Re: OT: Latin subject-verb agreement

On Dec 23, 2007 10:57 AM, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
wrote:

> >Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...> wrote:
> >AFAIK the /r/ in "Myanmar" and the first /r/ in "Burma" have always
> >been there (for people with rhotic accents, anyhoo);
>
Not so.  The spelling "Burma" began life as a non-rhotic phonetic
transcription of the native name - which is something like [bV:m@], AIUI,
but I've never heard Burmese.  Speakers of rhotic Englishes then interpreted
the name as [br\=m@] (modulo YAEPT considerations).
Again AIUI, same is true for Myanma, where the final <-r> is there to
lengthen the final <-a> so it gets interpreted as /a/ instead of /@/.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>