Estac!

[muckefuck]

I could get used to being on top of things. Today I was out the door at 7:35 with everything in tow including my nightguard (for sleeping over at monshu's tonight) and last night's leftovers. I was stretched, breakfasted, and looking forward to getting in and leaving early in order to have more time with my honey tonight.

Then I got stuck in the elevator.

I knew I was taking a chance given what happened to Stoner Boy the other week, but it'd been behaving so well for a while and the other elevator was in use. (If you ask me why I don't go down the stairs, the answer is: bad knees. Thanks, Mom and Dad!) When it first stopped more than a foot below the ground floor, I thought I could still force the door; nothing doing.

So I did exactly what I told one of neighbours I'd do if this happened to me: I calmly took out my phone and called the front desk. Strabo answered promptly and promised to get one of the engineers. In the meantime, I sat back on the carpeted floor and started reading my copy of Pedro Páramo.

A few minutes later, Strabo was there, explaining that he couldn't find the engineer and trying to work the release with his keys. But the chief engineer was actually in the building and soon came by and popped the door open. Almost immediately afterward, the cavalry arrived in the form of two other employees. The chief engineer was demonstrating his method to Strabo; I thanked everyone and headed out.

One of the men was headed in the same direction and accompanied me as far as the sidewalk. "Ju güer estac in de elevator?" I told him it was no big deal; I had food, a phone, and entertainment. "Guan taim ay guas estac so ay col sequiuriti an tel dem to bringa mi bir an a ledi!" Yeah, maybe next time.

Comments

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Hah! That is a beautiful phonetic rendering... do you know where the guy was from? Nigeria? I shall try out "bringa mi bir an a ledi". It has to work for me one day.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Like all our engineering staff, he's Mexican, but he's got the strongest accent of all, so I just wrote English words in Spanish orthography. The d's should be approximants (like the "soft th", only even softer) rather than the stops you'd hear from most West Africans.

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

I just wrote English words in Spanish orthography.

I was going to complain about "güer" but figured you know better, but now I have to put in that complaint.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Howzat? I mean: Kay may deesess?

Ich bin ein hamburgüsa!

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

My original comment was u-umlaut-related -- that one generally uses the umlaut or the following "e" but not both (e.g. "Düsseldorf" or "Duesseldorf"), but I figured you were doing some sort of fancy phonetics that don't follow those rules. But then when you said you were using Spanish orthography, I had to protest. There is no ü en Español, is there?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You're right, there is no umlaut. However, there is a diaeresis. This is used to indicate that a u after g is fully pronounced and is not simply an orthographic device to indicate that the g should not be pronounced like j (i.e. IPA [x]). For instance, pingüino is pronounced [piŋ'gwino], not *[piŋ'gino].

To many Spanish-speakers, English w sounds like their gu. For instance, I've seen "whisky" spelled güisqui and "water" spelled guáter.

BTW, although Standard German doesn't allow üe except in proper names, it's common enough in southern dialect orthography for the diphthong /yə/, e.g. Alemmanic Büecher [b̥yəxɐ] "books".

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

while "güer" sent me spiralling off into Turkish. Whatever, it was great.

Umlaut or diaeresis

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

I think most of the people in the US call the mark an umlaut and not a diaeresis. From a computer standpoint there is no difference in most fonts. I have an ISO Spanish keyboard so diacritical marks are easier to produce and I have separate keys for ç, ñ, º and ª.

Chuck

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Probably true, but we are not most people!

There are some older fonts which have distinct characters for umlauts and diaereses--the difference is in the roundness and the spacing of the dots--but most standards (including Unicode) do not differentiate them, so such fine graphical distinctions may be extinct before long. Nevertheless, they will still be distinguishable according to their function.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

I totally missed the Spanish aspect - I was so chuffed to realise that it was a phonetic rendering of English, I missed the orthography. Still figure it works well as West African though :)

[thesilia.livejournal.com]

ROFL@your rendering of the dialect. i can HEAR it coming out of his mouth the way you write it. thanks!