Re: alien xeno-anthropologists (was: Abkhaz)

John Quijada said:
>
> What "exotic" features about your language would you make up for alien
> xeno-anthropologists who visit Earth after some nuclear or biological
> holocaust to find you as the last living human being?
How about this:

English only has one vowel, but it has many phonetic realizations. This
vowel is never written in the text, but the consonants a, e, i, o, u, and
sometimes y are silent and act as placeholders for this vowel. Under no
condition is the choice of a placeholder consonant at all related to the
choice of phonetic representation for the unwritten vowel. Indeed, the
choice of phonetic realization often changes from one dialect to another.

~Caleb

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