Re: Cyrillic for English

At 8:52 pm -0500 10/12/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Roland Hoensch wrote:
[....]
>> n in new has no letter.
>
>Hunh?  It's the same as in "no" or "never", at least in my dialect.
In all dialects in both hemisphere IME.

>Some have /nj/, I suppose, but that's because the <ew> = /ju/.
I have /nj/ in /nju:/ - but it /nj/, not the palatal nasal of Italian
'gnocchi' /Jokki/.  Indeed, IME anglophiles find the correct pronunciation
of /J/ difficult & tend to substitute /nj/ so that, e.g. Italian 'signor'
gets pronounced as /sin'JOr/ or, more often in my neck of the woods,
/'sinjO:/

>
>> Even if it is to be digraphs; why not at least have letters for all
>> the consonants sounds?
>
>Except for /Z/, we do.  Consonants are almost totally predictable.  A
>bit complex, yes, but predictable.  The few exceptions are things like
><gh> which can either be silent or /f/.
...or /T/ in the placename 'Keighly' /'ki:Tli/   :)

>But, I think that those are
>naturally disappearing.  Just look at "tho", "thru", "nite", "lite" and
>the like.  Perhaps in a generation or so, <gh> will be lost.
Could well be - or the older spellings kept for special effect - as I've
occasionally met 'theatre' & 'gaol' in America to give 'quaint' or 'olde
worlde' effect.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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