Re: YAEPT: Enuf is Enuf: Some Peepl Thru with Dificult Spelingz

Mark J. Reed wrote:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/ap_060707_simpler_spelling.html
>
> Of interest, surely...
>
> "[The American Literacy Council] says English has 42 sounds spelled in
> a bewildering 400 ways."
>
> My pop-sci decoder ring interprets this as a statement that English
> has 42 phonemes.  How does that number track for you folks?
>
> The consonant set is probably not subject to too much dispute.  I count
> 24:
>
> /p/,/b/,/tS/,/dZ/,/t/,/d/,/f/,/v/,/k/,/g/,/h/,/S/,/Z/,/l/,/m/,/n/,/N/,/r/,/s/,/z/,/w/,/j/,/T/,/D/
Concur.
>
> Which presumably leaves 18 vowels.  Anyone care to guess which 18 the
> ALC recognizes?  (The full list isn't available on their website; you
> have to buy their book, I guess.)
My SAE (Midwest dept.) can count 14-16 vocalic nuclei, depending...
i I e E & (@,V) u U o O (A~a), ay, aw, oy= 14 + yu makes 15??

or 15+yu=16 if I count @ and V as separate _phonemes_, which I don't.

(Mark: you say 19-- what have I neglected???? Syllabic r,l,m,n? I consider
them biphonemic V+C, though one could argue the point. So if we add those to
my basic 14, OK, but then what about /yu/?-- It's anomalous in whatever
system you choose-- (1) the only rising diphth. in nativized words or (2)
the #C+y cluster occurs only before /u/-- borrowings like "piano" aside (and
IIRC most/all? the -yu- words are ult. < French, non?)

But they're talking about _spelling_, so all bets are off. Just to take the
sound [i]: ee, -iCe (machine), ea, ei, ie and even just i in common foreign
loans.

or whatever schwa-like stressed V occurs before /r/: ir, ur, er, or
(borough, thorough) but mostly final -or, and don't forget ol in colonel !!
There's possibly an -ar- spelling too, but I can't think of
any.........(Well, the name Caspar, if you spell it that way)

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