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Is it any wonder that poor NNSs of English are led up (and down) the garden path by English orthography? Take the vowel sound ɪ, for example. This sound can be represented in English spelling by:
<a> as in village
<e> as in except
<i> as in inn
<o> as in women
<y> as in hymn
Admittedly, the first two representations are in unstressed syllables and may turn up in many people’s speech these days as ə rather than ɪ, but I still think this sound is a pretty good chameleon.
No, I haven’t forgotten <u> as a representation of ɪ. Examples please!
Then we have the reverse situation where a spelling is spectacularly chameleonic. Take the digraph <ui>, for instance. Sometimes it represents ɪ as in build, guilt, biscuit etc. Sometimes it turns up as uː as in fruit and juice. And sometimes it’s uɪ as in ruin.
Update: It’s just occurred to me that <ui> can also represent juː as in nuisance in many English accents.
Photo credit: Hans Bernard. Used under this licence.
I think I have it in “versus”.
Busy.
lettuce, minute and missus
Depending on your HAPPY vowel (and HAPPIES), there are many more, eg ie, ee, ae.
How about these:
<a> may be /æ/ (man), /e/ (many), /ɪ/ (image), /ɑː/ (father), /ɒ/ (what), /ɔː/ (all), /eɪ/ (mate), /ɛə/ (mare) or /ə/ (among);
and /iː/ appears as or (Cæsar, Caesar), (me), (beam), (meet), (receive), (people), (machine), (fiend), (oestrogen).
Graham: I’ve fixed it. The problem is that < and > must be entered as & l t ; and & g t ; (minus the spaces) otherwise they get interpreted as HTML and strange things happen. Sorry about that. I’ve deleted your other two posts, which are now irrelevant.
jm
This topic is the subject of my article
The Spellings of the English Phonemes
to be seen at §4.5 of my website
http://www.ywk.me.uk
SORRY
http://www.yek.me.uk
Aren’t there 14 or more sounds and combinations of sounds represented by “ough”?
@lipman
I can think of the following: /uː/ /aʊ/ /əʊ/ /ɒf/ /ɔː/ /ʌf/ at the moment, but it’s late and I’m sleepy, and I’m sure there are more.
update: and /ə/ of courseǃ
Why sorry, Jack?
… because of the typo in the URL
Re angular brackets and html code: I keep falling into that trap ever so often. And while I’m in it, I can’t remember what the escape route is.
Like Petr, I use the angular brackets so infrequently that I never remember how to do it. Thanks for fixing it John.