-stans

[Paul Johnston]

So we're supposed to change the spelling of foreign names to match
our orthography now? And, since English (and I suppose American
English) is the "world language", only us?  Amerika ueber alles,
sounds like.  No wonder everyone hates us.

Paul
On Apr 2, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: -stans
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> If "stan" is to be pronounced with the "ah" vowel, then why is it
> spelled "stan".  This brings us to the best way to spell the "ah"
> sound in an English based best phonetic way.
>
> There is a real word equivalent,"ah," for that sound, which is
> usually used in NO-name-spell (the name I've given to the most
> popular phonetic transcription in English that has no name), e.g.,
> AHK-toe-ber for October.  For spelling the "ah" sound, truespel
> book 4 finds that the letter "o" is used almost twice as often in
> running text than the letter "a" for that sound.  The letter "o" is
> also used most often for spelling the "uh" sound, as well (as in
> "of,other").  The letter "o" is confusing because it's used for so
> many sounds (go, to, for, on, off, pilot, word).
>
> So why not use "ah"?  Using letter string "ah" to spell the sound
> "ah" is not optimal because it mixes vowels and consonants to spell
> a vowel sound.  So the best choice, and the one truespel uses, is
> "aa", which is consistent in other languages as well.
>
> Note:  Using the letter "a" for "ah" is a bad choice.  In English
> it must be used to consistently represent the "short a" sound as in
> "man" (e.g., Stan the Man, Musial).  This letter-sound relationship
> is over 99%, the most consistent for any vowel sound spelling.
> (truespel book 4).
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:03:47 -0400
>> From: cdoyle at UGA.EDU
>> Subject: -stans
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Charles Doyle
>> Subject: -stans
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> In his testimony yesterday General Petraeus followed his commander-
>> in-chief in the paired pronunciations [aefgaen at staen]/[pakistan].
>> Admiral Olson tried, but the best he could do was [pak at staen].
>> Last night on MSNBC, in his interview with Rachel Maddow, Colin
>> Powell consistently said [paek at staen] but [paek at stanI]. (I'm using
>> "ae" to signify the vowell /ae/).
>>
>> --Charlie
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