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Re: Phonetic scripts and diphthongs ...

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, July 16, 2004, 19:22
On Friday, July 16, 2004, at 12:39 , j_mach_wust wrote:

[snip]
> Exactly. I believe it's a peculiarity of the English alphabet that > certain affricates are represented by single letters.
Only [dZ] is represented by a single letter, [tS] is not - and English has no other affricates.
> This is only > because historically, they were single sounds. English /dZ/ was once > [j].
Not in English it wasn't. The sound came into English from Norman French as [dZ] (in modern French, the old French [dZ] has become simply [Z]). The Old French affricate [ts] simply became [s] in English borrowings, as neither Old English nor Middle English (nor modern English) has the affricate [ts]. (Where [ts] does occur in English, they are two phonemes).
> In German, e.g., you see that certain affricates are represented > with single letters (<z> [ts],
Yes - its not only the English version of the Roman alphabet that represents an affricate with a single letter - nor, indeed, just the English & German versions.
> and in alemannic German <k> [kx]), but > others are represented with compound letters (<pf> [pf], and <tsch> > [tS]). The other English affricate, /tS/, is represented by a digraph, > <ch>.
Nor is it peculiar to varieties of the Roman alphabet. The various versions of the Cyrillic alphabet certainly have single symbols for affricates (tho not for diphthongs) - and so do many other alphabets. Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>