i havnt read all of these threads (so many!) but the Hamtramck issue
makes me think of all those towns in eastern massachusetts that get
consistently misspelled and mispronounced - Worchester becomes
"Wooooster" and Glouchester becomes "Gloster" - I'm sure nicholas will
back me up on this, being in Waltham ("walthmm" or "wall-tham"
depending on who you are talking too).

It makes me wonder, when it comes to proper nouns, if spelling IS at
times arbitrary depending on the place and time that the name finally
gets written down (generally by the upper classes after the word has
been used by the rabble for quite some time), ie: is it really an issue
of spelling, linguistics, or historical analysis?

One of the streets that i have lived on was named Jameson Hill Road -
or Jamison Hill Road - depending on which end of the street you were
on, the signs having been put up by different townships at different
times. Personally my own first name (gabriella) has two L's in it only
because my mother was hopped up on painkillers after my birth and
forgot how she had intended to spell my name (Gabriela).

I guess my point is - i'm not entirely convinced that proper nouns are
even worth discussing as far as spelling goes...

On Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 01:54 PM, i18n wrote:

> At 04:35 PM 6/17/2004 -0400, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
> >My language arts teacher in second grade once told us of the time she
> >was in California and got blank stares when trying to get directions
> to
> >/la dZOl@/.� Simply a language problem; how was she to know it was a
> >Spanish name and pronounced /la hOja/.� "La Jolla" certainly *looks*
> >straightforward enough...
> >
> >~mark
>
> This one actually cuts both ways. I remember a time back in my college
> radio days when a Puerto Rican native son newscaster introduced the
> next DJ, Steve Snell, as Steve /snedzh/ (sorry, that is my best guess,
> I don't really know the codes the way everyone else does. But 20 years
> later that still brings a big grin to my face.
>
> Best,
>
> Barry
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> www.egroups.com/group/qalam - world's writing systems.
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