Re: USAGE: Adapting non-Latin scripts

>As long as the rules were regular with how to spell sounds, it
>doesn't matter if we spelt /æ/ as "a", "ä", "æ" or "ae" and /ei/ as
>"ai", "aa" or "é". If we just picked one and stuck to it, we'd be
>laughing. The Finns are (hopefully not at us ;), and they have more
>vowels than we do.
>Tristan.
Digress:
We actually tend to view most of ours as sequences of multiple vowels - only
the 8 monofthongs are seen as independant phonemes. A syllabe-final glide
interpretation works too, but then at least an additional schwa must be
positioned.

>From *our* POV, an analysis of English as /i i: e ei & A A: Ai Au o o: oi ou
u u: @/ (7 basic vowels + combinations) of course works just fine, but you
might protest...

BTW, I dout regularization would suffice to solve all problems of English.
Even with the exceptions aside, there's just too many rules - like the rule
of final <-ost> being "long".

John Vertical

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