Spelling and phonetics (Was: The amazing template which does nothing)

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 10:09:39 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 09:57:01 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
> wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 at 09:44:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> Just follow your natural way of speaking and you'll be fine. 
>>> Read it out to yourself. And let's be honest, it sounds 
>>> really crap when you read "an UFCS", bahhh!
>>
>> Yes, well, the problem is that "an U" sounds completely fine 
>> in my head!
>>
>> The way you pronounce the U letter in the English alphabet is 
>> the same (not sure if identical) as the Russian letter Ю, 
>> which is considered a vowel in Russian.
>
> In that case you'll just have to learn the rule: if it's a 
> single letter, it has to be `an`. Sorry, I didn't realize that 
> /j/ is treated as a vowel in Russian. I was thinking of 
> languages I'm familiar with, and there /j/ is always treated as 
> a consonant. Is the Russian sound a fricative or a pure vowel 
> without any friction (= obstruction)?

Can't answer that question, but <Ю> is actually [ju] in 
isolation, that is, a glide + a vowel. When preceded by a 
consonant, that glide is not pronounced, instead the consonant 
gets palatalized. Thus it would be better to say that /ju/ is 
treated as a vowel, not /j/.