* This letter can also be silent<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n ** Sometimes a <\/em>[ \u02b7 ] sound occurs at the beginning of these vowel sounds<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n *** This letter is only found in borrowed words and names<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n Questions you have probably already asked yourself include:<\/p>\r\n These are good questions, and there are two answers that address all the above questions.<\/p>\r\n As mentioned in the introduction to writing systems<\/a>, many languages use letters from the roman alphabet to represent sounds. They use letters in different ways, however: for example, the letter J usually stands for a [ d\u0292 ]<\/span> sound in English; in contrast, it stands for a [ \u0292 ]<\/span> sound in French, and for an [ x ]<\/span> sound in Spanish. Despite such differences, however, most languages with roman alphabets follow the same underlying rule, known as the Phonemic Principle. The basic ideas behind the Phonemic Principle are that<\/p>\r\n A sound-group is a set of sounds that speakers consider to be ‘the same’. While speakers can hear<\/em> the difference between such sounds (if it is brought to their attention), they typically ignore these differences because they do not convey any change in meaning in the language.<\/p>\r\n What you have just discovered is that the letter T represents a sound-group [ t\u02b0, d ]<\/span> in some<\/em> English words. (The [ t\u02b0 ]<\/span> and [ d ]<\/span> sounds are interchangeable in only a few<\/em> English words. It is more common for English to represent the [ t\u02b0 ]<\/span> sound with a T and a [ d ]<\/span> sound with a D.)<\/p>\r\n Although the later<\/em> example is only typical of a few English words (other words include butter, <\/em>shutter<\/em>, etc.), the situation where a single letter represents a sound-group is common in East Cree. In East Cree, the letter T always represents either a [ t ]<\/span> , [ t\u02b0 ]<\/span>, or [ d ]<\/span> sound. Unlike English, East Cree has no special letter for the [d]<\/span> sound because the [d]<\/span> sound is, at one level, ‘the same’ as the [t]<\/span> and [t\u02b0]<\/span> sounds for East Cree speakers.<\/p>\r\n Whenever sounds (or sound groups) convey a difference in meaning, a special letter is used to represent that difference. Because the difference between [ t ]<\/span>, [ t\u02b0 ]<\/span> and [ d ]<\/span> is not meaningful in East Cree, East Cree uses just one letter, T, to represent the [ t, t\u02b0, d ]<\/span> sound-group. Similarly, the letter K stands for [k, k\u02b0]<\/span> or [g]<\/span> sounds, and P stands for [p, p\u02b0]<\/span> or [b]<\/span> sounds. East Cree speakers use K to represent the [k]<\/span> and [g]<\/span> sounds because speakers can pronounce \u146d\u1431\u1455\u1424<\/span> kipitau<\/span> as [ k\u026ap\u026ataw ]<\/span> or [ g\u026ab\u026adaw ]<\/span> without a change in the meaning of the word.<\/p>\r\n As you can see, Cree uses letters differently than English does. Here is a summary of the main differences between how East Cree and English stops are spelled.<\/p>\r\n<\/a>The phonemic principle<\/h3>\r\n
Sound-groups: no meaning difference; one letter per sound group<\/h4>\r\n
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