Re: Mongolian Transcription (Bataar vs. Baatar)

[Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@inetia.pl>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: Mongolian Transcription (Bataar vs. Baatar)


< < Is it stress? And/or length? > >
< Having heard a little Mongolian spoken, it sounds like stress. >

It's length, which in the case of "baatar" (the correct Latinisation of the 
modern Mongolian word) results from historical contraction after the loss of an 
intervocalic consonant. In transliterated Classical Mongolian the word is 
"ba{gh}atur", where "{gh}" (Greek gamma) stands for a voiced velar fricative, 
dropped in Middle Mongolian (15th-16th c.). The long vowel also happens to be 
stressed, since in standard Mongolian stress falls on the first long-vowelled 
syllable of a word (thus in "ulaan" the second vowel is both long and 
stressed). If there is no long vowel, the word-initial syllable is stressed.

Piotr