O"calan

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Peter McGraw writes:

>>>
When in doubt, find out for sure.  I just went to the online version of
the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet and there was the answer: Ocalan with a
dieresis over the O. So the first vowel is mid FRONT rounded.
<<<

And on radio yesterday -- I think it was on BBC's "The World" -- I heard it
pronounced as Jessie Emerson describes it, /@rdjalan/. Rather, that's the best
approximation possible in USEnglish phonology to the pron. used by the
Turkish-speaker, which was (approximation alert)
     [  oe  d  zh  a  '  l  a  n  ]
which is what you'd get from the spelling Peter reports (with no cedilla under
the "c").

(Has anyone else here read _Van Rooten's Book of Improbable Saints_, by the
author of _Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames_? I'm thinking of that canonized
submarine Dutchwoman, St. Cedilla Onderzee.)

-- Mark