User talk:Omnipaedista/Sandbox

Χουσαὶν versus Οὑσαὶν

Hussein: would it be better with spiritus asper (Οὑσαὶν) instead of Chi letter (Χουσαὶν)?

Crazymadlover

Probably not. I'm transcribing the Classical Arabic version of the name, in which the first sound is a voiceless fricative pharyngeal whose closest analogue in AGreek is the velar chi, a primarily nonlaryngeal consonant; it's "crucial" to make the distinction btn. laryngeal and nonlaryngeal sounds in phonetics. If I were transcribing the English pronunciation (according to which the first sound is laryngeal), it would be Οὑσαὶν, of course [or even Οὑσεὶν or Οὑσεῖν], but first names in Wikipedias written in grc and la are based on the most immediate-to-classical form of a name; hence Bārūkh, which is the analogue of Barack in Biblical Hebrew and Koine (I'm wondering why the Vicipaedistae chose the "Anglo-Latin" Baracus and not Baruch, as in Baruch Spinoza). Btw., I have already written an article on Obama, but I'll probably wait till his inauguration on Jan 20, before I publish it. Omnipaedista 23:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)