Re: Optimum number of symbols,though mostly talking about french now

Quoting Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

> "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> > Yeah -- these people sound like the anglophone feminists who insist
> > that the word "woman" should be spelled "womyn" because the Old English
> > construction "wífmann" was sexist
>
> Didn't _mann_ mean simply "person" in Old English?
That is, IIRC, the case. This of course makes that particular
feminist's position even less tenable.

> > despite the fact that synchronically
> > for most modern speakers "woman" is monomorphemic, and bears only
> > phonological remsemblance to "man".
>
> Not even that.  Man is, at least for me, /m&n/ and woman is /wUm@n/.
> I'd say it's only an orthographic resemblance.
>
> Interestingly, _women_ is /wImIn/, and since /I/ and /@/ are very
> similar sounds in my dialect, the most salient distinction between the
> two is in the *first* syllable, where there is no orthographic change.
For me too, as I stated in my other response.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers