All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn")

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:13 AM -0500 2/13/09, M Covarrubias wrote:
>On Feb 13, 2009, at 5:36 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>
>>"Son/sun" have the same vowel as "sung" ~sun/~sung as I hear in m-
>>w.com
>>
>
>it follows that the difference is not in the vowel but in the final
>consonant.
>
>the first vowel in "hanger" is the same as the vowel in "anger" but
>the first has a voiced velar stop after the velar nasal and the second
>does not. you're system cannot capture this difference. if you're ok
>with that then good luck with it.
>
>you're not looking for accuracy, you seem to be looking for ease and
>convenience. your system is certainly easy because it tolerates a very
>sloppy analysis of what sounds actually occur in english. all the
>problematic examples that have been posted are evidence of this.
>
>it's fine that you're happy with a notation system that gets "close
>enough" to an accurate representation. your standards are your own to
>live with. but it does no good for those transcriptions that require
>linguists to make consequential distinctions in pronunciation. the
>convenience of a qwerty keyboard isn't all that tempting when
>precision is more highly valued.
>
And, to be fair, the problem isn't really with the inadequacies of
qwerty keyboards, which are real but not necessarily decisive in all
cases of desired precision.  The ASCII-ized IPA, limited as it may
be, has no problem distinguishing _haeN at r_ from _aeNg at r_ or _s at n_
from _s at N_.  It's the old biuniqueness issue, and the phonemic
principle.

LH

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