Re: polysynthetic languages

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Joe wrote:

> From: "Tristan McLeay" <zsau@...>
> > English, French, Swedish etc. never cease to amaze me with how evil their
> > orthographies can be. It'd be a sick and twisted person that designed an
> > orthography that bad. But then, we're the best kind, aren't we? :)
>
> I just had a thought - inverse-maggelity - It is quite possible to predict
> the pronunciation from the spelling, but not the reverse.  I suppose this
> would be a subcategory of Etabnannery.  French and Irish are examples of an
> inverse-maggelic orthography.
Actually, that's what etabnannery is all about. My definition is
self-deprecatory, but a more generic one which you'd find in a real
dictionary would probably build on your inverse-maggelity.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy