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Re: Phonetics vs. Phonemics (was: apparently bizarre 'A's)

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Saturday, February 25, 2006, 14:10
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> R A Brown skrev: > >>>> One rather well-known language which has this allophony >>>> is Tamil. /k/ is [k] word initially and in gemination, >>>> [g] after /n/ (which becomes [N] in this position) and >>>> [G] when ungeminated between vowels. >> >> >> >> Yep - what is generally transliterated as _itu_ (this) = ['IDU] > > > Isn't it rather ['IDM]?
Quite possibly - my only slight speaking practice was with an English family who had lived near Madras for several years :)
> >> =============================================== >> >> Roger Mills wrote: >> > BP Jonsson wrote: >> > >> >>I suggest everyone reads J C Welss' "Accents of English", >> >>Cambridge 1982. That reading will preempt all YAEPTs >> >>for a long time to come. >> >> >> > >> > Oh!! An outcome devoutly to be wished for......... >> >> Amen! >> > > That should of course be "J C Wells" and nothing else. > > John C. Wells is Professor of Phonetics in the University of London, > Esperantist and spelling reformer. His homepage is here: > <http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/> > > See especially: > <http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform.htm> > > The beginnings of a presentation of my own modest proposal is > here: <http://wiki.frath.net/New_AngloSaxon_Spelling>.
As well as churning out umpteen conlangs during my teens, I also came up with quite a few schemes for spelling reform. I think that among anglophones, at least, spelling reforms schemes are as de_rigueur as the 'Romance conlang' for the budding conlanger ;) But Wells does highlight the problems. Those schemes that are clearly regional make me squirm. But I fear all reforms will meet resistance; one has only to think of the stubborn resistance of my fellow countrymen to the modest (and IMO sensible) reforms of the Americans in reducing -our & -or uniformly to -or (a process that had begun also this side of the Pond, but got halted when our American cousins "rushed it", so to speak), and levelling both -er and -re to -er. BTW, I would level -our, -or, -er and -re, as well as -ar, all to just -r myself ;) But your scheme is doomed to failure on both sides of the Pond with all those 'furrin' diacritics! -- Ray ================================== ray@carolandray.plus.com http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>