[DECtalk] why is dectalk's alphabet so strange?

[Alex H.]

Looks like DEC was loosely based on the CMU dictionary... there's
definitely some crossover somewhere...

[1] http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict

It's worth noting that between DEC 4.3 and 4.64, and FonixTalk
thereafter, there were some trivial changes, both with auditory
phonemes and what is accepted in brackets of phonemic text. For
example dashes choke FonixTalk, but work fine in 4.3. You can still
use underscores or commas to insert pauses, durations are optional as
always.

Alex

On 5/24/15, Mohamed via Dectalk <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> Hi guys, so, I have another dectalk question. So, why is its phonemic
> alphabet so strange? Like, uw, jh, hx, nx. I get what they're supposed
> to say, but in phonemes like h, j, etc, what's the purpose of the other
> character, like with the j sound, what's the purpose of the h?
> Thanks
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