Re: English {phth} (was: Hellenish oddities)

On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 18:15:17 -0600 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
> Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > In Danish (as in English) the official pronunciation is /sf-/, but
> > (unlike English) there really aren't any word in common use where
> it
> > is initial.
> There aren't in English either.  Sphere is the *only* word that I
> know
> of with an initial /sf/, which is quite odd.  Not only is it the
> only
> case of initial /sf/, but the only case of two fricatives in an
> initial.
-

A friend of mine from IRC has a conlang, Vendi /vEndaj/ (very Anglic
orthography), whose first-person (singular?) pronoun is _sfas_.  I always
liked that word, along with other words from his language - such as
_atè_, /ati/ "friend".  Maybe i liked the word _sfas_ because of it's
simultaneous Englishness and foreignness, with that initial /sf/.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "...tidal waves couldn't save the world from californication..."
                ~ red hot chili peppers, "californication"