Re: English notation

> I must make it clear that personally I have no animus against Americans.
> Indeed, on my visits to the USA, I have found Americans to be courteous &
> hospitable.  BUT - I'm afraid Americans are not always perceived that way,
> even here and still less in other parts of the globe.  And one reason is,
> quite frankly, the attitude: "Look, buster, we are the dominant power in
> the world today, so you'd better get used to it."

And Dubya has four years to really stuff the country up. Oh well, here's
hoping ;).

----


>
> Here, in little old England, I went to Mass Friday morning in a church in
> the southwest of London.  The priest was of African origin (west African, I
> think), and he most certainly had neither an American nor a British accent.
> One my visits to South Africa I find quite a different accent, but similar
> to what I've heard people from Zimbabwe use.  Neither the Aussies nor the
> New Zealanders speak with anything that can be mistaken for either a Brit
> or American accent (at least, by us Brits - I'm told that some Americans
> find it difficult to distinguish Cockney & Aussie - strange).  And the
> English of the Indian sub-continent is quite different from that of Britain
> or the US.

My History teacher is a South African, and her accent seems so much like
a New Zealanders. (/I/>/@/, for example, and /U/ nearly> /@/ (or maybe
that's just /U/. I'm pretty sure that /U/>/u/ in Oz).
On the other hand, I've got friends who can't *understand* Cockney.


> But, surely, the orthographies discussed so far in the present threads have
> been _phonetic_, not phonemic.  Any successful spelling reform for English
> as a whole must be phonemic.

They've all seemed pretty phonemic to me, just phonemic for one dialect. Or have I
missed something somewhere?

>>.......they shouldn't choose some dialect that isn't
>>the most complicated; spelling /"kVr@nt/ ans <kerent> or whatever it is
>>makes no sence to a fair amount of the population.
>>
>
> Indeed not - it took me a while to work it out.
>
> (I see Tristan, tho living in a completely different part of the globe,
> like me pronounces _current_ with [V].  Not everyone conflates /V/ and /@/
> ;)

Tristan, tho living in a completely different part of the globe,
pronounces _current_ with [A], which corresponds exactly with your [V],
but has long-short distinctions too.
But I can't think of enny distinguishings between A and @ - furry is
/"f3\:ri/, not /"f@ri/ or whatever you have, (but curry is /"kAri/). But
the distinction is still there (many aussies think NZers say 'sex' for
'six' and 'six' for 'sex' (but 'fush 'n' chups' for 'fish 'n' chips').


Tristan