Re: A break in the evils of English (or, Sturnan is beautiful)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>Jesse Bangs wrote:
> > Besides, it makes more sense for {ei} to be high-mid.  Everyone
> > generally
> > agrees that {e} represents an unrounded (usually front) mid vowel.
> > Everyone agrees that {i} represents an unrounded high vowel.
> > Logically,
> > combining them to {ei} can give an unrounded mid-high vowel, or [e],
> > which
> > then leaves plain {e} to represent [E] (or whatever else you need it
> > for).
> >
>
>But the problem is that nobody uses it that way, so there must be a reason.
>In
>my opinion, [e] is more "simple" than [E]. I think that if we did a
>frequency
>survey on the use of [e] and [E], we would find that [e] is used much more
>often than [E], even in languages that have both. And I don't know of any
>language that has [E] without [e], while I do know the contrary.
Does length count? Swedish (at least most variants thereof) have [e:], [E:]
and [E], but no [e]. [E] is one of the commonest sounds, too.

                                                 Andreas

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