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From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: languages with phonetic alphabets?
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Message-ID: <1995Mar26.094517.9708@chemabs.uucp>
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References: <3kv7jk$61e@news1.delphi.com> <planders.578.2F732A45@mail.utexas.edu>
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Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 09:45:17 GMT
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In article <planders.578.2F732A45@mail.utexas.edu>,
Preston Landers <planders@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>In article <3kv7jk$61e@news1.delphi.com> tmoran@bix.com writes:
>
>>My son asked if there are any languages where each letter of the
>>alphabet has a single pronunciation.  Are there?
>
>Russian is pretty close to that.  Within a single dialect of Russian, there
>is pretty much only one way to pronounce each letter, and also each sound in
>the language is represented by a single letter with a few exceptions.
>
>
>//////////////////////////  Preston Landers
>/////////////////////////  planders@mail.utexas.edu

This isn't exactly true, at least not for standard, literary Russian.
E.g., unaccented "o" is reduced to "a" immediately before the stress and
"@" (schwa) anywhere else (the phenomenon known as "akanje").  Also,
final voiced consonants are devoiced.

Serbocroatian is the most phonetic of the Slavic languages, with clear
unaccented vowels and voiced finals.
-- 
Rick Turkel         (___  _____  _  _  _  _  __     _  ___   _   _  _  ___
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