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Re: Future English

From:Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 9, 2005, 20:08
In a message dated 2/9/2005 9:17:04 AM Eastern Standard Time,
emgrasso@DATA-RAPTORS.COM writes:

>I think major simplification of the English phoneme inventory (especially the >vowels) is unlikely without some really strong external impetus. It's like >getting rid of kanji in written Japanese: you end up with so many homophones >that ambiguity spikes. If the vowels flatten out, what methods will the >resulting langauage use to counteract this ambiguity? If both vowels and >consonants simplify, where does the meaning hide? If the phonemic invontory >drops despite this problem, what causes this shift?
>(Recent dialectal drift seems to me to be more in the direction of increasing >vowel weirdness, if anything.)
On the other hand, I can think of some mergers in progress or recently completed in varieties of AMercian English that do simplify the phonemic system and/or lead to homophones: The merger of /O/ and /A/ in much of the Western US. The merger of /I/ and /E/ before nasals in much of the South. The merger of /w/ and /W/ for most Americans The loss of /h/ before /j/ for many Americans, leading to "Hugo" = "Yugo". Each of those causes some homophony, but that doesn't seem to prevent the change. Doug

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Kevin Athey <kevindeanathey@...>