R: Re: English notation

BP wrote:

> At 20:41 2001-06-29 +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>
> >IMHO the only successful way for a wholesale reform of English (rather
than
> >regularizing present spelling) is to adopt a _phonemic_ approach which
> >accommodates all mainstream varieties of English.
>
> And that is what I'm attempting!
From Rosenfelder's site (www.zompist.org/spell.html):

<<Ideally you shouldn't have to worry about my dialect at all: you could
simply take (say) ê to represent whatever you pronounce as the vowel in met.
Unfortunately, English dialects are not uniform enough to share a single
phonology. There are many words that are not only pronounced differently in
different dialects-- that is, they have a distinct phonetic realization--
but also have their own phonemic representation.

Some examples:

1. GA is rhotic-- we pronounce the post-vocalic r's-- while other important
dialects are not, notably the British standard, RP.

2. I distinguish cot and caught, Don and Dawn; these vowels (ô, ò) merge in
the US West.

3. On the other hand, I merge the vowel sounds in Mary, merry, and marry,
which are distinguished in Eastern US dialects and in RP.

4. I pronounce wand wh the same.
>>
So, what to do with these, for intance?

Luca