What character was removed from the alphabet? (2020)
dictionary.com
dictionary.com
“Ye Olde” is Middle English (or maybe even Early Modern)
Old English doesn’t look like English at all. To my eyes, it looks Scandinavian-even though I know it is closer to Dutch than to Swedish/Danish/Norwegian. Actually, the closest living relative to Old English (apart from its descendants) is Frisian, a minority language of the Netherlands and northern Germany.
It’s eth (voice on, like in pronouncing “that”).
Icelandic still uses both, didn’t replace both with ambiguous “th”.
Typos evidently perputuate!
There’s a politician in the UK called Menzies Campbell, his name is pronounced “mingis” because that “z” actually used to be a yogh
> Menzies was proud of his Scottish heritage, and preferred his surname to be pronounced in the traditional Scottish manner (/ˈmɪŋɪs/ MING-iss) rather than as it is spelled (/ˈmɛnziz/ MEN-zeez). This gave rise to his nickname "Ming", which was later expanded to "Ming the Merciless" after the comic strip character
Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today: ampersand."
On the other hand, why it would have become so widespread as to become a word is what makes me doubt the story.
U’s conversation ’s equal to his wine,
You sup with W, whene’er you dine:
X, Y, and Z, hating to be confin’d,
Ramble to the next Eating-house they find;...
And Per Se And alone, as Poets use...
[0] A 1781 printing: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101068156031&vi...
[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075984876&vi...
Always impressed by people who can find primary sources for things quickly!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Tullius_Tiro
https://creativepro.com/ampersand-history-usage/#:~:text=The....
"Among Tiro’s notae was an innocuous character representing the Latin word et, or “and.” Though this was only one symbol among many (in their most elaborate medieval form, a system descended from Tiro’s original cipher comprised some fourteen thousand glyphs), the utility of Tiro’s system ensured that his et sign would considerably outlive both its creator and its sponsor. This was not, however, the storied ampersand: when Tiro created his so-called Tironian et, the ampersand was still more than a century away."
The book itself is worth a read for all the other punctuation marks it discusses.
We used wooden alphabet puzzles as a guide so it could reinforce the idea the you are saying L-M-N-O pretty fast.
Since the ABC song is one of three songs that use the same tune it is easy to teach an infant or toddler their alphabet as you sing them to sleep.
The ABC song, Baa-Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star all use the same tune.
Add in the backwards ABC's and you get four songs sung with the same tune so that the whole thing becomes tonally monotonous and soothing and it will tend to relax your child as you rock and sing.
With practice I got pretty good at mixing verses from these four songs on the fly so that the song eventually morphed into a single tune with disconnected lyrics. I used it as a challenge to keep myself awake while I rocked them to sleep.
For grins, the Backward ABC lyrics are:
Z, y, x, w, v, u, t...
S, r, q, p, o, n, m...
L, k, j, i, h, g, f...
E, d, c, b, and a.
Now I've sung them backwards to you,
Can you sing them backwards too?
Pretty easy to see how each letter breaks free of the original forward limitations.
I diagrammed it out in the post above. I hope that helps.
Z, y, x, w, v, u, t...
S, r, q, p, o, n, m...
L, k, j,
I, h, g,
F, e, d, c, b, and a.
I think F and E are too easy to turn into "effy" when you sing it out.
It's a personal preference. Yours works too.
NOTES = 0
ABC = 1
BWABC = 2
TTLS = 3
BBBS = 4
[0] C, C, G, G, A, A, (long G)
[1] A, b, c, d, e, f, (g)...
[2] Z, y, x, w, v, u, (t)...
[3] Twin, -kle, twin, -kle, lit, -tle, (star),
[4] Baa, baa, black, sheep, have, you, (any wool)?
[0] F, F, E, E, D, D, (long C)
[1] H, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, (p)... (the elemental problem rises because they crammed an extra letter into this line and distinguishing each individual letter gets muddy because they used the two D notes for four letters - l, m, n, o. This is not optimum)
[2] S, r, q, p, o, n, (m)... (gives each letter an opportunity to be clearly enunciated)
[3] How, I, won, -der, what, you, (are)...
[4] Yes, sir, yes, sir, three, bags, (full)
[0] G, G, F, F, E, E, (long D)
[1] Q, r, s, t, u, (v)... (pause on the F at S, or use a long F between S and T sop that the third and fourth notes merge on S)
[2] L, k, j, i, h, g, (f)... (fits the flow and allows each letter to have a distinct sound)
[3] Up, a, -bove, the, world, so, (high)
[4] One, for the, mas, -ter, one, for the, (dame)
[0] G, G, F, F, E, E, (long D)
[1] W, x, y, and, (z)... (Both notes G, F are merged to handle the single letter they are sounding and the E includes "Y and" to get you to the last letter)
[2] E, d, c, b, and (a). (This handles the rhythm like we see in [1] treatment of the stretching or pause on the third letter of the series)
[3] Like, a, dia, -mond, in, the, (sky)
[4] One, for the, lit -tle, girl, who, lives, down the, (lane)
[0] C, C, G, G, A, A, (long G)
[1] Now, I've, sung, my, A, B, (C's)
[2] Now, I've, sung, them, back, -wards, (to you),
[3] Twin, -kle, twin, -kle, lit, -tle, (star)
[4] Baa, baa, black, sheep, have, you, (any wool)?
[0] F, F, E, E, D, D, (long C)
[1] Tell, me, what, you, think, of, (me).
[2] Can, you, sing, them, back, -wards, (too)?
[3] How, I, won, -der, what, you, (are)
[4] Yes, sir, yes, sir, three, bags, (full)
That's all I got. That's how I sing it. I tried to break out the notes as they flow in each song. Commas separate each note in the song and the parentheses around the last word or letter denote a long note. Where you see two words behind one comma those two words use the same note - "for the" is an example. It all fits for me though I guarantee that there is more than one way to skin this cat. This way works for me.
So like, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyZ, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxY, ...
You can also use this algorithm to reverse a linked list, though you will not get the job if you do. I'm wondering if the cops are as picky as Google interviewers.
Since I don't drink any alcohol and don't drive, I can't imagine I'd ever have a chance to use this in a field sobriety test, but I also suspect that a cop who pulled me over wouldn't find it particularly amusing, so I wouldn't be eager to try it anyways.
I decided that it was a useful skill. Later when our kids were born and the long early morning hours were filled with rocking chairs noises, diaper changes, feeding and burping I took the opportunity to add that version to my song list. Sometimes I ended up singing every song that I knew any words from so it helped a lot when I was tired to focus on one tune.
Single-quote/quote comma/less dot/greater p y … a o e u i d h t n s …
abcdefg, hijklmn, opq, rst, uvw xyz
It goes something like.
A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q R S T U
V W and X Y Z
Y and Z
Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlZNXUWh9Do
*facepalm*
A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q
R S T
U V W X Y Z
Yes it doesn't rhyme but it scans so much better that, once you're used to it, the American LMNOP version sounds ridiculous.
Such a pattern of 16ths occurs in "have you any wool" in the English nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep", which is sung to the same tune.
Now, I sometimes get confused about what letter comes next. If I'm at `G` am I supposed to say, GFEDCBA or am I supposed to go from my forwards anchor of ABCDEFGH ? This happens when I'm at a nice anchor in my backwards memorization that's a non-anchor in my forwards memorization.
But I mean, yeah, neat party trick that I can say ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA (and also type it really quickly).
Interestingly, my breaks are different from the parent commenter's:
ZYXWVUT
SRQP
ONMLK
JIH
GFEDCBA (this part was easy from the start because I played piano)
No alphabet song involved at all.
Reminds me of this classic, the reverse bike:
The only one that ever got any mileage out of it was my little sister. At a poker party she was going into the kitchen for some soda. Somebody asked as she entered 'Cindy, can you say the alphabet backward?' As she opened the fridge, got the 2-litre and poured, put it away and left the kitchen she sang the alphabet song backwards. Never stopped to ask why they wanted to know. Just did it and left, cool as a cucumber. My sister is so cool.
I wasn't sure why there would be two kinds or when to use each kind, but I figured they'd explain later.
Those Sesame Street people really understood how a kid's mind works.
Lesson? KISS. They should've implemented it with brackets.
as opposed to simply not continuing the list, or using the word "end" somewhere? this doesn't make sense, to me. I find it difficult to believe this.
The common speculation seems to be that they put it in there simply because it's a symbol. I think about the alphabet as representing a class of characters that represents sounds, which biased my interpretation of the story. However, others could have thought of it as a list of symbols to know in order to read (besides punctuation).
-bash: c/passwd: No such file or directory
$ cat: /: Is a directory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86
But by the time I was in High School it seemed to have disappeared.
Þ called "thorn" is another, which type setters replaced with a Y so as to not add another letter to their collections. It made the "th" sound and why "Ye Olde ..." is a spelling convention but people of the time would never have said "yee" for it.
Other letters were lost too, eth, wynn, and this is all contributes to why Modern English spelling conventions are kind of awful for ESL learners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet
http://s320709369.onlinehome.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/f...
> Any advantage of the I.T.A. in making it easier for children to learn to read English was often offset by … being generally confused by having to deal with two alphabets in their early years of reading.
But also, multiple symbols for a sound is a lot simpler than having two alphabets that work in completely different ways. And even worse is the two alphabets sharing symbols and giving them different interpretations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
I remember the Maxell tape ads (ibid) "Me ears are alight".
The problem is that any delimiter that has no chance of appearing in actual text will be hard to discover, and cannot appear on a standard keyboard (so it is not easily human-writable). So we are kind of stuck with the comma for human readable formats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes#Field_...
Not using these is wasting so many bits of one-byte character encodings, I don't understand why we even need to bother escaping CSV files if we could just use the appropriate control characters instead.
Those books were likely printed in the 1950s.
* especially ei as it's the same sound: eis (demand) and ijs (ice) are homonyms.
Edit: The name points to sz, but it's possible that it replaced both ss and sz. I'm not an expert.
The letter C is useless. It either makes the sound that S does or the sound K does. Instead of C we should just use an S or a K for every place a C is.
Some may argue that without C we wouldn't have CH. And then I say, "Why do we need two characters to represent a single sound? It should have it's own letter."
Alas, English spelling is all kinds of messed up. And I'll have to resign myself to that fact.
Sidenote: I see that some transliteration systems make Q represent “ch”.
The 'c' could also be considered useful exactly because it has the unique property of changing its sound depending on the surroundings. In Dutch, for example, the word for politician is "politicus" where the 'c' had a k sound, but the plural is "politici", where the 'c' has an 's' sound. It would be a lot less clean if we had to swap 'k' and 's'. Maybe we should only use the 'c' for words where that property matters.
I hope you all remember the various "language reform" essays that get progressively less readable as various redundant letters are dropped or replaced.
Although you could also argue we should add some. The 'e' can be pronounced in several different ways, and not being able to tell the difference can occasionally lead to confusion. In Dutch, for example, the words for "a" and "one" are the same: "een", but pronounced differently.
I would like to further improve the 'x' by making its pronunciation 'sk' at the beginning of a phoneme, rather than 'z', 'ex', or maybe 'k'.
It sounds fine in words like 'xylophone' or 'xray', and there are plenty of words like 'xy', 'xate', 'xunk', or 'xeleton' so we could re-balance our alphabet.
Can you cite any that are putting in legitimate effort and expertise into the letter choices, and not picking a whole bunch of things that are half bad on purpose?
Also it's a bad idea to rate an orthography based on how it looks with 0 hours of practice.
The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
With some kids even learning to read English by learning the general shape of the words rather than the individual letter pronunciations (based on some flawed research), I wouldn't mind a general spelling reform to bring the situation under control.
This is just a fun little writing and should not be used to imply anything.
Uses long a instead of æ and removes the r from the end for vowel coloring? How would you separate pastor from pasta? I refuse to accept this reform based on its regional bias.
(double checks keyboard)
J, U, and W are sometimes considered pretenders. Late additions, at least.
J is just a stylized I. U is a variation of V. W is of course just a double U.
G is also a relatively recent entry, if you go back to the Romans from which the Latin/English alphabet is derived.
You really only have 18 fingers and toes when you think about it - 10 toes + 8 fingers.
Those other two appendages are thumbs. Even my kids know this.
EDIT: You also have two sets of knees - your low knees, and your high knees.
The low knees were the ones you pat with both hands in that song. (Your ordinary knees.)
Since they knew that song I taught them that they actually had two sets of knees, low knees and high knees (hiney, LOL). When I asked them to pat their knees they would use both hands to pat their (low) knees and then reach up behind and pat their high knees (hineys). The best part was that they would announce which knees they were patting. Pretty funny for me helping my toddlers attain true enlightenment.
I thought it was funny. My wife didn't at first but everyone who knows me understood why it worked out this way.
I kept on the message that they only had 8 fingers too in the hopes that they would argue with their teachers about it and win by showing those teachers that two of those digits are actually thumbs. I made sure they understood that they have 10 digits but only 8 of them are fingers, the other two are thumbs. Ha ha, whose the smartest now, teacher?
26 * 2 + 10 = 62, almost 64
(26 + 1) * 2 + 10 = 64
I wonder what the history is behind why base-64 encoding became so widespread. Sadly I can even recognise certain sequences now without having to decode them. But the fact it's not even safe for use in URLs/filenames (due to + and /) would suggest it's not really fit for purpose (and yes I know base64-url encoding exists, I once had to write code that had to deal with strings that could use either encoding, and you could only tell by looking for the presence of _ or -. Certainly that _ was not originally chosen as one the extra 2 characters needed on top of A-Za-z0-9 for full encoding is a bit baffling. "-" is often used as delimeter though - my other pick would have been #.)
And it's incomplete. You can't really write American English with just the usual 26 letters. Ñ and the ʻokina are proper letters and necessary for writing a bunch of American words correctly. The various kahakō are helpful too but they are treated as diacritics and not full fledged separate letters.
Weirder still: we often call it the Latin alphabet, but Latin never had some of these characters. No 'j', 'u' or 'w' in Latin, for example.
Depends what you mean by “correctly”, but in practice they’re not necessary to write American English, and most people don’t use them (except in very high-production-value writing, like professionally edited books and magazines).
It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and.” So, the students said, “and per se and.” Per se means “by itself,” so the students were essentially saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.”
So it was just some shorthand tossed in there
A:
1> (diff (range #\a #\z) "the alphabet")
(#\c #\d #\f #\g #\i #\j #\k #\m #\n #\o #\q #\r #\s #\u #\v #\w
#\x #\y #\z)
Now you know why 'W' is so named.
Fun fact though, there is one character that was removed from the Spanish alphabet and the whole of Spanish orthography but remains in use in many others. Even better, this character actually originated in mediæval Spanish, so it could be argued that it wasn't removed: it was let loose!
That character is the 'ç', which is now so closely associated to French, but remains in use in other close neighbours of Spanish such as Catalan and Portuguese and has been adapted for use in many other languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ç