www.alphadictionary.com

It was a toss-up as to whether to post this here in the Spelling forum or in the Languages of the World forum.

Court enforces letter of the law

Oct 25, 10:03 AM (ET)

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said Tuesday.

The court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, at the event last year. The letters Q and W do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, but are used in Kurdish.

It's interesting how letters can have such a powerful influence. The Spanish Accademy and other Spanish media use the ñ to advocate the use of Spanish as a (second/foreign) language or sign of Spanish pride. I hear the Danes didn't like it very much when Swedish å's were substituted for aa's. I wonder which letter we would use to represent Portuguese. Ç couldn't be it, because other languages use it too. Ão maybe?

Brazilião dude

Do we anglos have any unique letters?
No.

-J

Talking about laws, I'm in the middle of an article that describes a bill that attempts to abolish the ` over the letter a in Portuguese when crase is at play. Crase refers to the blending of two a's: the preposition a (to, for), and the feminine article a (the). The proponent of the law says this rule is humiliating because, according to him, eight people out of ten don't know how to apply it (I wonder where he got that statistic from). Anyway, the phenomenon will never cease to exist, whether he likes it or no. Besides, what does a congressman have to do with matters linguistic?

Brazilian dude

Besides, what does a congressman have to do with matters linguistic?
Brazilian dude

Our congressmen know everything about everything. Just ask them.
-gailr

Welcome, J!

Do we anglos have any unique letters?
No.

It's one of the beautiful things about English, really. We mostly use letters that everyone else (who uses the Roman alphabet) also uses -- this makes for really difficult spelling, because we have to make up for the fact that we don't have unique letters for certain things, and we borrow so many words from everone else.

We do have some unique consonant combos, for example -- gh for [f].

-Tim

We do have some unique consonant combos, for example -- gh for [f].

-Tim

wouldn't that be Ph, rather that gh? I pronounce gh as in ghee as GEE, or Ghetto(geh'-to)
I don't know how they pronounce it in Southern....

Katy

...

I pronounce gh as in ghee as GEE, or Ghetto(geh'-to)
I don't know how they pronounce it in Southern....

How do you pronounce «tough», Katy ?...

Henri

ok! but I can think of many more ph examples

Kt

. . .

How do you pronounce «tough», Katy ?...

Henri

Not to be confused with tuff . . . which is not to be taken for granite . . .

I think my point was 'ph' is always >>ff<< and 'gh' is not.

Kt

Well, actually, didn't we once have a peculiar letter, back in [sup]y[/sup]e Auld Dayes?

We used to have the three letters þ, ð and æ. They are all still used in Icelandic.

A variant of þ looked like <y>, and this is the <y> we see in signs like "ye old shoppe".

þ and ð were eventually replaced with <th>.

We used to have the three letters þ, ð and æ. They are all still used in Icelandic.

A variant of þ looked like <y>, and this is the <y> we see in signs like "ye old shoppe".

þ and ð were eventually replaced with <th>.

Good point. Prounounced "thu", was it not? I can't remember

We used to have the three letters þ, ð and æ. They are all still used in Icelandic.

A variant of þ looked like <y>, and this is the <y> we see in signs like "ye old shoppe".

þ and ð were eventually replaced with <th>.

Good point. Prounounced "thu", was it not? I can't remember

Far as I remember, the "hard" one was called "thorn" and pronounced as an unvoiced labio-dental fricative (like th- in today's three. The "soft" one (a voiced labio-dental fricative) was pronounced like the th- in today's the.

-- PW