Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

Padraic Brown wrote:
> That's almost as bad as long and short (we already have hard and soft
> cees and gees), in my opinion; though it _is_ better than long and
> short by a goodly way. Why not just say that English has x number of
> distinct vowels and lay to rest the myth of 5 long and 5 short vowels
> a la Latin.
Well, there is a good reason for it - it's central to our orthography.
For example, /I/ and /aj/ are a complementary pair in orthography, as in
<bit> and <bite>