🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes:
>
>> In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more
>> vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than
>> Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels.
>
>FOURTEEN?  Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me
>only FIVE:  A E I O and U!

Bruce, he's not talking about graphemes, i.e. the things you draw with pen
and ink.  He's talking about the vowels themselves.  Don't for a moment sup-
pose that the English writing and English sounds correspond very closely.
In fact English has a much richer vowel inventory than its writing system
is capable of representing - even using double vowels like au, ou, etc. in
addition to our Latin vowel-symbols AEIOU and sometimes Y.

Hope this helps.
-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@sophist.uchicago.edu         rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer