The language ends up being very far from phonetic, but it's evidently organized on such principles. The letters generally have one or two primary sounds associated with them, so that when we see a new word we can usually guess about how it sounds, or transcribe foreign words into English. There are exceptions a lot of the time, but they are still the exceptions rather than the rule, I'd say. Maybe the best way to sum it up is: English is written with the Roman alphabet. ;)
PS - a quick search finds /g/ as in ghost, /gh/ as in doghouse, /f/ as in enough, /p/ as in hiccough, /w/ as in plough, /h/ as in Callaghan, and if you accept them, /k/ as in lough, /θ/ as in Keighley. Also it can show up as part of /ng/ or /ngh/ or as //, as in light. Tolkien used it to represent /γ/, but he was clearly being ridiculous.
Anybody know what this alphabet is called, and if it's already included:
A Alpha B Bravo C Charlie D Delta E Echo F Foxtrot G H Hotel I J K L M N O P Q R S T Tango U V Victor W X X-ray Y Z Zulu
(and can you fill in the rest?)
That's a radio alphabet (there's a better name for it, which I can't remember). There are several versions.
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... is a so-called "phonetic" alphabet, not to be confused with the IPA.
I don't think Tolkien was being that ridiculous when choosing "gh" to represent the voiced "kh" or the fricative of "g". A couple other languages do that. Besides, it fits: k voices to g; kh voices to gh. I was kidding - I think it is completely reasonable, far more so than any of the actual options except g+h.
If syllabaries cannot have parallelism between sound and symbol (otherwise they would be called abugidas), can alphabets have parallelism between sound and symbol (such as a predictable mutation of the symbol from stop to fricative to nasal to semivowel or from voiced to voiceless)? --Damian Yerrick
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