🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes:
> In article <TMB.91May22102757@volterra.ai.mit.edu>, tmb@ai.mit.edu
> 	(Thomas M. Breuel) 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!  It was mentioned that sometimes Y can act like
> a vowel, but it is still a consonant.  So at most you might say English has
> 5.5 vowels.  But 14??  Where did you come up with such a figure?

Elementary school spelling rules are simplifications that bear little
resemblance to the english language.  There are only 26 letters, but
many more distinct vowells and consonants.  These are encoded partly
as letter combinations and partly by convention.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)