Re: Optimum number of symbols

Mike S. wrote:>Actually, most of the time, these patches are either
unphonetic
>or unproductive as phonetic markers.  I'm not sure what to call
>the "h" in English diagraphs, but a phonetic marker, it is
>certainly not.  Likewise, the Spanish tilde only marks one grapheme
>--arguably phonetic but hardly productive.  The German umlaut
>*seems* like a phonetic marker--until we learn that a"u
>is pronounced [OI].  What's that all about?
It's the result of phonetic changes after the "phonetic patch" was
introduced. I'm sure one or another of our resident germanophones 'll
correct me if I get the details wrong, but basically "au" was [OU] in the
good old days, and "äu" was the umlauted version [2Y]. Later these mutated
into [AU] and [OY], giving the modern apparent weirdity.

                                                          Andreas

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx