USAGE: English vowels (w@z: Re: The Language Code (take 4)

At 09:47 16.6.2003 -0600, Dirk Elzinga wrote:

>To get English down to 9 vowels requires a degree of ruthless parsimony
>that would be highly controversial.

When writing English with tengwar I use six tehtar
(diacritics) for non-diphthongal nuclei:

         I E & O V U

These may be followed either by a consonants or one
of three vocalic codas/semivowels:

         Ii Ei &i Oi (Vi) (Ui)
         Iu (Eu) &u Ou Vu Uu
         I@ E@ &@ O@ V@ U@

To these may be added following /r/, since non-prevocalic
and prevocalic /r/ have different graphemes in the system:

         Ir Er &r Or Vr Ur

Note that although non-prevocalic /i u r/ are treated
graphically different from prevocalic /j w r/ they are
in fact in complementary distribution.

Also note that this system is able to cover and differentiate
  a wide variety of both rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations.
My own usage is predominantly rhotic, but includes some
compromises like {&@r} for [A(:)(r)] and {O@r} for [O(:)(r)],
while [O:] is usually {O@} and I distinguish between {&@} [A(:)]
and {O} [Q] like in most non-rhotic accents.

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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