Re: YAEPT alert! [Re: Not phonetic but ___???]

Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> > POOR would have been better.
>
> Except that in my 'lect POOR is a homophone of PORE and sounds nothing
> like CURE. :)
Right.  Bad idea on my part.

> Ah.  What about the [l] in PALM?  Is that also part of the distinction?
No.  Do you actually articulate any [l] there?  I don't.  This set contains
very few native words; in particular, "all" and friends are part of the
THOUGHT set, which I suspect you actually collapse with PALM (I don't, but
most Americans do).

> Either way, though, that seems like more vowels than any one language
> has any right to have. :)
As the number of vowels and diphthongs, it's not so huge.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Rather than making ill-conceived suggestions for improvement based on
uninformed guesses about established conventions in a field of study with
which familiarity is limited, it is sometimes better to stick to merely
observing the usage and listening to the explanations offered, inserting
only questions as needed to fill in gaps in understanding. --Peter Constable

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