Re: Cyrillic for English

Roland Hoensch wrote:
>
> Three letters granted.  That leaves English with 30-35 seperate
> sounds and 26 letters.  I won't say that's good or bad... but three
> letters when about a good 10-12 were needed is a small start
> if anything.
You're totally ignoring the digraphs.  English represents the /S/ sound,
a sound which was foreign to the Romans, quite adequetly with the
digraph {sh}.  With the exception of /Z/ and /D/, we have a combination
for every letter.  /Z/ is a new sound to the language, which explains
why it does not have a distinctive representation - tho "zh" is often
used in quasi-phonetic spellings as used in foreign language phrase
books - and /D/ is represented by {th}.  With the exceptions of
pronouns, articles, and demonstratives, the rule about when {th} is /T/,
and when it's /D/ is very easy to explain - /D/ when written between
vowels (e.g., bathe, breathe), and /T/ when not (e.g., bath, breath)

Vowels are another thing, but even they are pretty well represented by
combinations like "ee" and by rules like the rule about VCV, the first
vowel is long (e.g., "mate", the a is "long", /ej/, "mat" it's "short",
/&/)

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