Re: Place names

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

la nitcion. cusku di'e

> Well, um, how do I put this... I don't 100% buy the "as pronounced/named
> by the natives" argument. ckiperia, maybe. But definitively {london} over
> {lndn} (actually, this'd make a really good debate; I seem to remember
> Colin (or was it And?) already being on the side on {london}.

If you really want the "local pronunciation", I hear it as "ln,n".

> hey, is [Magyar "gy"] a palatal stop (Upside-down f in IPA)? It's been only 4
> months since I found out Greek has one of those (dialect, of course, varies
> the enunciations immensely).

Yup.

> bosnia - bosnian: la sara,evos.

The usual transcription is "Sarajevo" which suggests "sara,ievos."

> belorus - belorusa: la minsk

Which way do we go on belo- vs. bela-?  I have been seeing "Belarus" lately.

> rumania - rumanias: la buxarest

Definitely "ro-" here.  The French started to write "Roumanie", god knows
why, and propagated that error to most Western languages.  "romanias."
is the only thing that fits native-speaker intuition.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban