Grapheme clusters, a.k.a.real characters

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>:

> Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>  * a final "v" receives a superfluous "e" ("love")
>
> It's not superfluous there, it's preventing "love" from looking like
> it should rhyme with "of".

I'm pretty sure that wasn't the original motivation. If I had to guess,
the reason was the possible visual confusion with "w".

An interesting tidbit is that the English spelling demonstrates how the
[o] sound regularly shifted into an [ʌ] sound in front of nasals and
"v":

   dove
   love
   hover
   cover
   shove
   above

   sponge
   come
   among
   front
   done
   son
   monk
   monkey

Again, exceptions abound:

   on
   wrong
   song
   gone
   long


Marko