Much as I admire and appreciate the
French language (second only to Italian), the proximate derivation of "Unicode"
was not from that language, and the transcription should not match the French
pronunciation. Instead, it has solid Northern Californian roots (even
though not exactly dating from the Gold Rush days).
According to the references I have,
the prefix "uni" is directly from Latin while the word "code" is through French.
The Indo-European would have been *oi-no-kau-do ("give one strike"): *kau
apparently being related to such English words as: hew, haggle, hoe, hag, hay,
hack, caudad, caudal, caudate, caudex, coda, codex, codicil, coward, incus, and
Kovač (personal name: 'smith'). I will leave the exact derivations to the
exegetes, but I like the association with "haggle" myself.
I will ask our resident phonetician
about the IPA transcription. Clearly Standard British English would add some
interesting -- and no doubt valuable -- complexities and nuances to the
vowels, but that is not the goal in this case. Even "o" is often a
diphthong in English, it is probably better to have [o:] as a target for
matching from other languages, since [ou] may be considered slightly affected in
the native language.
The stress is definitely on the
first syllable. One does hear some normal generative English variations such as
ˈjunəˌkoːd. (schwa instead of short-i), but the stress
still should be on the first syllable, as in "unify", not later in the word as
in "unique". Of course, the best approximation in the target language should be
used: if it does not allow for that position for the stress (without affection),
then the secondary stress should be used.
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marco Cimarosti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Unicode List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001
03:11
Subject: Re: Transcriptions of
"Unicode"
>
> I don't fully agree with Mark Davis' API transcription of "Unicode":
>
> http://my.ispchannel.com/~markdavis//unicode/Unicode_transcription_images/U_
> IPA.gif
>
> Because:
>
> 1) I think that IPA transcriptions should be in [square brackets], while
> phonemic transcriptions should be in /slashes/. If neither enclosing is
> present, the transcription is ambiguous.
>
> 2) AFAIK, the phoneme [o:] (a long version of "o" in "got") does not exist
> in any standard pronunciation of contemporary English. It should rather be
> the diphthong [ou] (where the [u] would probably better be U+028A).
>
> 3) The transcription shows the primary stress on the first syllable, and a
> secondary stress on the last one. In the few occasions when I heard native
> English speakers saying "Unicode", I had the impression that it rather was
> the other way round.
>
> 4) As "Unicode" is the proper name of an international standard, and it is
> built with two English roots of French origin, it could as well be
> considered a French word, which would lead to a totally different
> transcription.
>
> Sorry if I am repeating something already said by other people: I have been
> off the list for a while. And, about points 2 and 3 above, beware that I am
> a second language English speaker and that I don't have much experience of
> American pronunciation.
>
> Ciao.
> Marco Cimarosti
