On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 9:01 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:54 AM, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> And how does this strange language called English fits into your rules
>>> and (no) special cases scheme?
>>>
>>>
> http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/3989/Did-you-know-that-ough-can-be-pronounced-TEN-DIFFERENT-WAYS
>>
>> I learned six, which is no more than there are for the simple vowel
>> 'a' (at least, in British English; American English has a few less
>> sounds for 'a').
>
> What is this thing you call "American English"? :-)
>
> I wouldn't want to put an exact number of distinct accents in the USA, but
> it's probably in three figures. And it used to be said that a sufficiently
> skilled linguist could tell what side of the street an English person was
> born on, that's how fine-grained English accents used to be.
"American English" is the category compassing all of those accents
common to the USA. There are certain broad similarities between it and
British English, just as there are similarities between Dutch and
German; and there are certain commonalities across all accents of
American English, allowing generalizations about the number of sounds
made by the vowel "a". :)
>> Now have a look at Norwegian, where the fifth of those sounds
>> ("water") is spelled with a ring above, eg "La den gå" - and the sixth
>> is (I think) more often spelled with a slashed O - "Den kraften jeg
>> skjulte før". Similarly in Swedish: "Slå dig loss, slå dig fri" is
>> pronounced "Slaw di loss, slaw di free". Or let's look at another of
>> English's oddities. Put a t and an h together, and you get a
>> completely different sound... two different sounds, in fact, voiced or
>> unvoiced. Icelandic uses thorn instead: "Þetta er nóg" is pronounced
>> (roughly) "Thetta air know".
>
> English used to include the letter Thorn too. Among others.
Yes, but it doesn't any more. Icelandic is the only modern language
I'm aware of that retains thorn and eth (eg in "það").
ChrisA
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