#orthographic transliteration

[whetstonefires]

i like how it's a reasonably common name but the way he said it they figured out which wong they were dealing with

Doctor Strange #4 - “U.X.O.” (2023)

written by Jed MacKay art by Andy MacDonald & Kj Diaz

[anghraine]

Speaking of femslash Spirk genderbending name considerations:

I was really torn between how Spock is such a masculine-coded name by Vulcan norms that it feels weird to do nothing at all with it. But also, it's so extremely iconic as THE name for THE character that an equally feminine-coded name like T'Pel or whatever would be super jarring (and distancing from the original character, I think—the potential in-world rationales for a character's name are one consideration when I think about this stuff, but only one).

Also, Spock's name predates the development of Vulcan as a language, and iirc, it's also slightly odd as a Vulcan name these days (if I understand correctly, inconsistent orthographical representations and erratically silent letters are not at all usual). This does not even slightly bother me in terms of canon, but I thought a transliteration that looks more like "modern Vulcan" might preserve the basic sounds of the name while shifting pronunciation and appearance just enough to seem less specifically masculine.

Still, I was really tempted to try and make T'[whatever] work somehow with this. I feel like Sarek is the kind of person who might well insist upon his daughter having the prestige of the t'sai in her name, even if Amanda thought otherwise. But I couldn't figure it out aesthetically, so instead I settled on S'paak. (I'm not 100% decided, but it's the smoothest result thus far of my attempts to compromise between norms of Vulcan names and their components as more fully developed later, and the ultra-recognizable consonants of the original name.)

I'm also deciding how other crew members even address her, because "Miss S'paak" feels like a really weird and inappropriate way to refer to someone of her position and responsibilities, and yet this could at least be partly said of the canonical "Mr" as well. Maybe it's just this era of Starfleet being relatively slack about this kind of thing, at least below the commanding officer's rank? IDK, it's not my impression, at least wrt women.

Hmm, I checked and Uhura is occasionally addressed as "Miss Uhura" but far more often as "Lieutenant Uhura" or just "Uhura." Mira Romaine in "The Lights of Zetar" (which I watched not long ago) seemed to also be addressed by name as "Lieutenant Romaine" rather than "Miss Romaine." OTOH Scotty is "Mr Scott" quite often rather than addressed by rank, same for Sulu, etc, so maybe it's more of a relic of the ultra-gendered dynamics and evolving worldbuilding of TOS... I'm still undecided tbh!

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Turkish in polytonic Greek system! How did it start?

Karamanlidika is a script of the Turkish language with Greek characters (instead of Arabic), as well as a dialect of Turkish. It was used by Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, mainly in the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, who were called Karamanlides, hence the name of this dialect and script, but also in some other regions, such as the Russian Empire on the Black Sea. The first official appearance of this script was recorded in 1718 and it had such a resonance that it was maintained for two centuries.

Due to the Islamization and assimilation that occurred in Asia Minor until the first decades of the 19th century, a large part of the Greeks forgot their native language and used Turkish. [citation needed] A limited number of Greeks who were located in areas far from the coast and large urban centers were linguistically assimilated by the conqueror, but they managed to maintain the consciousness of their religious and racial independence.

Booklet: Ibar, G. (2010). Anadolulu Hemşehrilerimiz-Karamanlı. Iş Bankası Kültür Yayınları. (Post source)

Karamanli Text: Βὲ γὲρ ο̇ὑζεριντ̇ὲ χὴρχ χ̇ο̇ὺν τουφὰν ὀλμάγλε, σουλὰρ τζογαλὴπ̇, σεφινεγὶ χαλτ̇ηρτ̇ή. Βὲ Νοὺγ, . . . γιανηντ̇ὰν χ̇ο̇γερτ̇ζινὶ σαλὴ βερτ̇ί. Κ̇ο̇γερτ̇ζὶν ἰσὲ ἀγιαγηνὴ π̇ασατ̇ζὰχ γὲρ π̇ούλμαμαγλε, σεφινεγὲ ἀνὴν βεζτ̇ινὲ ἀβτ̇ὲτ ἑττ̇ί. Modern Turkish: Ve yer üzerinde kırk gün tufan olmayle, sular çoğalıp, sefineyi (gemiyi) kaldırdı. Ve Nuh, . . . yanından göğercini (güvercini) salı verdi. Göğercin ise ayağını basacak yer bulmamayle, sefineye onun nezdine avdet etdi (geri döndü).

More info by the post commenters:

There are tons of other sources like that over Turkey. In the churches, gravestones, on the walls of some houses etc. I encountered them a lot. I even read a gravestone from Manisa city very recently. However, it is a little bit different than regular Greek alphabet due to different sounds in Turkish. Such as ü, ö etc. They modified the Greek alphabet and put different signs on some letters on purpose.

γ is at the same time transliterated as h/g/y. As there was not a standard form of writing karamanli turkish, many orthographical irregularities occurred while publishing.

[les-mis-in-space]

Pabchoni Culture and History

The Pabchoni were the indigenous inhabitants of Embaril. They resembled large peacocks with tortoise heads and shells, with an extra set of talons in lieu of wings. They were omnivorous, although there was a strong tradition of vegetarianism originating from ancient religious dietary laws. Pabchoni typically lived for 1.5 centuries.

In pre-colonial times, Pabchoni lived in huts made of stone and wood. Pabchoni society was individualistic, so a Pabchoni dwelling typically contained only one resident. Women's huts were historically larger to accommodate children, a tradition that persisted into the New Republic period. Pre-colonial Pabchoni were polygynous. During an annual festival, Pabchoni would come together to select mates. Pabchoni men would court as many Pabchoni women as would have them, with especially successful men taking multiple partners. Pabchoni women typically laid clutches of 4-8 eggs. Although the festival was an annual tradition, Pabchoni women with children were discouraged from participating until their children came of age.

Pabchoni were considered young adults after ten years. Historically, Pabchoni lived with their mothers until they come of age, at which point they were expected to find their own residence. Girls learned from their mothers, while boys were apprenticed to adult men, who would visit men's homes with their peers to be instructed before returning to their mothers' homes at the end of the day. Education was considered highly important in Pabchoni society, as inadequate education would leave a young Pabchoni unprepared to live on their own.

The Pabchoni language was primarily oral. Although they possessed a written script, it was generally used to mark gravesites and other places of importance. When Embaril was colonized by the Tionese, they imposed their own language on them, though Pabchoni survived in secret. Eventually, as Pabchoni began to gain more acceptance, Pabchoni scholars adapted it to the Tionese alphabet, with orthographical changes. For example, because the Tionese language did not have both a b and a v sound, the Pabchoni rendered the latter sound by appending a chi to the Tionese beta. The chi also modified the letter gamma to create a y sound. When not paired with these two letters, the chi was silent, representing a glottal stop which gradually disappeared from the language. The letters delta, sigma and tau would take on different sounds when followed by an epsilon, eta, or iota; delta would make the j sound as in Jedi, sigma would make the sh sound as in shoot, and tau would make the ch sound as in chair. In the case of certain words, like the names Deurgchal and Toimoch, the vowel following a delta, sigma or tau would be silent; in others, like the names Mitigcho and Teigon, the letters were not silent. As with Tionese, a long accent mark would be used to differentiate eta from epsilon and omicron from omega when rendering Pabchoni in Basic, as in the name Koudōch; however, this was not always used in transliterations. Pabchoni contained five diphthongs— ai (as in blast,) ēi (as in late,) ao (as in now,) ou (as in trooper,) and oe (as in droid.) In the original Pabchoni script, these had been considered their own vowels.

Tionese culture brought changes to the Pabchoni lifestyle, such as the institutions of marriage and monogamy. Many Pabchoni were forced to live together in coops constructed by the Tionese, who demolished Pabchoni villages to make room for Human settlements. Embaril was heavily urbanized over the millennia, destroying many important Pabchoni heritage sites. Though Embaril's admission into the Republic was a huge step forward in Pabchoni rights, the majority of Pabchoni were forced to assimilate to Tionese culture in order to be granted equal status or relocate to to other worlds outside the Tion Hegemony. By the end of the High Republic era, the majority of non-diaspora Pabchoni were fully assimilated, while a minority were only partially assimilated. Pabchoni indigenous nationalist movements persisted well into the New Republic period.

[blunt-force-therapy]

[] phonetic notation

// phonological notation

⟨⟩ transliteration, orthographic notation

{} prosodic notation

(...) unintelligible speech

(()) muffled or obscured speech

’"‘”’" means "I edited this text on both my phone and my laptop before sending it"

Bracket Symbols [Explained]

Transcript

Bracket Symbols and what they mean ( ) Regular parentheses for setting stuff aside [ ] Square brackets (more secure) { } This stuff is expensive so be careful with it " " Someone is talking ' ' Someone British is talking ‹ › An Animorph is talking « » A French Animorph is talking | | I'm scared of negative numbers but these sigils will protect me * * _ _ / / I have a favorite monospaced font ~ ~ I'm being sarcastic and I had a Tumblr account in 2014 [ ( [ { ( ) } ] , ) ] These Python functions are not getting along ⌊ ⌋ Help, I'm a mathematician trying to work with actual numbers and they're scary ʃ ʅ Why are you trying to read my violin? | ⟩ Don't stop here--this is quantum country

[tinkerreise]

Benechia, Venetsia, Benis

Back when Duolingo was good and had a functioning forum section, I found this one comment on (what I assume was) a katakana lesson that nestled its way into my brain. I don't remember it exactly, but it seemed to say that the Japanese government just stopped using ヴェネツィア in favor of ベネチア when writing about Venice, and that that's due to a shift in how V-sounds should be transliterated. ヴィ -> ビ and so forth.

-> But… now I'm actually looking it up, and it seems like it's actually the other way round? Or at least not that easy.

Starting with this page, which takes up the different spellings of Venice in quite some detail:

https://www.apriori-eye.com/entry/japanese-language-orthographic-variants

in particular this part

「ヴ」という表記は「v」に相当する発音をできるだけ正しく表記するために、福澤諭吉が考���した表記法である。 私は、「ヴ」という表記法はできるだけ使わないようにしたはずだと思っていたが、それは勘違いであった。

Then, according to this ask, the ヴィ maps onto Vi. I'd imagine that's to leave ビ for Wi:

That is, ヴ is taken to be a particular katakana notation to indicate that a loanword was spelled with V.

BUT ALSO

大辞林 writes all loanwords containing V (e.g. ヴァージン, ヴィオラ, etc.) with バビブベボ (like バージン, ビオラ, etc.).

If you search for ベネチア on 首相官邸 (しゅしょうかんてい) you get twice as many hits if with Benechia as Venetsia:

https://www.kantei.go.jp/ja_kantei/search.html?q=%E3%83%99%E3%83%8D%E3%83%81%E3%82%A2 (41 st.)

https://www.kantei.go.jp/ja_kantei/search.html?q=%E3%83%99%E3%83%8D%E3%83%81%E3%82%A2 (87 st.)

The number of alternate spellings on the Wikipedia page for Venice is also pretty impressive:

So... yeah. V -> ヴぃ / W -> び？

If it's like that, then the problem is just moved a bit. What's a V / W to Japanese? The V-sound in Swedish is different from the V-sound in English, and further, V/W aren't actually differentiated in Swedish... Tip of the iceberg.

When katakana-izing, the general law seems to be to stick to the pronunciation in the source language, like パリ (and not... ぺーリス or something). There are many (presumably old) words that break the rule above, like video nonetheless becoming ビデオ.

I guess I'll keep on thinking about the V/B/W problem until I get bored of it, lol.

[daily-new-testament]

Matthew 1:2

Ἀβραὰμ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰσαάκ, Ἰσαὰκ δὲ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰακώβ, Ἰακὼβ δὲ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰούδαν καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ,

Abraam begat Isaak, and Isaak begat Iakōb, and Iakōb begat Ioudas and his brothers,

Notes:

ἐγέννησεν: an aorist form of γεννάω. γεννάω is usually taken as "produce" or "beget." The sense here is of producing a son, i.e. Isaak was the son of Abraam, Iakōb was the son of Isaak, etc.

The aorist tense in ancient Greek is often used for events which occur in a narrative or in the mythical/heroic past.

~~~

The definite article (here τὸν, τοὺς) is used with proper names and one noun (ἀδελφοὺς) in this section. I have not included it in my translation because "the Isaak" and "the brothers of him" sound unnatural in modern English. The definite article is used more frequently in Greek than in modern English, including often with proper names.

~~~

Ἀβραὰμ, transliterated here Abraam (Abraham) is a significant figure in the Old Testament. His story is told in Genesis 11-49 and is too long to recount here. Interestingly, his name is changed from Abram to Abraham by divine order in Genesis 17:5. The Greek uses two alphas here, possibly an attempt to replicate the "aham" sound (impossible in the Greek orthographic system), but it is also possible that the old name, Abram, is preferred in this genealogy.

~~~

Ἰσαὰκ, transliterated here Isaak (Isaac), another significant figure in the Old Testament. He is the son Abraham was ordered by God to kill. See Genesis 17-35 for Isaac's biography.

~~~

Ἰακὼβ, transliterated here Iakōb (Jacob), also significant in the Old Testament. See Genesis 25-49 for Jacob's biography. His name, like his grandfather's, is changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28, but he is still called Jacob in the text, unlike Abraham.

~~~

Ἰούδας, transliterated here Ioudas (Judah) appears in the Old Testament. He is the one to suggest selling Joseph into slavery, and the head of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. See Genesis 29-49 for his biography.

[clarenecessities]

c‘yra vs cyra

i didn’t include this in my author notes bc like there’s a limit. not to what i’ll inflict on my readers but on the characters for author notes. buckle in buckos it’s time for Unsolicited Opinions with Clare

Here’s the thing about apostrophes: they mean a bunch of different shit to a bunch of different people.

People (nerds) get it in their heads that throwing random apostrophes and diacritics into everything makes it look cool and exotic or whatever (see: Ebony Dark’Ness Dementia Raven Way, Koriand’r, T’hy’la, etc.), but what does it mean? Is it akin to an English apostrophe, indicating a dropped letter with no audible effect on the word, eg. can’t or let’s? Does it indicate a glottal stop for those who despair of their readers recognizing ʔ? An implosive consonant? Ejectives? Voiced pharyngeal approximants? it’s plagued fantasy and scifi writers since the days of JRRT, who at least knew what shit meant

In the case of MOTUC, the source of the C’yra of D’riluth III thing—it is not sourced from a conlang, or established lore of any kind. It bucks naming conventions (see: the contrast of D’riluth III with Darius-7, from the very same solar system), disregards previous backstory (”””Purrsia”””), and confuses people who know too much and too little about canon. Are we just picking these arbitrarily? Does chaos reign over space? This shit’s under Horde dominion, you’re telling me Prime is cool with this orthographical nightmare?

Okay, bear with me. Prescriptivist grammar is bullshit and I hate it. But standardization for the sake of official character bios would be like, nice?? Like what does a bitch have to do to get a pronunciation guide here?

after laboring in vain to parse the horse shit of the people who brought us Wun-Darr the wonderbread he-man, yet still unwilling to call the kid Mara or make up like an actual name, i took matters into my own hands

because of a neopets research project that got out of hand, I default to reading random apostrophes as glottal stops. Thus, C+“yra”, which we can extrapolate as “eeruh” although WHO’S TO SAY? Maybe it’s ih-raw and god is dead!! Who fucking knows!! Of course, that still leaves the question of hard or soft C. Is it “Kuh-ira” or “Suh-ira”? Ordinarily I would read Cyra as “seera”, but the separation of the phonemes leads me to pronounce it independently, and i default to hard Cs for irish reasons

As it so happens, Cyra is a real ass name, the feminine form of Cyrus, ultimately from Old Persian kuruš, which you will observe is transliterated with a K, because it’s a hard C. this cemented my decision to cling to performative nerd name bc it allowed for the syncretism of C’yra and Purrsia, which ostensibly MOTUC should have done for me, but it’s fine. it’s cool. i’m not bitter at all

tl;dr i took the apostrophe out of C’yra so people would be able to pronounce it and also i am fucking deranged

[maniculum]

Alternatively, if we’re making changes to the orthography anyway, we could say Q by itself makes the same sound as <kw> and just get rid of the <u> after it. Voila, space is saved. Of course then we’d need to also replace all the Qs that are currently by themselves with Ks, but you see that anyway since most-if-not-all of the “Q by itself to sound like K” instances are found in transliterations of words English has borrowed from other languages and already have multiple accepted spellings (e.g. “qi” vs. “ki”).

I think at least some of the Q-by-itself transliterations are using it to represent a slightly different sound — in IPA, /q/ represents a sound that’s similar to /k/ but pronounced further back in the throat, so maybe that’s what we’re supposed to read it as — but since English doesn’t actually make that distinction, the practical value of including it in the orthography is questionable. (Though if we’re going down that road, we probably have to re-examine the whole <ph> spelling convention as well, among others.)

Edit: also, as others have said in the notes, bring back the thorn. Not strictly relevant, but worth saying in any discussion of English orthographical reform. I think we should include the yogh in that too.

It bothers me so much that Q almost always comes with a U just to make the same sound as a K followed by a W. And when it does appear on its own it's just to make the K sound. No space is saved by Q existing. It just looks and sounds cool.

We should get rid of K and W so Q is meaningful.

[ctrl-alt-languages]

今日（きょう）

(kana transliteration of kanji in parentheses)

with french translation

こんいちは！

今日（きょう）、私（わたし）はたくさんしました！

たくさんの食べ物（たべもの）が作りました（つくりました）！中国（ちゅうごく）の大きな（おおきな）餃子（ぎょうざ）と豆腐（とうふ）と

オルゾーパスタとともにミントを作りました！そして、学校（がっこう）のタスクがしました、と私は来年(らいねん）の学校のプラニングをしました。

明日（あした）も、たくさんします。これわ私のリスト：

食べ物を作る：サンドイッチとお茶

日本語（にほんご）の勉強（べんきょう）

学校の プラニング：学校の本（ほん）を買う（かう）、リストをしてる

今、めっちゃ眠い（ねむい）ですね、2時（じ）です。。。朝（あさ）です笑笑

おやすみなさい～！

french translation: 

NOTE: i did not write any accents because my computer doesn’t have them and also because i am way too tired- but i know the spelling for all of these words when it comes to accents (je n’ai pas ecrit les accents parce que mon ordinateur ne les a pas et aussi car je suis trop fatiguee- mais je pense le spelling (orthographe??) pour tous les mots quand il agit des accents haha :))

bonjour!

aujourd’hui, j’ai fait beacoup des choses! 

j’ai cuisine beacoup des aliments! j’ai fait des boulettes de pâte chinois, de tofu, et d’orzo avec la menthe! aussi, j’ai fait des choses pour l’ecole, et j’ai fait du planning pour l’annee prochaine pour l’ecole.

aussi, demain, je ferai beacoup des choses. voici ma liste: 

faire le dejeuner: un sandwich et du the

etudier le japonais

planning pour l’ecole: acheter les livres pour l’ecole, faire une liste

maintenant, je suis tres fatiguee, c’est 2h00 le matin haha

bonne nuit! 

(holy crap my japanese writing is trash someone please edit- translating this to french was such a pain bc it’s so repetitive...this made me realize that i need to expand my japanese vocab asap hahahaha)

also i realize that there was absolutely no reason for me to use “beaucoup” and たくさん to describe the amount of things i did because its literally just 3 things but trustttttt the cooking took forever lmao

[apolesen]

A phonological analysis of Cardassian

@illogicalbroccoli and I decided to sit down and analyse the Cardassian sound-system. This can serve as a guide for coining names and words. We have also included a description of what a Cardassian sounds like. 

Limitations

This analysis is based on the names of all named Cardassians in alpha-canon (i.e. the TV series) (with exceptions of names that are clearly names of the production team that are added in writing just as place-holders), taken from the category ‘Cardassians’ on Memory Alpha. We have also taken into account the names of the sectors of the Union Capitals and the fan-coined names for body parts: chufa, chula, chuva (the spoons), prUt, ajan, vit (genitals). (We have also gone through the Cardassian names in Memory Beta and have considered how they would fit in, but not used them as basis for our analysis.) This is a fairly good sample, but with any sample, some phonemes and combinations of phonemes might not be represented. 

We are treating the way these words are written as Federation transcription. That means that sometimes, we might find inconsistencies in it. We have tried to not invoke transcription errors too often, but at times we have simply to keep the system plausible. 

The final thing is that Cardassian vocal organs are probably different from human ones. Do Cardassians have an uvula, do their teeth look the same, what is the range of movement of their tongue? However, in this post, I am assuming that their vocal organs are close enough to ours that we can use the same terminology. 

Terminology

Stop - a consonant where the air-flow is completely cut off. These are /p, t, k, b, d, g/. If you can say it drawn out, it’s not a stop.

Fricative - another type of consonants where the air-flow is not completely cut off. If it’s a consonant you can say drawn out, it’s a fricative, such as /f/.  

Sibilant - sibilants are strictly a kind of fricative, but are worth mentioning in their own right. They are s-sounds. If it sounds like something a snake might say, it’s a sibilant. 

Affricate - a sound that starts as a stop and ends as a fricative, for instance English chap. 

Cluster - any sounds that commonly occur together. Here I specifically mean consonant clusters, such as /pl/, /gr/, /rm/ etc. 

Phoneme - a distinct sound in a specific language. Phonemes are identified by minimal pairs, words where the only thing that is different are the sounds we are investigating. For instance, English rent and lent are different words, and shows us that /r/ and /l/ are phonemes. 

Allophone - an allophone is how a phoneme presents. A phoneme might manifest differently depending on its position in a word. As with phonemes, there are specific to languages. What is allophonic in one language can be phonemic in another. 

Slashes are used for indicate phonemes, i.e. sounds. Angled brackets indicate graphemes, i.e. written signs. 

I have used some IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) signs in this post, but have endeavoured to give examples wherever I can. A good resource is the website internationalphoneticalphabet dot org, where you will find a link to “IPA chart with sounds”. You can simply click the sign in question and it reads it to you. 

The Cardassian phonetic system

We are proposing the following system: 

p - t- k - q - v

b - d- g - ɢ - f - θ - ʃ - j - h

ʧ - ʦ

r - l - m- n- ŋ - s - z

a - e - i - ɔ - o - u - ei

In the following sections, I will go through them and explain our reasoning and give examples. 

Stops

Cardassian has a balanced stop system, much like that of English: 

/p/ - Paldar

/t/ - Tain

/k/ - Kelas

/b/ - Belor

/d/ - Damar

/g/ - Garak

However, the voiceless velar /k/ causes us some problems. This sound is sometimes written with <k> (e.g. kanar), but sometimes it is written with <c>, e.g. Broca, Preloc, Crell, Lemec. However, <c> is also used for a sibilant in the names Ocett and Macet. We could put this down to an error in transcription, but that is a dull out. Let us take another piece of data into account - the <gh> in Ghemor. At first glance, this might be an aspirated stop (a sound that occurs allophonically in English and sounds a bit more ‘breathy’), but if so, we would expect more aspirated stops. We could say that the examples of <c> as a velar are aspirated, but it does not ring true to me. Therefore, I suggest that <c> and <gh> represent uvular stops: 

/q/ - Crell

/ɢ/ - Ghemor

The uvula is the thing that hangs down at the back of your mouth. In order to make this sound, you pronounce an ordinary velar (/k/ or /g/) but also bring up the back of your tongue and touch your uvula. These sounds do not occur in English, but does in Arabic and some Caucasian languages. 

It is worth noting that there is one Cardassian name with a <q> in beta-canon, Andrul Taqut. This might be another example of the uvular. 

Fricatives, affricates, liquids and nasals

The Cardassian fricative system is not as well-balanced as its stop system:

/v/ - Revok

/f/ - chufa

/θ/ - Thrax

/ʃ/ - Shoggoth

/j/ - Ziyal

It has both /v/ and /f/, but the latter only appears word-internally (e.g. chufa - there is a beta canon example of Fhret, but this is an odd cluster and I am going to put it aside). There is /θ/, transliterated <th> (like in English thirst), but no voiceless version (like English there). There is also /ʃ/ (English sheer) and /j/, (English yet).

As for affricates, there are two: 

/ʧ/ - chuva

/ʦ/ - Marritza

The sound /ʧ/ is that of English chap and /ʦ/ is Italian pazzo (a /t/ and /s/ sound very close together).  

The nasals, liquids and sibilants are much the same as in English: 

/r/ - Garak

/l/ - gul

/m/ - Mila

/n/ - Nor

/ŋ/ - Lang

/s/ - Silaran

/z/ - Ziyal

What about the times <c> is used for a sibilant? It is noticeable that it only occurs word-internally and between vowels. We have three names with <s> word-internally and between vowels: Rusot, Moset and Russol (assuming the gemination does not show it is something else). Both the first and last cases are flanked by back vowels, so I suggest that they can be disregarded. We are then left with Ocett, Macet and Moset. I will suggest that <c> is used (by a very sloppy transcriber) to present an allophone of /s/ which occurs when the phoneme /s/ follows after a vowel and precedes a /e/. Usually, allophones are not written in different ways, so we would be correct writing these names as Osett and Maset. 

Furthermore, there is a /h/, which often occurs within words. 

Vowels

With the vowels, we must note that there is a problem as English vowels are very messed up. Do we assume that the orthography or the pronunciation is closer to the Cardassian truth? Most of the time, we think the pronunciation is closer, but with some provisions for English lenition. We decided upon this system: 

/a/ - Garak

/e/ - Enabran

/i/ - Ziyal

/ɔ/ - Terok Nor (always transcribed with <o>)

/o/ - Ulani (sometimes transcribed with <o>, sometimes with capital <U>)*

/u/ - Dukat

*) We are assuming an inconsistency of transcription here, simply to allow for the orthography in prUt which does not occur in alpha canon.

There is also one diphthong (or at least one that we can find evidence of): 

/ei/ - Tain **

**) Even if this is written with an <a>, the first part of this diphthong is clearly an /e/. 

Notably, Cardassian does not have a schwa, /ǝ/, which is a sound in the very middle of the mouth like in chocolate. This occurs when an unstressed vowel is weakened to the extent that we don’t bother to put our tongue up or down but simply keep it in a fairly neutral position. Because 

Vowel length is marked, and appears to orthographically be shown by double vowels, as in Boheeka, Aamin. At least once, these are separated by an accent, Darhe’el. The accent also occurs in the name Pa’Dar, where it rather seems to show a shortening of the preceding vowel. I am going to chalk this up to a misunderstanding in the transcription. 

A note on the uses of <h> in beta canon

I have discussed <gh> in Ghemor. However, it is worth mentioning that there are some odd uses of <h> in beta-canon names: Khevet, Efheny, Rhukal, Rhemet, Mhevet. 

Most of these can, in my opinion, be dismissed. Khevet could be an uvular that has been written that way by influence of the transcription of Ghemor. Rhukal and Rhemet are probably examples of the phoneme /r/. It might be an allophonic variation not shown in names such as Rusot and Rugal (perhaps Bajoran doesn’t have this variation and that’s why Rugal’s name is written without it?). As for Efheny, I do not think that the <h> is there to show a change in the /f/, but that there is supposed to be a hiatus between them, Ef-heny. When it comes to Mhevet, I think we need to look at the character in question. Arati Mhevet is from North Torr, which is a poor and close-knit community, and precisely the kind that might have a distinct dialect. I propose that the <mh> represents a labial that is found in the North Torr dialect and not in ‘standard’ Cardassian. 

Permitted clusters

Languages are governed by some internal rules of sounds that can and can’t go together and only in certain positions. For instance, initial /ks/ is generally not permitted in English, which is why words such as xylophone and xenophobic are often pronounced starting with something like /z/. Similarly, English does not allow initial /pt/ and /ps/, which is why words starting with these, e.g. pterodactyl and psychologist, often are pronounced with the <p> silent. 

In Cardassian, we can see some general rules for permitted clusters. 

Clusters consisting of a stop plus /r/ are generally permitted. Liquid plus stop is rare, as are fricative-initial clusters. 

However, this obscures a lot. 

Stop-initial clusters: 

pr, tr, kr, br, dr

kl, gl

gn

-ks#

When it comes to stop plus /r/, all are permitted with the exception of /gr/. In the case of stop plus /l/, only velars, /k/ and /g/, are allowed. The only stop-nasal cluster allowed in /gn/. 

The hash indicates the end of a word; the combination /ks/ is only allowed at the end of words (there is a Cardassian name Thrax). 

Liquid-initial clusters are: 

rb, rd, rt, rl, rn, rm, rv 

ld, lt 

Liquid+stop clusters are generally rare, and /r/-initial clusters are far more common than /l/-initial ones.

Nasal-initial clusters are: 

nd, nt, np, mp

As for clusters starting in fricatives or sibilants, there are only two: 

θr, sk

A Cardassian Accent

What a person sounds like when speaking a language which is not their first language is down to what phonology they are used to. For instance, a native speaker of Hindi may pronounce sounds that are not retroflexed in English as retroflexed, as that is a common sound in Hindi. The allowed clusters in a language also often carries over. 

As we have established what sounds and clusters occur in Cardassian, we can extrapolate what a Cardassian-speaker might sound like if they were speaking English. The amount of accent one has depends on a great number of things - age of second language acquisition, previous bilingualism, general aptitude for language, amount of progress. In my opinion, someone like Garak would not have much of an accent, but people with less experience of other languages and less exposure to native English-speakers will have a more noticeable accent.

As there is no voiceless fricative /ð/, like in English there, so a Cardassian-speaker might say “dere”. The /f/ phoneme is never initial, so while a Cardassian-speaker might be able to pronounce English sofa well, they might struggle with foal and instead say “voal” (which might lead to interesting misunderstandings). They would have trouble with English diphthongs, of which there are a lot. They might also make distinctions that an English speaker would not, such as using an uvular velar in certain positions. 

As the consonant clusters that are allowed in Cardassian are fairly few, a Cardassian-speaker will struggle with some of the clusters in English. Words like star or morsel might cause them trouble. They might add a vowel in between - “satar” - or drop one of the segments “mosel”. 

We have not taken things like accenting patterns and word melody into account, as there is not really any data that allows us to reconstruct it, but that too would change how a Cardassian accent would sound. 

[rionsanura]

I’m having an amazing time typing resyllabifications and transliterations of Crowley’s name into a Hebrew machine translator to see if any of them are attested words.

I’ve never studied any Semitic languages, and I understand that the vowel situation is pretty ambiguous to the rest of us, orthographically. This translation site isn’t for Biblical Hebrew, either, which is what I’d rather investigate, but I couldn’t find one of those that worked the way I was messing around, and also I don’t want to be disrespectful. So I’m faffing around in the general vicinity of the consonants k (and articulatory relatives q, h, and dropped-initial), r, and l, with various explicit vowel configurations, and I’m sure most of these approximations don’t even fall within the confines of real Hebrew phonology, but machine translation is a laugh no matter how bizarre your input. It tries its best.

“quroel”

Sure, ok, I’ll accept that. He would be insulted if you didn’t at least imply it.

“qurael”

Well, it’s one of his main activities, isn’t it?

“qurali”

If I had your number, my dear boy, you’d hear from me constantly.

“qrael”

Is that an instruction? Believe me, I will.

“qrel”

You better believe it. Sweet, soft, and a little bit burnt, that’s our snakelet.

“qoli”

Naturally.

“horoli”

Sure, sure. Most foul.

“urel”

Yes, we all know the fangs aren’t just bluffing. Of course not.

“hrel”

Oh, doubtless. Terrifying.

“he ali”

A beast of temptations, I see.

“qe ali”

Isn’t that a little more ambition than you usually show? I’ll start with a wahoo.

“hrle”

He thought nobody saw, but we did. We saw.

“qr li”

I know you are, sweetie. You’re cold-blooded. I also know someone who can help.

“kerol”

When you jump in the phone line, you are.

“krali”

We know exactly which one, don’t we.

“kr li”

A devil put aside? Everything’s for you, darling. Especially that.

“kr lei”

Oh, right. You’re the one who sleeps.

“kro lei”

Sorry, sir, I’ll back off.

But, most hilarious of all, someone has been here before. This is a name we know. Just a name.

“qroli”

Bonus nonsense:

“zr fl”

“zr fal”

He did, didn’t he?

[thedreideldiaries]

From the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been looking at YIVO transliterations for a while now and it took me a while to guess what the issue was here. "Kale" is, for better or for worse, the official YIVO transliteration of כּלה (which, if you're trying to be understood, you would probably write as "kallah”). I would guess that some of the regionalisms of the people who came up with YIVO’s transliteration rules had an influence on what they chose, but I don’t even know where to look to find out.

Near as I can tell, the “e” in the standard YIVO transliteration usually means a schwa, which is kind of a catch-all vowel sound in English that can be represented orthographically by…literally any vowel depending on context/word origin, including “e.”

Not all languages have this sound, though! Spanish has five very distinct vowel sounds it can squish together and tends to leave it at that - one of the non-native Spanish speaker tells is using a schwa where there should be another vowel. I think Hebrew is similarly relatively vowel-sparse (which is useful when your writing system dispenses with vowels most of the time). If Hebrew has a schwa sound, I would guess it’s not as common as in English. Yiddish, like English, gets a lot of sounds from Germanic and European languages with all sorts of vowels all jumbled together. Add some regional variations and a lot of loanwords, and it becomes kind of a vowel free-for-all. Inglush duz thuh saim theng.

tl;dr: like others have been saying, English orthography makes most transliterations look wrong to *somebody* no matter what you do, and sometimes this leads to brides transforming into leafy greens.

Was watching an episode of Say Yes to the Dress and I think at some point something went very wrong with the editing.

[blogquantumreality]

English as spelled in the game - Ancient Greek reconstruction of the term - Gothic transliteration

Kassandra - ΚΑΣΣΑΝΔΡΑ - 𐌺𐌰𐍃𐍃𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍂𐌰 (kassandra)

Alexios - ΑΛΕΞΙΟΣ - 𐌰𐌻𐌰𐌹𐌺𐍃𐌹𐍉𐍃 (alaiksios)

Ikaros - ΙΚΑΡΟΣ - 𐌴𐌹𐌺𐌰𐍂𐍉𐍃 (eikaros)

misthios - ΜΙΣΘΙΟΣ - 𐌼𐌹𐍃𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍉𐍃 (misþeios)

malaka - ΜΑΛΑΚΑ - 𐌼𐌰𐌻𐌰𐌺𐌰 (malaka)

chaire - ΧΑΙΡΕ - 𐍇𐌰Ï𐍂𐌴 or 𐍇𐌰𐌾𐍂𐌴 (xaïre or xajre)

To be fair, the Gothic alphabet hadn’t been invented in the era of the game but I’m imagining a Gothic scholar writing down Greek legends and “localizing” them as it were. :)

(Also, by the 4th century AD the names themselves would have their pronunciations changed and that’s reflected in the orthographical conventions used for the Gothic spellings. As a result, since Kassandra uses an “ee” sound to say Ikaros’s name I’ve reflected that in the transliteration.

I’m also undecided if Alexios’s or Ikaros’s names would have the -os be pronounced with a short “o” in the Koine Greek era, so I’ve chosen to keep the long “o”, rather than using “au” for the short “o”. Additionally I’ve chosen to assume that our scholar would show the second “i” in “misthios” having an “ee” like quality, so the Gothic spelling uses the rule for that language’s representation of that sound.)

So here are some terms and names! Let me know if I missed any other common ones in the game. :)

[darkhei-noam]

shelomit replied to your photo “Quick update as I sign off for Shabbat… Got an unexpected burst of...”

Wow! That was a bit of a trip to try and read through. It looks like the orthographic influence is coming mostly from French?

Yes, definitely... Algerian Jews in the 1880s would have already been largely Francophone at this point.  The “ou” for וּ, “gue” for ְג, all very French. I wonder if the use of “sch” for ש, rather than “ch,” is from Italian influence. I can’t explain why he sometimes transliterates ק with “k” and sometimes with “q.” But I can confirm now that he certainly had at least one set of Latin type! P.S. you might remember Guedj’s print shop from the beginning of my Galway paper! I began with his advertisement. :D

[jacobhinkley]

New Bitcoin Spellings Cause Confusion: Биткоин, Биткойн, Біткоїн, Биткојн

The addition of “биткоин” (bitcoin) to the Russian spelling dictionary is “well grounded,” according to an important official from the Institute of Russian Language – another recognition of the cryptocurrency. Transliterating English words into a Slavic language written in Cyrillic, however, is not always a straightforward process. Two spelling forms have gained popularity in Russia, but which is the correct one? Other Slavic nations face a similar challenge. Besides, each one of them seems to have its own idea of how to write bitcoin with Cyrillic letters.

Also read: Russian Railways Eyes Crypto for Tickets, Blockchain for Cargo

Биткоин, Биткойн, Біткоїн, Биткојн – Bitcoin

Transliterating words from one language into another can sometimes spawn a number of spellings with none of the alternatives being a true original. This is often the case with borrowed terms describing new inventions that have to be written in a script different from the one they originated from. The word “bitcoin” is no exception – it is an invention, and it is a new term. Its introduction into Slavic languages using the Cyrillic alphabet has produced many spelling variations, with almost each nation “inventing” its own bitcoin, or биткойн I should say.

Bulgarians, who liked and adopted the Cyrillic script a millennium ago, have decided, unofficially, to spell bitcoin the way it is pronounced in English and in their Slavic language – “биткойн.” Their closest linguistic relative, the Macedonians, write it “биткоин,” true to their commitment to be different. The short unstressed i-vowel “й” (as in /aɪ/ or /kɔɪn/) is missing from their version of the Cyrillic alphabet. No worries, we can still read it.

Ukrainians, who probably have more “i”-s than just about any other Slavs (и, й, і, ї,) have chosen to use two or three of those in their spellings of bitcoin – “бiткойн” and “біткоїн.” That adds a little Latin flavor, although truth be told, the “dotted i” was indeed part of the early Cyrillic alphabets and they have kept it to this day. Belarusians also write it “біткойн.” Serbs, who use a Latin script alongside the Cyrillic, spell it “биткојн” in. Gosh, now there is a “j” in it…

Bitcoin Making its Way into the Russian Spelling Dictionary

Russia, by far the largest Slavic country and most famous user of the Cyrillic script, has a dilemma. Both “биткоин” and “биткойн” are used to refer to the cryptocurrency in Russian media and by the local crypto community, although “биткоин” is more popular. The question about the correct spelling has sparked multiple discussions in Russian crypto forums. The rule applied to other English loanwords says bitcoin in Russian should be spelled with the short “й” in the second syllable. But as it often happens with living languages, people prefer the incorrect “и” version.

A high-ranking representative of the Institute of Russian Language, under the Russian Academy of Science, has recently spoken in favor of adding “биткоин” to the Russian Orthographic (spelling) Dictionary, local media reported. “The question of including the word “биткоин” in the dictionary seems to me well-grounded,” Oksana Grunchenko, senior researcher and head of the referral service at the Institute, told the Moscow News Agency.

Grunchenko expressed regret that bitcoin didn’t make it into the Russian Explanatory Dictionary. Its “Б” (B) volume went out without it. “But since the word “биткоин”, or “биткойн”, represents a spelling challenge too, I think it will find its place on the pages of the orthographic dictionary,” she added indicating that both spellings may be accepted. “If both are included, we can talk about variability of the norm,” she explained, noting that there are other examples of that in Russian.

I don’t want to say that but maybe we, the Slavs writing in Cyrillic, do need some central authority to sort things out… Although, that has never really worked well here. Besides, it’s not just bitcoin – I am pretty sure we have the same issue when spelling “core” and “cash.”

Do you think adding bitcoin to a dictionary is a recognition of its importance? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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