Re: Wofir aka The Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 08, 2000 at 06:57:23AM +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > e.g. drop the {h} in spelling?  Wouldn't a portmanteauization
> > [snip]                                               ^^^^
> >
> > Hey!! a tetraphthong! :-P
>
> Don't we wish.  French seems to be chock full of multiple vowels that
> sound, to my ear, like single-thongs or diphthongs at best, like l'eau.
Oh, they are.  <eau> is the monophthong /o/, although it does descend
from a triphthong pronounced like the spelling.  French has one of the
most conservative orthographies of any European language, along with
Greek and, of course, English. :)

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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