> > You should have spoken about the 101 ways to write
> > [o] in French. ;-)
>
> /o:/ in my idiolect of Australian English, showing
> counter-examples after 'vs':
I did forget at least one:
- ough (fought, bought)
So 16+. Which is a lot.
> - a (water/call vs what /O/),
> - al (walk/talk vs album /&l/),
> - ar (war/quarter vs bar /a:/),
> - au (auburn/faun vs fault /Vu/ vs caustic /O/),
> - augh (caught/taught vs laugh /a:f/),
> - aul (caulk/Caulfield vs maul /o:l/),
> - aw (saw/law vs awry /@/),
> - oa (broad vs road /Vu/),
> - oar (boar/soar),
> - oor (poor/door)
> - or (cord, cork vs story /o:r/ vs orange /Or/),
> - ore (lore, sore)
> - our (court vs our /&u/),
> - uar (quart vs quarter /wo:/)
> - ure (sure vs pure /ji\u\w@/).
> (Note the number of homophones, too. /ko:t/ seems to
> be particu'ly bad.)
>
> That looks like 15, which isn't quite french's 101,
> but I'm guessing that's an exaggeration :P I
> might've
> forgotten a couple, too. There are others I could
> include, but won't because they're cheating (e.g.
> hors
> in hors d'oeuvre, which probably also has the oddest
> spelling of /8:/ at <oeu> and /v/ as <vr>). But
> anyway, it looks like the only reliable spellings
> are
> <oar> and <oor> and <ore>, the latter of which is
> less
> reliable because it relies on an unreliable
> orthographic habit.
>
> (Some of those obviously rely on context: a often
> requires a still pronounced rounding consonant (w,
> l)
> before or after it.)
>
> --
> Tristan.
>
> --
>
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