From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Mon 07 Jul 1997 - 01:26:21 EEST
Jane replies to:
> "goihl@zedat.fu-berlin.de" (how do you pronounce that, BTW?)
"Daniel Fahey". (Hi there!) Discussion on how to pronounce "Fahey"
(will that be one syllable or two, sir?) snipped. And you thought
English was a language with a "phonetic" script, too. This is the
obvious objection to those who object that written Western can't be
such a script; having an alphabetic script with a notional phonological
mapping doesn't mean the language is actually _pronounced_ that way.
Pronounce "ghoti", to re-use a very old saw. Given enough conservatism
about written script, and drift in the spoken language, one could end up
with a tongue written using such an alphabet, which it's only possible
to read in a pseudo-ideogramatic fashion. ("It's _spelt_ 'Luxury
Yatch', but it's _pronounced_...")
Slainte,
Alex.
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 18:38:11 EEST