On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 4:26 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:
So, why not {SeqatlenDe’}? That would certainly be a more recognizable transliteration. Okrand’s looks more like its based on English spelling than pronunciation, which he has avoided doing when naming other countries.
He's been pretty consistent about transliterating word-final "-land" as {-lan}, even if it's natively pronounced as "-lant": - {ne'Derlan} The Netherlands (from Dutch *Nederland*) - {DoyIchlan} Germany (from German *Deutschland*) - {'Inglan} England (from English *England*) - {'ISlan} Iceland (from Icelandic *Ísland)* - {nu'SIylan} New Zealand (from New Zealandish *New Zealand*) He also consistently uses {I} to break up a word-initial "sc-" or "sk-" consonant cluster: - {SIQab'el} Scrabble - {SIqenDInavya'} Scandinavia (from English, I assume) - {SIqral} the river Skral (coined in English for DS9) I don't know why the vowel in "SIqot" is {o} and not {a}. After having watched a couple of Scottish accent videos on Youtube, my guess is that Scottish speakers tend to pronounce the "o" vowel with more rounding than in English, so perhaps Maltz thought {o} was a little closer.