Re: Advanced English to become official!

Ray Brown wrote:

>
>> In most dialects of English, including the English spoken by most
>> nonnative speakers whose use you value so highly, there is no
>> phonemic distinction the carrot [V] and the schwa [@].
>
>
> Something we've debated more than once on Conlang. In RP of the SE
> England
> _curry_ & _furry_ do not rhyme; /V/ and /@/ are not the same. But they
> are
> in many dialects, including some Brit ones. I think a spelling reform
> designed for _all_ English speakers should indicated the widest phonemic
> inventory - and, of course, Pascal's scheme falls down badly in that
> respect.

While we're YAEPTing - 'furry' is [f3:ri] in my RP-ish Oxfordshire
dialect.

 However, I would never merge [@] and [V], for my dialect, that is. They
follow different rules.  Schwa can't occur in monosyllabic words, and
occurs only in unstressed syllables - because it's a reduced vowel.
However, [V] can quite easily occur in monsyllables, but rarely in
unstressed ones, because it tends to be reduced to schwa. But this does
not mean they are the same - many vowels can be reduced to schwa, in
totally unstressed syllables.

Rather I'd say it's just that their nature (in my dialect, again) means
they cannot have minimal pairs.  Rather like [N] and [h], in native words.