Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Initial "Beged Kefet" consonants always have a...
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:38:01 -0400 (EDT)
>> we should not draw any conclusions from it. (In general,
>> transliterations are terrible guides to language, as I discuss at
>> length in my book, and as is well-known by linguists. If people want,
>> I'll try to post the evidence on-line.)
>
>In general? Any problem with German or Russian names transliterated into
>English?
Yes, oodles of them. Consider the English word "Russia" itself. The
English is bisyllabic, the Russian trisyllabic.
goes through some other examples. (And Vadim, you should know this
--- you have my book.) Going the other way, we find "Garvard" in
Russian for "Harvard" in English. In Hebrew, we find LIN-KO-LEN for
English "Lincoln," even though the second "L" is silent in English.
Etc.