Sunday, April 17, 2011

Your Sunday Boring Postcard from Michael5000



Tblisi.


Provenance: Sent by L&TM5K Ambassador to the Caucasus Patrick, January 2011.
Posted by at 4/17/2011 08:16:00 AM
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8 comments:

Aviatrix said...

Tbilisi!

I never realized that Georgian was a phonetic alphabet, with vowels, before. For some reason I assumed it was like Arabic.

6:36 PM, April 17, 2011
Michael5000 said...

I am told that every postcard of Tblisi has a bus in it.

7:22 PM, April 17, 2011
Aviatrix said...

I believe that.

My first instinct was to spell Tblisi the way you did, but I was intimidated into inserting the extra vowel because both the Russian and the Georgian on the postcard have three i-letters.

Why do you suppose we use a spelling that defies English phonology when it's not attested in the source language?

8:13 PM, April 17, 2011
Michael5000 said...

What, you asking me? I dunno. Somebody wrote it down that way 300 years ago, maybe?

Worth noting, though, that if you go with the Russian / Georgian and write "Tbilisi," you're splitting up a perfectly good English "bl" and allowing the real oddball, "Tb," to stand. If we were transliterating from, say, the Vulcan, it would probably be rendered "T'blisi," no?

7:46 AM, April 18, 2011
Michael5000 said...

Hold the phone! It appears that the standard English spelling is indeed Tbilisi (from an old form "T'pilisi," ho ho!). So, the question is -- did I accurately type the Latin-alphabet caption on the back of that postcard? Or is it just another garden-variety typo? Find out tonight on the L&TM5k!

9:05 AM, April 18, 2011
Aviatrix said...

The Internet seems to favour Tblisi, but your theory about our affinity for bl is interesting, but in that case I would have expected metathesis to Tiblisi. I don't know which consonant blends Vulcan phonology supports.

10:18 AM, April 18, 2011
Elaine said...

I just want to know if the big stain is actually on the building or on the postcard photo. Because the former would be pretty interesting to speculate about....

2:42 PM, April 18, 2011
Michael5000 said...

I am holding here in my hand the actual artifact, resplendent with its four Armenian stamps, and can report the following findings:

1) There is no Latin text on the back of the card. Patrick, who has cred as he bought the cards in situ, writes "Tblisi."

2) The stain is very probably a scar from postal sorting equipment, although I can not say this definitively.

Also, this in from a non-commenter correspondent: "I showed the picture to my husband, because he taught [in Tblisi] in 2009. In his photos Tblisi is incredibly photogenic -- they had to work to get such a boring photo." And don't forget the waiting around making sure a bus was in the scene! A lot of work went into this postcard.

8:21 PM, April 18, 2011

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