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

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
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