At 12:45 -0500 2002-02-18, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Most Samis live in Norway. In Norway, the Germanic language there >> borrowed the word S�pmi, S�mi, as "same" with an adjective "samisk". >> In Finland, where there are not very many Sami speakers compared to >> Norway, particular orthographic practices of that language write long >> vowels with double letters, hence "saami". > >I don't know how much the relative number of Sami speakers in >Finland contributed to the spelling; my guess is that the "long >vowel -> double vowel" rule was much stronger in this case. Any >kind of diacritics very rarely survive when words are "finnishized" >(made to agree with Finnish ortography) (In fact, I can't think of >any examples right now where the diacritics would survive, but I'm >certain there are counterexamples...)
But the point is that -aa- is unnecessary in English. Sami rhymes with swami. Saami looks bad in English, and there's really no motivation to prefer it. -- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
