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Maybe someone can help me out with these 3 interrelated questions.
1. Is there a verb for what is done when a word is spelled out phonetically for the purpose of instruction in pronunciation, as following a dictionary entry? I am looking for a word that would take the place of the phrase here in brackets:
" If I were to (spell out phonetically, with diacritical marks and stress indicators to indicate pronunciation) that word, I would do so this way..."
2. How is the word "transliteration" used?
3.How would one (insert above bracketed phrase here) the stereo-typical New York accent as it presents itself in the phrase "Gorgeous as an orchid." It sounds something like this:
goo(r)chis as an oo(r)kid.
Thanks,
MM
One more: Any insight into why the spell-checker at this board is so odd? I mean, can anyone imagine ever misspelling MNEMONIC as MM?
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The only query upon which I may be able to shed some light is that regarding transliteration. I've always understood it to mean tspelling a word from one language, using the letters of another. Shalom, for example is a transliteration from the Hebrew alphabet into the Latin. I suspect that vodka is a transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet, as are names like Slobodan Milosevic, and Kosovo.
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In response to your first question, the verb I am familiar with is "transcribe".
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Pooh-Bah
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If you search (top left, next to Main Index, select all forums, all posts) on spellchecker or as it now known Enigma or even Aenigma, you will find some views on the device we have taken into our hearts.
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metameta,
I'd love to know a word for your first question, but I think you'll have to coin it.
As Max said, transliteration is indeed moving the phonetics from one alphabet (or idiogramography[??]) to another.... which is why we in the "West" for so long mispronounced (and still do) Chinese names and place-names, for example... the transliteraters were, shall we say, sloppy.
..and yes, please do a search on our inimitable spell-checker, Ænigma. An entity unto itself, without peer.
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the verb I am familiar with is "transcribe".
Spot on, ammelah!
According to Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: tran·scribe
Pronunciation: tran(t)-'skrIb
Function: transitive verb
.....
2 a : to represent (speech sounds) by means of phonetic symbols
Not the main meaning, but definitely good enough for me.
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Max Quordlepleen states
I suspect that vodka is a transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet
vodka is from the Russian word for water (voda) and is, I have read, shortened for Russian water of life– similar to aqua vita term used in Scandinavia. Both are a transliteration of Whiskey (uisge beatha–the Gaelic for water of life.)
Well that is a translation, since beatha has is its roots in the word for navel– and mean birth or beginning. And the Gaelic meaning is closer to constantly re-born. What in English would be a gerund– an continues state of being born.
It shows up again in the Erin go bragh (Ireland forever)
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In reply to:
vodka is from the Russian word for water (voda) and is, I have read, shortened for Russian water of life– similar to aqua vita term used in Scandinavia. Both are a transliteration of Whiskey (uisge beatha–the Gaelic for water of life.)
Thanks, of troy. I had long known of "uisge" and its parallel in Scandanavian, but I did not know that aquavit and vodka were both derived from "uisge" Those drunken Celts and Picts sure got around! 
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So "transcribe" it is, then. I am mildly surprised that this particular kind of transciption does not have a unique name, considering that the people I imagine use it most often are those people who are most immersed in words and the naming of things and actions. Or, perhaps, when the lexicographer says, "Transcribe this list of words for me, Miss Jones," his helper would never have to ask just what he meant. But of course she would. "Transcribe them how, Mr.Smith?" she might ask, and to which he would reply, "You know, transcribe them phonetically."
Hm. Seems like they would have made up a word for it by now.
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Hi,
I live in a country pretty close to Russia, I learned Russian for some time, and cannot imagine how vodka could inherit from "water of life" which, I believe, is (here goes, Polish is so close to Russian it would be a letter-to-letter transcription) "voda zhizny".
I would be very grateful (and I mean it) if you could just explain me how THIS came from "uisge beatha"?
Lukasz
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>vodka is from the Russian word for water (voda) and is, I have read, shortened for Russian water of life<
I studied Russian years ago at school, and I seem to remember that vodka (in form, at least) is a diminutive of the Russian for water, so would better translate as 'little water'
If you've ever drunk vodka with any Russians, little water is far more than they put in it!
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>why we in the "West" for so long mispronounced (and still do) Chinese names and place-names, for example... the transliteraters were, shall we say, sloppy.< Anna, I'm afraid I have to take issue with you here. It is not the transliterators who were sloppy, it is the transliterees. (Ooh, I knew I wouldn't get away with that one!  ) Or maybe the English alphabet, which is sloppy enough that it uses a mere 26 letters for far more than that number of sounds. Let's take "Deng Xiaoping" as an example. In Pinyin, which is the transliteration system used by mainland China, he transliterates as Deng Xiao-ping. In Wade-Giles, which is an older transliteration system used by Taiwan, he transliterates as Teng Hsiao-p'ing. A student who knows either transliteration system will have a clear and precise idea how to pronounce the man's name correctly. Each is equally good in this case. An English speaker who does not know the transliteration systems will come closer to a correct Mandarin pronunciation of his name if it is transliterated using Pinyin. It can be argued that Pinyin is a more useful transliteration system in this case. (Neither Pinyin nor Wade-Giles as shown above show the tones of the syllables, which are integral to their meaning. Both have fuller versions, barely used in English targeted at non-Sinologists, which do indicate the tones. This is a different issue.) So far, it sounds as if Pinyin is an improvement on Wade-Giles. And it probably is, for Mandarin to English. But Mandarin to English is not the same as Chinese to English. Chinese includes all sorts of other dialects/languages, including Cantonese, Fukkienese, Taiwanese etc. Some of these dialects (and I am reaching the edges of my knowledge, so don't quote me, but I am pretty sure Fukkienese is one of them!) distinguish three consonant sounds where English only distinguishes two. The Wade-Giles transliteration preserves these three distinctions. The Pinyin (being a construct of the Party who also wanted everyone to speak Mandarin rather than their local language) makes no allowance for three consonants. Example: Wade-Giles b - soft, unbreathed (try saying b without letting any breath out of your mouth - that's the nearest I can get to an English equivalent!) Wade-Giles p - soft, breathed (equivalent to English b, Pinyin b) Wade-Giles p' - hard, breathed (equivalent to English p and English p) Similarly, there are three sounds in the g-k continuum and three sounds in the d-t continuum. Now, if you're a student trying to learn Fukkienese (or Cantonese, or Taiwanese, or any other language that has three consonant sounds in the series instead of the two that English has) which transliteration system is better? Remember, the systems were designed for students of the Chinese language(s) in the first place! My main point is, I think it's a bit unfair to say the early transliterators were sloppy when in fact they were trying to devise an English-letter system that could represent more distinct sounds than the English language recognises! PS, If you find the concept of the three different consonants b,p,p' difficult, don't worry. It took me about four years to get my head round it and I was meant to be studying the stuff!
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Both are a transliteration of Whiskey (uisge beatha–the Gaelic for water of life.)Hmmm. I think, like Lucasz, I'd need convincing on this one, Helen. It's a romantic notion that whiskey was the original stuff of life - well, still is , though I'll take the Scotch variety, thanks - yet surely the chilly Northern Europeans would have independently developed their own tipple at around the same time? Giving it a name that's derived from a word for "water" (with a bit of "fire" or "life" thrown in) is natural enough. Or am I unaware of an established pattern of European migrations in the dim and distant past? Vodka and whiskey are definitely pretty distinct drinks these days. Vodka is actually far closer to pot(ch)een the potato-based spirit than to whiskey. Which, incidentally, is highly recommended if you really want to blow your head off, and can get the real thing. 
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Vodka is actually far closer to pot(ch)een the potato-based spirit than to whiskey. Which, incidentally, is highly recommended if you really want to blow your head off, and can get the real thing.
If you're ever spending a night over in the Midlands, there is a little family-run hotel some miles outside Hinckley where the food is spectacular and the landlord, if he trusts you, will bring some poteen out from behind the bar. It is, being unlicensed, and vastly stronger than the standard spirituous liquor (which is abnout 40% v/v?), illegal, which is why he needs to trust you first - and why I'm not revealing his name here. Mail me if you want a recommendation. I can vouch for the excellence of the poteen.
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>Both (vodka and aquavit) are a transliteration of Whiskey (uisge beatha–the Gaelic for water of life.)
Of Troy:
This is not what I remember, and I learned this at the feet of a master. Aqua vita (whence akvavit and aquavit) is Latin for water of life. Both aqua and vita would have been in use long before Julius's almost fatal exposure to the Gaels, when, I assume, the Romans would have first encountered fortified liquors. I can't speak to vodka except to note that voda and water aren't that far apart to a casual observer, though a trained linguist might disagree vehemently.
Along these lines, I'd like to see more about transliteration. My dictionary defines transliterate "To represent (letters or words) in the corresponding characters of another language."
How does this differ from borrow or loaner words? Or does it? Take, for instance, the word apparatchik, a member of an underground (usually Communist) political organization. While not a word in common use, there's no doubt where it came from. And its spelling is a transliteration of the Russian word, based on how it is spelled Cyrillically (like that one?? (GRIN)).
BUT! What if we had taken this word from the Russians before St. Cyril created his alphabet for the Slavic languages? Since there was only a spoken word and presumably not a written word, how could it be a transliteration (which requires two alphabets)? And one would have to assume that there are such words, though perhaps not very many.
Other words closer to home in the US: tepee or tipi, from a Dakota word tipi. Certainly there was no Dakota alphabet to use for transliteration. The people who first ran into the Dakota may well not have tried to write down the word for months or years. In fact, judging from where the Dakota lived, it wouldn't surprise me very much to learn that this particular word came to us through French-speaking traders who were among the first Caucasians to tread there.
Ted
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ted, the initial citation for transliterate in the OED captures the dilemma quite well:
1861 Max Müller in Sat. Rev. Not only proper names, but the technical terms also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be effected with a language which, like Chinese, has no phonetic alphabet?
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Welcome to you, Lukaszd. I see in your bio that you are about to be "beatha" (born) into the 'real world' when your
life as a student ends. Good luck, Dear!
Now--here is my very imaginative genealogy:
I began by imagining how uisge might be pronounced,
and came up with, roughly, oos-ga. From there, I got to
juice->liquid->water->vada->vodka. (?)
Beatha looks like breathe, which is what you do when you are born, and live. Beatha->vita?
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yes, shona, you're right, it is closer to translation or even a meme-- the idea that grain could be fermented and distilled and the liquid extracted was "the water of life".
as for the migrations, well, by the time roman culture was reaching ireland, it was falling apart in rome.. and the culture that did get saved and transmitted to ireland was changed by irish.. and as for the irish and the scandinavians-- well the norsemen didn't just visit england.. they were well known in ireland too.
a few years ago i saw a scandinavian film (originally produced for scandinavain TV) "Under the Glacier" one of the characters was married to a an irish woman who was a silky.
all the stateside reviews went to lengths to explain what was going on, but apparently it was clear enough to the original audience. They might not believe in silkies, but knew about them. Bel doesn't celebrate the 4th of july, but is likely to be familiar with the holiday. cultures cross bounderies.
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Thanks for the welcome, Jackie. To finish the glass of vodka here's a bit of lecture: Both Gaelic and Russian languages came from the same root - the Indo-European. Gaelic was one of the first Romance dialects whereas Russian is much younger and derives from a common Slavonic dialect, now extinct (just like Gaelic...). I would say that 'water' is one of the most basic concepts and therefore the need to name it had appeared long before the Indo-Europeans parted their talk. I suppose we could find the common origin of words for water from all the European languages save Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque (even French eau would qualify, though I cannot really believe it ). Russian vodka is indeed a diminutive from voda - water - and is made from potatoes and/or rye. I prefer flavoured brands myself  and I can recommend you all the famous 'Zubrowka' (exported as Polish Bison Vodka), best consumed with apple juice (mixed 1:3 - and that's 1 of vodka!).
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What! take good whiskey and dilute it? Apple juice? the correct way to drink whiskey is neat--if on the rocks, quickly, let the ice chill it, but not melt and dilute it. (why haven't we moved to freezing all alcohol? I mean, i store my vodka in the freezer, but not Jack Daniels-- well maybe i should...)
If you have to have a mixed drink, you mix your alcohol with other alcohols-- make a martini (a drop of vermouth) or a manhattan (vermouth again) or a black russian--vodka and kualua... now there is a drink, strong alcohol mixed with strong alcohol! none of the mincing pansy stuff of vermouth.
I never could understand why you'd mix any whiskey worth drinking with fruit juice! The only reason the english did it was to get the sailors to drink the lime juice.. they knew it would be drunk if mixed with a bit of rum.
and as for drinking water-- din ye never see the insides of pipes?
(actually i love the local water--- NYC water is great)
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I do agree that mixing clear (I mean not flavoured) vodka with juice is both a waste of the alcohol and the juice. I could never get used to the idea of mixing different spirit-based beverages in one drink, though. And (having read this you'll probably think of me as of a fur-wrapped barbarian) - I can't stand whiskey!
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Oy vey, this board is just hopeless sometimes. But, if I DO find the word I am looking for, I will post it here to illustrate what you guys have missed while you were gazing (a bit too lovingly?) into your bottles.
In Good Cheer,
MM
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In reply to:
My dictionary defines transliterate "To represent (letters or words) in the corresponding characters of another language."
How does this differ from borrow or loaner words?
I suppose the difference is that transliteration is the transfer from one writing system to another where the primary motivation is probably to enable someone who is unable to read the original script to have a fair go at pronouncing the word. Whether those using the target writing system will then adopt the word into their language (i.e., borrow it) is another issue. Petros would be a transliteration of the Greek word for stone, which we have borrowed for the combining form petro- and the name Peter.
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In reply to:
Oy vey, this board is just hopeless sometimes. But, if I DO find the word I am looking for...
well meta², if you DO find the word you're looking for we'll have to try our utmost to spread it around, as the phrase "transcribe phonetically" abounds on the internet.
-joe (I did like the claim "I'm transcribing *morpho-phonemically*") friday
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I prefer flavoured brands myself and I can recommend you all the famous 'Zubrowka' Lucasz, you neglect to mention the absolutely splendid Wisniowka (cherry vodka), and also Sliwowicza (sp?) (plum brandy). The former is drunk cold, neat and far too quickly. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially as a winter drink. The latter is on a par with poteen again. Demonic stuff, but you start tasting the plums after about the third glass. Sto lat! 
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memes...cultures cross boundariesIndeed they do, Helen. Even well before the Web. The Evolution of Drink is a fascinating subject. maybe we should have started another thread, though! Oops. 
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Thanks, tsuwm, and please, all, forgive the testiness of my last post. I am a struggling college student programmed to tenaciously seek "answers", and sometimes decorum and protocol get swept away. It's a hazard of living in textbooks with no social life. I'll probably be a crusty old buzzard long before my time.
MM
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please, all, forgive the testiness of my last postIt was a well-made point, matemate, and no offence was taken. Some day we'll keep threads strictly on track and we'll just answer the question. And we definitely won't be lured into interesting little sub-threads. Definitely not in Q&A. Never! Perhaps tomorrow..
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metameta, looks to me like your question was answered swiftly, by ammelah. In a "duh" moment, I was trying to come up with something more specific, but "transcribe" is what you do when you write something phonetically.
Oh, and Bridget, thank you for that! I've never studied any languages ouside the Indo-European family. I'm still wondering, though, how Feng Shui for example is transliterated as such when I'm given to understand it's pronounced more like "Fung Shway."
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>I'm still wondering, though, how Feng Shui for example is transliterated as such when I'm given to understand it's pronounced more like "Fung Shway."< Anna, you're right about the pronunciation, and put like that, I have no idea! Just the way they set up the rules in first place, I guess. Hung, tongue... Why not feng? English spelling and pronunciation are far from a one-to-one match. The blessing of both the common transcriptions (transliterations? I don't know any more!) from Chinese is that once you know how to pronounce a combination of letters, you know how to pronounce it. It's consistent. English speakers, on the other hand, live with such terrors as the [though, through, thought, bough, cough, enough] group of words, then complain that languages such as Chinese are too hard because 'you can't tell how to pronounce them.' 
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There are two common water words in IE: 'water' cognate with Russian (etc) 'voda', Greek 'hudor', Latin 'unda' (wave), and Hittite 'watar-'. In fact the Finnish is very close and is a good bit of evidence that Finno-Ugrian may be closely related to Indo-European.
The other word is Latin 'aqua' (French 'eau'), related to Norse 'a' (modern Scandinavian 'aa') for river, and the element -ay in some English place-names. The Hittite for 'drink' is 'akwa-'. It as has been postulated by some as an extremely ancient word for water found all around the world.
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When I studied Hebrew our teacher (a very old and precise man) told us to transcribe something and was flabbergasted when he found we had all transliterated it. To him the difference must have seemed obvious.
Transliterate = render letter by letter, so that you can tell what the spelling in the original script was.
Transcribe = render the actual pronunciation of.
An example might be Japanese zyuuzitu (t/lit), jujitsu (t/scr).
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The (Beijing) Chinese vowel in 'feng' only occurs before -ng. It's nothing like the -u of 'wu', but resembles the sound of old-fashioned RP -u- in 'hung'. This is not how 'hung' is pronounced in modern English. So there is no obvious way of transcribing it. Chinese clear -e doesn't occur by itself (i.e. without a following consonant) so it's going spare and can be used for several of the obscure vowels. For example, it's also used for a sound that only occurs before -n, and which is like nothing in English. Wade-Giles used it in several such ways and Pinyin uses it similarly but not exactly the same.
'shui' could be written 'shuei' (i.e. "shway"), but because the actual -ui sound never occurs they seem to have used it for -uei, saving themselves one letter.
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Regarding transliteration of Chinese:
Strictly speaking, one can't transliterate Chinese since it doesn't use an alphabet. The normal symbols are ideographs; they represent a concept and not a sound. They do have a system called bopomo which is a syllabary, not unlike the hiragana and katakana* of Japanese, but used only in dictionaries and for educating the children. The official transcription system has varied over the years which is why we have the variant spellings Peking and Beijing representing the same sounds.
*Also known (to Ænigma) as Hiram and Kate.
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it doesn't use an alphabet. The normal symbols are ideographs; they represent a concept and not a sound.
I've always wondered about this. How can you know how to say a word written in Chinese if there is only thought process associated with the word? In most languages, you can look at a word that you've never seen before and be able to pronounce it for the most part, but can this be done in Chinese?
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Not quite the answer to the question, I know, but I gather that in Chinese dictionaries characters are grouped by the number of strokes used to make the character and then by complexity within each number of strokes.
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In most languages, you can look at a word that you've never seen before and be able to pronounce it for the most part, but can this be done in Chinese?
No, is the short answer. You have to memorize them all.
There is some phonetic component, more applicable to the ancient form of the language when the script was being created, but still partly applicable today.
Chinese characters are often combinations of a meaning part and a pronunciation part. A loose analogy is this. There is a basic meaning part, say a picture of water, that occurs in the characters for river, sea, drink, and so on. Then (if we were doing this in English) you could represent the word 'sea' by a complex character water + eye. That is, 'sea' is the water word that sounds like an eye word, 'see'.
Whether it's actually possible to guess at modern Chinese characters from a knowledge of the phonetic components, I don't know.
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NicholasW correctly states: No, is the short answer. You have to memorize them all.
The bopomo I mentioned above is the workaround. This syllabary is used in dictionaries. there is one more complicating factor and that is the matter of tones. Mandarin and Cantonese, the two major varieties of what we foreign devils loosely call Chinese, have four different tones that apply to any given syllable. I got the following off some web site at some time in the distant past:
Tones are usually described in terms of their beginning and ending points on a 5 point scale. Point 5 is the highest and 1 is the lowest.
Tone 1 in Mandarin is 55, since its beginning and ending points are the same - both at the highest end of the scale.
Tone 2 is a high rising tone. It begins at the middle of the scale (3) and rises to the highest point. We represent this as 35.
Tone 3 begins in the low mid range (2), drops to the lowest point (1) and then rises to level 4. We therefore use 214 to represent it.
Tone 4 begins at the highest point (5) and drops sharply to the lowest point (1). We therefore use 51 to represent it.
Sometimes you will see these tone numbers used in transcriptions of Chinese words, but more often you won't. I'm not sure how bopomo handles tones.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
There's a good explanation at http://wellgot.ca/phonetic/preface-e.htm. ('Bopomo' doesn't throw up many useful sites. Here they just call it phonetic Chinese.) The tones are indicated by the roman diacritics after the two-part Chinese phonetic character.
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444
addict
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addict
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444 |
A chance to wax lyrical and bore you all about Chinese and I missed it by going off camping in the sunshine for two weeks. Damn! Better late than never. I only learned Mandarin, but my understanding is that Cantonese has more than four tones - about six or seven. It is frequently possible to guess at the pronunciation of a Chinese character you have never seen before, especially when you see it in context - a sentence or such like. This is because you can tell which part of the character is the 'meaning' indicator and which is the 'sound' indicator. However, since pronunciation has changed over the centuries, the 'sound' indicator is only a rough guide to the modern pronunciation. So the character 'bai, 3rd tone, meaning white' is used as a sound indicator for words pronounced as bai, pai, pa and bo, all in various tones, in modern Chinese. It's always worth a go - someone might understand you! (Side note, the Japanese have both adopted Chinese characters to represent Japanese origin words and adopted Chinese words along with their character. So a single Chinese character usually has two totally different pronunciations in Japanese, one related to the Chinese and one 'native' Japanese. For example the season spring is 'chun' in Mandarin Chinese and the same character is pronounced either 'shun' or 'haru' in Japanese. Depending on the word / compound it's in. This characteristic of Japanese is to me far far worse than any pronunciation problems with Chinese - Japanese has two pronunciations you can't be sure of from the look of the character instead of one....) As for finding words in a Chinese dictionary, Bingley is half-right. NicholasW has a clue too. The 'meaning part' is called a 'radical' and there are 216 of them, with a set order. Each has a number and a name. For example, number 86 (I think!) is a set of four dots, sometimes reduced to three in a set form, that is called the water radical. (A reasonable number of the radicals have two forms, depending on how much space the total character allows them to take up - just another thing you have to get used to. Different people write 'a' differently in English and we live with multiple forms.) The dictionary starts with Radical 1 as a standalone character. It continues to characters formed of Radical ONe plus one extra stroke, then characters formed of Radical One plus two strokes etc. When all the characters having Radical One have been listed, it moves on to Radical Two and so on and so on. Much like the alphabet really, except that you have to learn 216 radicals instead of 26 letters - and that it is not always obvious what the radical of a particular character is... Dictionaries for foreigners are often arranged in some kind of phonetic order (bopomofo or Wade-Giles / Pinyin arranged according to the English alphabet) with an index of characters sorted by radical etc. This is because foreigners need to be able to look up a word by the way it sounds (if heard in speech) and by the character (if come across in writing). Kind dictionaries also have an index of 'Characters with obscure radicals' for when you have tried every element of the character you think could possibly be a radical and still got nowhere. BTW bopomofo / bopomo is only used in Taiwan. Also the PRC has simplified many characters and character elements to make them 'easier' to learn. They used common handwriting abbreviations - a bit like using the + sign instead of &, but even more so. Taiwanese and other overseas Chinese still use the full traditional characters in print. They tend to be able to understand simplified characters, as these are based on handwriting, but mainlanders, who have never seen the traditional characters, have real problems with them. At college we had to learn both, which was a real pain in the butt until we went to Taiwan and China and had to use both. I guess this is like knowing 'sweets' and 'lollies' as well as candy so that you can function in all (most? have I missed anyone out?) English-speaking countries. ...it's all a lot less random than it looks when you start out. And it really does get easier after a critical mass - 1-2000 characters and you know enough to start internalising the patterns. PS NickW you're right about pinyin being non-phonetic on a letter-by-letter basis. I guess I never thought about it because I looked at it in the bopomofo way as an 'initial consonant' and a 'following vowel' (with or without nasal ending. From this cluster-by-cluster' point of view, it is phonetic. I think.
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
Transcribe = render the actual pronunciation of.
Yet in Paleography, when one is asked to "transcribe" a document the expectation is that you will render, in modern orthgraphy, the exact way that the document is written, with all abbrev.s, misppelins, contract'ns and peculiarities.
I am almost certain that the next step - rendering it into understandable English - is known as "transliteration."
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
If you're rendering a manuscript into modern orthography, how can you preserve all its peculiarities? How do you draw the line between a mis-spelling and a correct one in times when spelling was more -- creative, shall we say?
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
The only peculiarities that you may iron out are those of actual letter formation. My apologies for using entirely the wrong word - it ain't orthography and I can't for the life of me think what the right one is (product of advancing years and receding levels in the glass of worthington) - what I mean is the shape of the letters, which has changed quite dramatically over the past 250 years. Indeed at least one letter has disappeared completely - thorn - which looked like a "Y" and stood for the "th" sound. This is, of course the origin of "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe", which really and truly should be pronounced "THe Olde - - ." But that would take away some of the fun for tourists, and it is an easily recognised icon for something that relies on our "heritage" (ugh!!!  ) for its marketing strategy. So lets keep the "wiy" sound for their sakes. I might even get some research funding out of it!
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 819 |
Wrote Max Q:
Thanks, of troy. I had long known of "uisge" and its parallel in Scandanavian, but I did not know that aquavit and vodka were
both derived from "uisge" Those drunken Celts and Picts sure got around!
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Not too surprising when one considers that the Russ (from which Russia) were a Nordic tribe which plied the Varangean "highway" of ancient times. They Pict fertile ground for becomming the Celt of the earth, they did.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
> They Pict fertile ground for becomming the Celt of the earth, they did. Gaels of ter
TEd
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