Re: USAGE: di"f"thong (was: Tetraphthongs, Triphthongs, Dipht..)

On 5/28/06, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
> >John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
>
> >(You may have also noticed me using spellings such as "laff"
> >or "enuff", which I hope everyone can agree to be improvements.)
>
> Why two f's?
Presumably because the doubled letter indicates that the vowel should
be short.   I mean, no Anglophone would look at <laf> and say /lejf/;
they might say /laf/ instead of /l&f/, but then half the world says
/laf/ for <laugh> anyway, as Philip said.  So the doubled letter is
not really necessary in <laff>. However, it has more utility in
<enuff>, since I could definitely see someone reading <enuf> with a
/-nuf/ or /-nUf/, vel sim.

English spelling is, after all, approximately phonemic, despite the
many rules and their many exceptions.  A fluent reader will make
certain assumptions about the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word, and
one goal of a gradual spelling reform such as John seems to be
undertaking - as opposed to the big bang proposals - is to make those
assumptions correct more often than they currently are, rather than to
violate them for the sake of rigorous adherence to some new standard.




--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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