British Dialects Book

[Mark A Mandel]

I wrote:

#>/h/ is a phoneme. /h 'aI/ is a pron. As you train the program
#>initially and continue to use it, the /'aI/ phoneme gets adapted to your
#>pronunciation [a:] and the program gets better and better at recognizing
#>your speech.

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

#>AHA! /h/ and /aI/ are phonemes and /haI/ is a pron. It's not clear
#>to me why "pronb" are not phonemically-spelled wods (or morphemes).
#>I still find the term unhandy.

Uh? Actually, what we used as a pron for "hi" (and "high") was something
like    hI      , adapting the pre-Windows IBM-PC code page 437
character set for our symbols. And that is a phonemically-spelled word.
Two phonemes:
        h
        I, representing the diphthong aI with primary stress

You may not like the term. I'm not telling you to use it. We found it
indispensable, and when Lernout & Hauspie bought Dragon their people
adopted it eagerly.

-- Mark A. Mandel