and the use of "h" to indicate lenition--these
seem to be bandages put on an already muddled spelling system.  I was
perhaps mistaken in calling that Etabnanneric, but you can see why it is
difficult, perhaps even senseless, to the outsider.  French, however, is
much less difficult, it seems.  Its laws of pronunciation are fairly
regular, in my opinion.  You just have to memorize which endings are silent.
Once that is mastered, there is the occasional violation of rule but these
are nothing compared to the exceptions and violations of English.  I would
be curious to know how a native speaker of Spanish, say, would rate the
difficulty of Old Irish and modern English.  Which would be more difficult
to learn?

> English and French on the other hand are definitely etabnanneric. Oh,
yeah!

Who is it invented Etabnannery?  And how is it pronounced? :)

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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