Re: CHAT: On the term 'engelang'

Andreas Johansson writes:
 > Carlos Thompson wrote:
 > >And Rosta wrote:
 > >
 > > > The pronunciation of "engelang" is obvious once you know the
 > > > etymology -- as is often the case with English spelling. And <enge>
 > > > is the natural spelling, given the pronunciation; cf. henge, sprenge,
 > > > revenge.
 > >
 > >But this is kind of a "ghoty" thing, as those examples of "enge" for
 > >/EndZ/ are all word final.  I would have pronounce engelang as /EN@l{N/.
 > >Probably enge-lang would work better.
 > >
 > >But, of course, I am not a native English speaker.
 >
 > Well, neither is I, but medial _nge_ for /ndZ/ does occur in English;
 > "strangely" comes to mind, strangely enough!
 >
It does, but only (so far as I am aware) in cases where the morpheme
ending -nge also occurs alone.  "Enge" is not a word, although it
if it were an English word there would be no difficulty in knowing how
to pronounce it.

 > Still, I can't say I'm too thrilled by _engelang_ either. Let's unthrill all
 > the natives and spell it _enjlang_!
 >
 >                                                      Andreas

I'm leaning towards enlang, myself.  The j in enjlang obscures the
etymology, for me, and /ndZl/ isn't that easy a consonant
cluster. (Maybe it's just me who finds it so - it is in "strangely"
after all.)