Re: OT: Slightly OT: French as a second language

On 21 Nov, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Nov 2001 12:30:58 +0200 Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
> writes:
> >     3. And let's not forget the spelling, a topic of extreme
> > youthful
> > anguish often heard in our home. ;-)  Hebrew is spelled a lot more
> > like it is pronounced than English is.
> >         Typical rant in our home: "Why are there 50 million ways to
> > spell(and they pronounce /i/)? If it sounds like (pronounced
> > /i/), it should be  written "i" and be done with it!"
>
> > Dan Sulani
> -
>
> Do you know why they picked "i" for /i/, and not another spelling version
> of the sound, like "ee"?  They don't know IPA, do they?  ;-)
    No, they don't know IPA. They just choose "i" because
it's a one-letter spelling, simpler than other variations.
    They  consider "i" a valid spelling variation of /i/ because
in their Hebrew-accented English, words with "i" are pronounced
[i] (for example: "fin" is pronounced [fin] and not [fIn]).
As a native-speaking  [I]-user myself, I personally wouldn't
consider "i" as a valid spelling variation of /i/,
but I was quoting them, not me!
    Anyhow, I just used the phoneme /i/ as an example.
My kids have carried on, at various times,  at length, about _all_
the sounds that have multiple spellings in English!
 (It does seem to me, though, that there are variants of English [ that is,
English as L1]  in the world which lack [I] and use [i] or [ij] instead.
Anyone on this list know for certain?)

Dan Sulani
------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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