Re: Ã…land

From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Wed Nov 02 2005 - 02:56:39 CST

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    On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Kent Karlsson wrote:

    > Regarding this particular case, I don't quite see why the names for
    > this "territory" in many languages should include "Islands"/"Îles"/etc.

    Probably reflecting the English name, but this raises the question
    of its origin. My guess is that some people thought that "Åland"
    (or "Aland") alone is so short and little known globally that it needs
    some addition to give a hint.

    > Many "island" territories do
    > not include that particular fact in their name (though some do),
    > and in the language spoken in Åland, it is just called "Åland",
    > usually not including mentioning the
    > islandsness.

    Indeed. I don't think I've ever seen the islandness mentioned in
    Swedish or in Swedish. If there is anything but the name, it's
    something like "Ålands landskap" or "Ålands län", which roughly
    corresponds to "county of Åland". Anything corresponding to
    "Åland Islands" would probably be taken as purely geographic
    and hiding rather than emphasizing the administrative status.

    > B.t.w. the draft Greek name in CLDR 1.3 for Åland is not even transcribed to
    > Greek.

    That's strange indeed.

    > But how to best transcribe Å into Greek, I do not know. Just using a
    > plain ALPHA seems inadequate. OMEGA with acute?

    Are there any fixed rules for transcribing from Latin script to Greek?
    What I have seen seems to aim at reflecting the pronunciation rather
    than spelling, so it would be odd to use alpha. Since modern Greek
    has lost the distinction between omikron and omega in pronunciation,
    I would expect to see omikron (with tonos, of course). I would also
    expect a suffix like -ia added to the name. But this would give
    "Olandia" (omikron lambda alpha nu delta iota alpha), which is
    disturbingly closed to "Ollandia", the registered Greek name for
    the Netherlands.

    -- 
    Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
    


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