I sure to converting
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Nah, the e on the end of "safe" isn't even a vowel; it's just vestigial. Well, I'm no philologist, but I think it's vestigial. Most of English's -e letters are remnants of a time when they were actual sounds.
The glosses I can quickly find show OE sauf -> ME safe -> Modern safe. That one in the middle probably sounds something like /'sef@/ or /'sefE/... and the Great Vowel Shift (http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_early_modern.html) probably royally screwed a bunch of this up anyhow. From what little I remember of what I've read, the -e we know and despise today was mostly pronounced as a schwa (the neutral sound of "uh" made with all your mouth parts relaxed) by the time of Chaucer.
Also, what "English teachers" (I would argue they are not even) usually claim is that there are "long" and "short" vowels, and that the -e on the end indicates that the preceding vowel is long (con vs cone). Like all spelling rules in English, this couldn't be complete without a whole ridiculous circus of exceptions (com vs come). On top of that, though, it's entirely wrong. Those vowels used to be long/short, but the GVS screwed the long ones into crazy shit and tensed up the short ones. So the first syllable of bide and bid used to be the same sounds, but bide was literally longer: the first vowel was the same, but with a greater duration. So, /bi:d@/ vs /bid/, where now it's /bAid/ vs /bId/.
For allaying any confusion, I suggest reading Mark Rosenfelder's Hou tu pranownse Inglish: http://zompist.com/spell.html
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For allaying any confusion, I suggest reading Mark Rosenfelder's Hou tu pranownse Inglish: http://zompist.com/spell.html
It's English! You can't have too much confusion…
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Unless you're talking Engrish?
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I still prefer Hawaiian. :P