Xref: utzoo comp.fonts:2547 soc.culture.german:4368 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!midway!ellis.uchicago.edu!goer From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) Newsgroups: comp.fonts,soc.culture.german Subject: Re: Umlaute [was: naive (...question about uncial...) ] Message-ID: <1991May22.225532.26321@midway.uchicago.edu> Date: 22 May 91 22:55:32 GMT References: <1991Apr24.152455.22367@engage.enet.dec.com> <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (NewsMistress) Organization: University of Chicago Lines: 21 In article <1991May22.141034.12747@pbs.org> btiffany@pbs.org writes: > >> In any case, I believe most dialects of English already have more >> vowels than any of the languages you mention (certainly more than >> Spanish). English has somewhere around 14 vowels. > >FOURTEEN? Well, when I was knee high from the floor in school they taught me >only FIVE: A E I O and U! Bruce, he's not talking about graphemes, i.e. the things you draw with pen and ink. He's talking about the vowels themselves. Don't for a moment sup- pose that the English writing and English sounds correspond very closely. In fact English has a much richer vowel inventory than its writing system is capable of representing - even using double vowels like au, ou, etc. in addition to our Latin vowel-symbols AEIOU and sometimes Y. Hope this helps. -- -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer