Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 09:33, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
> The Greek-alphabet analog of this
> spelling convention would as far as i can tell be
> σχ,
Yes, I expect so.

> even if the Old and Middle Rhaetian spelling
> were σκ, just as OHG/MHG wrote _sc/sk_ but NHG
> writes _sch_.
Hm.

> Also, how would you spell loanwords with /sk/? I
> reckon there would be tons of such from
> Classical/Koiné Greek.
Quite possibly, yes.

I haven't thought about pronunciations of borrowings from older
versions of Greek in detail, but my feeling is that what would happen
is that the words would be borrowed by spelling and then pronounced
according to modern rules.

After all, that's more or less what, say, English or German or French
does with borrowings; for example, Greek alpha-iota turns into ae or e
in English (paedagogical/pedagogical) and ä in German (pädagogisch)
and pronounced accordingly; Latin c and even Greek kappa (when
borrowed through Latin c or re-spelled as if borrowed through Latin)
will be pronounced /s/ if appropriate in the target language; etc.

And it's what Modern Greek does, too -- for example, pronouncing
alpha-upsilon as /av/ ([av] ~ [af] depending on context) rather than
/au/ or the like.

So I would expect, say, σκηνή to become /'Se:n@/ or something like
that -- also shifting the accent to the front and neutralising the
final vowel to schwa.

I'm not sure yet whether the spelling would be modified to Σκηνε or
whether it would stay Σκηνη, though.

I can imagine the spelling of the endings changing, though, to fit
into the modern inflectional paradigms. (Much as Modern Greek does,
for example, with -ον --> -ο in neuter nouns.) But the root will
probably stay spelled as in the original, simply pronounced
differently.

On the other hand, borrowings from living languages which have /sk/,
I'm not sure what to do. My hunch is to spell them σκ as well and
pronounce them /Sk/.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>