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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography (was Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
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References: <3ergbm$g14@condor.cs.jhu.edu> <rharmsen.97.000B857D@knoware.nl> <D27L7o.6o2@spss.com> <rharmsen.109.0015D233@knoware.nl>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 17:25:40 GMT
Lines: 32

In article <rharmsen.109.0015D233@knoware.nl>,
Ruud Harmsen <rharmsen@knoware.nl> wrote:
>In article <D27L7o.6o2@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>Like so many schemes for English spelling reform, this one spends most of
>>its energy fixing what isn't broken.  For instance, <th> represents two
>>sounds in English, so one could make a (weak) case for separating them;
>>but why replace *both* of them with 'dh'?  
>
>Did I? My intention was to use "th" AND "dh" for these two sounds. Where did I 
>write a "dh" for what is spoken as "th"? (sorry if I overlooked),

Cf. "a not-too-sharp brake widh dha past"; if you meant to use "th" for 
unvoiced /T/, that should have been "with dha past".

>But you are right that these two sounds, though clearly distinguished by all 
>speakers, are most probably just one phoneme. I set up rules to predict the 
>sound (a number of years ago, when I didn't have a computer yet, and I don't 
>know where I kept the piece of paper), and it CAN be done with almost no 
>exceptions. But you need not only surrounding phonemes for these rules, but 
>also grammatical categories (e.g. the, that, this, they, vs. think. There are 
>no _verbs_ that have an initial dh sound, etc.).

Right: initial unvoiced th appears only content words.  Does any historical
linguist here have an explanation for this?

>Intervocalic <s> is generally /z/
>>in English; why bother with 'pleze' or 'rezanably' then?  
>You mean intervocalic after _long_ vowel or diphthongs? What about "hissing"?

Sorry if I was unclear: "hissing" has <ss>, which is generally /s/, while
a single intervocalic <s> is generally /z/.  The same convention is seen in
French; cf. _frison_ vs. _frisson_.
