Subject: Coelacanth

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 11:49:32 -0700 (PDT)

Asks Pierre

> The diphthong "oi" is missing. So how would you transliterate
> "koilakanthos"
> (a kind of fish known from fossils of which the finprlatimeria va'i
> gombesa is extant)?

The rule being that we get these from Latin (Linnaean) rather than
directly from Greek, this means coelacanthus. Because JCB forget to treat
oe as a soft vowel, this gives ko'elakanto.

So, two things:

(1) Do we want to make oe a 'soft vowel'? In English, oe almost always
goes to e; e.g. oeconomica > economics. So coelacanth is pronounced
seelakanth, not keelakanth. This would then make it co'elakanto. What do
French, German, etc. do --- do they treat the c in coelacanth as soft or
hard?

(2) This would involve adding to the existing standard in the Book, but I
still think oi and ai are more convenient for oe and ae, and not hard to
recognise. So I'd prefer koilakanto.

-- 
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Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
[email-masked] -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias