"hydpographica"

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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Soap
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"hydpographica"

Post by Soap »

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/qp9u28zt8neigeu/hydpo.jpg

Saw this in a bathroom. I don't know if there's anything to be made of it ... I've always wondered if there were times when words were loaned by letterform instead of by sound. I havent been able to find even a single example of that in English, though in other langs sometimes Roman alphabet names are loaned in with Roman script instead of transliterating it. Is this just a simple scribal error? why was it not caught and fixed ~400 years ago?

another potential example is the name Remphan, which Wikipedia describes as being a loan from the Hebrew name Chiun ... if there is a connection at all, it presumably has to do with the letter shapes since /x/ and Greek /r/ do not sound alike. The Hebrew name seems to begin with an "h" letter and not the qoph. Coptic is ⲣⲏⲫⲁⲛ .
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Hominid
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Re: "hydpographica"

Post by Hominid »

This isn't exactly what you're describing, but the word "Ye" in "Ye Olde" fits into this general category.

zompist
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Re: "hydpographica"

Post by zompist »

FWIW, I think the default hypothesis should be that it's a typo. Speaking as an author: it's astonishing and embarrassing how blatant an error can slip past your eyes if you wrote the thing.

I'm perhaps more curious how Anatolia was labeled as Natolia. Some quick Googling shows that Natolia was a pretty common designation, but I didn't find any explanation on how the a- was lost.

M Mira
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Re: "hydpographica"

Post by M Mira »

I can't come up with a serious one, but plenty jocular ones like "CCCP", "Fappu Nottep", and "Cyka Blyat".

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Ryan of Tinellb
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Re: "hydpographica"

Post by Ryan of Tinellb »

M Mira wrote:I can't come up with a serious one, but plenty jocular ones like "CCCP", "Fappu Nottep", and "Cyka Blyat".
I saw 'MOCKBA' (Latin letters) on a vehicle numberplate the other day.
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Re: "hydpographica"

Post by hwhatting »

zompist wrote:I'm perhaps more curious how Anatolia was labeled as Natolia. Some quick Googling shows that Natolia was a pretty common designation, but I didn't find any explanation on how the a- was lost.
Perhaps via a Romance language (I guess Italian) where spoken l'Anatolia [lanatolia] was wronly segmented as la natolia.

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