🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:
>
>I don't think the combinations are any more hideous that what German
>and most other languages already have: "sch", "ch", "au", etc. It's
>merely a question of what you are used to.
>
>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.

Doesn't it sort of muddy the waters to mix phonemes into a discussion
of fonts and orthography?  

German has umlauts; it also has standard orthographic substitutions for them
which do not use the dots: ae, oe, ue.  

Sch, ch, au, mentioned above, are not orthographic substitutions;
they _are_ the orthography.

English may have fourteen vowel sounds (I'd really guess at a higher 
number if you include pronounciations from New England, Manchester, Texas, 
etc.) but it has 5 (perhaps as many as 7) orthographic vowels: a, e, i, o, u
and occasionally y and w.  

Orthography does not match phonetics in any language I am aware of.  That
is why there is an International Phonetic Alphabet.  


-- Mike Eager