Long words' stress

Tinkerers Anonymous: Some people can't help making changes to "fix" Toki Pona. This is a playground for their ideas.
Tokiponidistoj: Iuj homoj nepre volas fari ŝanĝojn por "ripari" Tokiponon. Jen ludejo por iliaj ideoj.
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mije Wi
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Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2009 5:29 pm

Long words' stress

Post by mije Wi »

What about stressing long words in the third syllable from right? That wouldn't change the common words' pronunciation but would make way easier long words (like Wikipesija).
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janKipo
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Re: Long words' stress

Post by janKipo »

We do need to think about that, since now ALL words are stressed on the first syllable, But shifting the stress might make it harder to identify words in some cases. Still, WIkipesija is not a comfortable mouthful.
janMato
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Re: Long words' stress

Post by janMato »

Wikipesija is just a bad transliteration. It should have been truncated at the point where it becomes unique. The cities and countries has plenty of examples where the last syllable gets left off. It follows we can drop a few more syllables off to make a name reasonable to work with. This happens in English, e.g. polyurethane -> polly as soon as anyone has to say it over and over all day.
janKipo
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Re: Long words' stress

Post by janKipo »

I sensible solution, though just when a word becomes unique is a bit hard to specify, Short enough to use; long enough to identify seems to work about right: Wikipi
Mako
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Re: Long words' stress

Post by Mako »

Isn't stress on the first syllable of any word the rule in some languages? IMO rampant post-tonic reduction is a fault of English, not necessarily other tongues.
janMato
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Re: Long words' stress

Post by janMato »

Icelandic and other Scandinavian languages put accent on the first syllable and is part of the cause of the Minnesotan/Lake Woebegone accent. French puts accents later (2nd to last? I forget). English is a French Germanic hybrid, so the accent varies based on a word's parentage. If I remember all this correctly.

I just ran wikipedia through my machine transliterator and got Wikipesi using the default options.
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