Optimum number of symbols,though mostly talking about french now
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, May 25, 2002, 21:02 |
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"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?
> 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.
--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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