[BRLTTY] Contraction error: Caledonia

[Keith Wessel]

My father (who some of you have seen on some of the other blindness-related
lists, Verle Wessel) worked with APH and others in writing the braille
teaching manuals. I asked for his input on this, and my suspicions were
correct... It's a sylable-based rule. Contractions can't bridge between two
sylables. Below is his detailed response. Unfortunately, this would be a
tricky one to write programmatically, I'm afraid.

My father wrote:
I am a little rusty in my old age, but I believe there is a rule that says
you should not use a contraction crossing over two syllables.  So the debate
is not so much about contractionizing as it is about syllabification.  In
most cases when the O follows the Ed sound, it is accented indicating that
is a separate syllable in itself.  Words like speedometer and pedometer are
fairly obvious.  The word fedora has 3 syllables fed-o-ra with the O most
pronounced.  Now is you were in England Caledonia would be written in four
syllables as cal-ed-o-ni-a, but If you are in America it woule be written in
3 syllables cal-ed-o-ya.  In the word predominant the letters pre make up
one syllable in itself, and the ed sign would not be used.

He said he would double-check with one of his colleagues to enture this
correctness, but he's fairly confident in this answer.

Hope this helps,
Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: brltty-bounces at mielke.cc [mailto:brltty-bounces at mielke.cc]On
Behalf Of Dave Mielke
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2007 9:11 AM
To: Informal discussion between users and developers of BRLTTY.
Subject: Re: [BRLTTY] Contraction error: Caledonia


[quoted lines by Lee Maschmeyer on 2007/08/24 at 09:28 -0400]

Hi:

>Very much to my surprise, Caledonia should use the e-d sign:

The problem is a rule in the table which says that "ed" in the middle of a
word, when followed by "o", shoudn't be contracted. This certanly looks like
a
flawed rule, but I'm not sure what the right rule should be. Here,
therefore,
are a few otehr such words I'd like your thoughts on:

bedouin
chalcedony
fedora
macedonia
pedometer
redolence
redout
speedometer
stevedore

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