Re: Albanian spelling

Jim Heckman wrote:

By the way, why are Swedish verbs in -a, here S. "stava" > F. "tavata", typically borrowed into Finnish as so-called contracted verbs of the type Abondolo calls X-stems, instead of just plain old "tavaa" (stem tava-)?

I really don't know why this is the case for older borrowings. Nowadays, as you probably know, "contracted verb" formation is very much "in vogue": new verbs, whether borrowed or formed from pre-existing material, are typically taken into that category, probably because of clearer morphological segmentation.)

Ah bis. Where are the syllable divisions when geminates or diphthongs are involved? How would one spell aloud my so-far favorite Finnish word "liikkeessään"?

No difficulties whatsoever. The prime rule of syllabification is "there's a syllable boundary before each CV cluster", and additional rules exist mainly to place syllable boundaries between vowel sequences. Thus, simply: "liik.kees.sään".

(By the way, are there any words with more than five double letters in a row?) 

Not that I know of :)

You've said before there aren't really any synchronic differences between what are called diphthongs and other vowel sequences,

Yup, and that turned out to be a flamebait :) Maybe I'm too much of a
phonetician and tend to look at linguistics from an overly sceptical viewpoint; I just think your typical linguist doesn't care too much about boring details--he's much too busy with the broad picture!

but I understand Finns are still taught the traditional 16
diphthongs.  Do these count as single syllables when spelling aloud?
How many syllables are there in "auto" and "radio"?

True. Just in order to count the syllables, you need to know which vowel sequences are syllables and which aren't. "au" is, "io" isn't, so: "au.to" (2) but "ra.di.o" (3). (I must say that, as a phonetician, I see very little point in this kind of exercise :))

--
..... Tommi Nieminen .... http://www.saunalahti.fi/~tommni/ ....
    Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
        -G. B. Shaw-
..... tommi dot nieminen at campus dot jyu dot fi ....
.

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