On Thursday, 5 May 2016 at 16:28:58 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
Point taken, though I think the correct term is "phonemic
spelling". ;-)
Yep. "phonemic spelling", you're right.
Another issue is that the Latin alphabet, with its dearth of
vowel
letters, is really inadequate for representing the extensive
English
vowel system. Modern English has far more vowels than there
are letters
to represent them, and in an ideal writing system you'd have a
distinct
symbol for each of them.
What about combining existing vowel graphemes? In German you
write <au> for the diphthong /au/, and <ai> or <ei> for /ai/, why
wouldn't you be able to do the same thing in English?
Mai father was aut and abaut.
There would be nothing wrong with keeping <ou> as long as it
represents only /au/ and not /u:/ "through" among other sounds.
Consistency is important. Spelling should at least serve as a
template:
Sound convertGrapheme(T)(grapheme gr)
{
static if (T == RP)
return map!T(gr);
else static if (T == HibernoEnglish)
return map!T(gr);
else
return to!Sound("Bahhh!");
}
convertGrapheme!RP(ate); // returns /eit/
convertGrapheme!HibernoEnglish(ate) // returns /e:t/
