Alain scripsit:
> In the latter language, if that word existed, it would be automatically and
> systematically syllabized into "ra-di-i (and perhaps, as there is a rule
> which says that you never cut a vowel alone, actual hyphenation would then
> rather be "ra-dii").
Syllabication (as some have it) or syllabification (as others prefer)
in English is a black art, and most people rely on dictionary lookups to
get it right, or else simply use intuition or a computer (perhaps equally
reliable in this case). Dictionaries don't always agree, however;
there are pressures in favor of pronunciation, and others in favor of
etymology, and either may win.
As Knuth says, "bathing" is "bath-ing", and "nothing" is "no-thing";
you can't have every-thing. Orthography in English evolves by a
Hartree-Fock iterative process (ask your local physicist) between
lexicographers and publishers, and this is one of the more difficult bits.
ObI18n: I have heard that in Italian it is acceptable to hyphenate
using "_" (underscore) almost anywhere, without regard to either
pronunciation or etymology. Is this true?
--
John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:48 EDT