ginormous (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Must've been before my time... I've always heard Westerners say
"Sawdee" or "Sowdee". At least "Sah-oodee" roughly approximates
<sa`u:di> with the long "u" as the second vowel, even if the ayin is a
lost cause.

--Ben


On 7/12/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Ben. Oh, by " ... rare outside Semitic languages," do you
> really mean,, " ... hard as hell for a speaker of a European language
> to learn to pronounce?" :-) BTW, are you old enough to remember when
> "Saud(i)" was pronounced "Sah ood(ee)," with a glottal onset, if not
> quite with a glottal stop, and not "Sawd(ee)"?
>
> On 7/12/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >
> > There's actually nothing like an "eye" diphthong in the (modern
> > standard) Arabic pronunciation of "al Qaida" -- the scholarly
> > transliteration would be <al qa:`ida>, where <a:> is a long "a" vowel
> > and <`> is the ayin or voiced pharyngeal fricative. The ayin is
> > frequently omitted in foreign pronunciations and transcriptions of
> > Arabic (since it's rare outside Semitic languages), but it's there in
> > the original separating the two vowels. If the ayin isn't going to be
> > represented orthographically, then the "ae" spelling might be
> > preferable to remind the reader that there's no diphthong there.
> >
> > On 7/12/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > WAG: Is it the case that "ai" is intended to represent the
> > > Classical-Arabic sound, whereas "ae" is meant to reflect a more modern
> > > pronunciation? Or not.
> > >
> > > -Wilson, who knows of Arabic only that it is a Semitic language
> > >
> > >
> > > On 7/12/07, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Sorry all about the "K" I wrote in Al Kaeda, Al Kaida.  That should have
> > > > been Al Qaeda, Al Qaida.  Basically I was focusing on the ae/ai difference.
> > > > I had always seen it as "ai" before.  Now I see it "ae" in the newspapers.
> > > >
> > > > For truespel I needed a phonetic spelling for the sound "eye" (long i).  I
> > > > picked ~ie (as in "pie,lie,tried).  This is in line with a rule that all
> > > > "long" vowels are spelled with silent e moved over next to them
> > > > (ae,ee,ie,oe,ue).
> > > >
> > > > More predominant for spelling that sound is the leter "i" alone (primarily
> > > > due to the word "I".  Next is "i" with "silent e" and then "y", "igh", "ie"
> > > > and "eye" with a few others.

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