E and e (was: A break in the evils of English (or,Sturnan is beautiful))

Tristan wrote:
> Why? Aren't phonemic representations related to how the people hear the
> sound? In which case, using /ei/ ~ /E/ is perfectly normal and to be
> expected
Except that the /i/ part is unnecessary, as no dialect that I know of
contrasts [e] and [ei]/[ej], they have one or the other, so /e/ is all
you need, and when you make a narrower phonetic transcription, you just
need to know if [j] follows /e/ in the dialect.

> I must say, I especially hate anything that doesn't show the length
> difference between /i:/ and /I/
In a narrow phonetic difference, sure you would mark the difference, but
a phonemic transcription is not supposed to show predictable features,
like the length of /i/ or the offglide of /e/.

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