LL-L "Orthography" 2008.03.30 (08) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 31 March 2008 - Volume 08
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Resources"

Hey Buttje (et al),

Whoever said that all roads lead to Rome, has surely not seen this
signpost in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan:

http://www.katrienenebroindeknel.be/Foto22Centraalazie.htm
(top right)

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Names

Thanks a lot for sharing that, Luc. But it looks rather like "All roads lead
away from Tashkent," doesn't it?

By the way, this is a great illustration of how messed up adoption of
foreign names can be. Uzbek and all other Turkic languages, as well as all
Iranian languages, have the phoneme /h/. However, those of the former Soviet
Union, as well as those of China that have been under indirect Soviet
influence, have adopted foreign names in their Russian forms, where most
instances of "h" are rendered as "g". Hence it's *Gamburg* what would have
been **Hamburg* had it been adopted directly. The same applies in the Uyghur
language that is mostly used on the Chinese side of the border but has been
under Uzbek and occasional Russian influence.

Furthermore, Uzbek orthography shares with conventional orthographies for
Low Saxon an unnecessary feature: the spelling of long /a/ as "o" or as
anything other than necessary *aa*, *â* or such. Because the long /a/ is
pronounced with more or less lip rounding (in Uzbek [ɒ(ː)] ~ [ɔ(ː)], because
of Tajik Persian substrata and influences)), people with little or no
knowledge of phonological theory wanted to write it "phonetically." Hence
also *Toshkent* for *T**âshkent*, *Qobul* for *Q**âbul* and *Herot* for *Her
**ât*. In Uzbek this happened when Cyrillic was first used for it (to be
followed by Roman, then Cyrillic again and now Roman again). (In the
preceding Arabic-based system the *alif* was used, which is usually
associated with long /a/ and in Modern Iranian core varieties has come to be
pronounced [ɒ(ː)] ~ [ɔ(ː)] ~ [o(ː)] ~ [u(ː)].) In Low Saxon this happened
after Middle Saxon spelling had been lost from people's memory and German
spelling ("o" for /aa/ -> [ɒ(ː)] ~ [ɔ(ː)] ~ [o(ː)]) and Dutch spelling ("oa"
or "oa" for /aa/ -> [ɒ(ː)] ~ [ɔ(ː)]) came to be used as yardsticks for the
new orthographic systems (as also in West Flemish and other non-standard
Dutch varieties where the long /a/ is pronounced more or less rounded).

Let it now be said that I don't know how to bring practically any seemingly
extraneous topic back into the Lowlands!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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