Re: interestin' gamelang?: Cuotl from 'Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends'

On Apr 23, 2007, at 7:15 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> On 19.4.2007 Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> > Haven't we seen it all before -- Stargate(*), namely. As for
>> > the lang it gives me the impression of a namelang by someone
>> > who can't be bothered to learn Mayan at least enough to
>> > concoct names in it, but then I guess that's what a Gog may
>> > say of Sindarin vis-à-vis Welsh...
>> >
>> > (* Jocularly pronounced /sto:rgo:t/ in Swedish! I actually
>> > pronounce the Lambda with a ring above as /L\_w=/ just to
>> > show off my language geekdom!)
>> Why /L\_w=/? I would think it should be pronounced /V_0/ :)
>
> The reference is to the Swedish letter Å which is /o:/ rather
> than to IPA.  Non-Scandinavian fans are wont to write STARGÅTE,
> which is also how the sign is used in the logo for the show.
Oh... well that much I got, but I still don't see where /L\_w=/ comes
from.

> To us it is of course silly, since the cognate of _gate_ is
> _gata_ 'street', which has /A:/, coming from a short /a/ in
> Common Scandinavian.  The associaton with Greek Lambda is of
> course my own, though it might occur to math geeks as well
> as to language geeks, methinks, though math people may not
> have any strong association of Greek letters with speech
> sounds at all.
>
> Sorry for late answer.  I'm nigrating to a new computer,
> which has made a mess of my backmail, among other things.
>
> --
>
> /BP 8^)
> --
>   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
> and so they are gone to milk the bull."
>                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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