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there is a law inside the alphabet

My part of the North Yorkshire coast and the moors behind have a lot if dialect words that are hold overs from when it was part of the Danelaw.

For example cow, mentioned earlier in the thread as an example of Gaelic is 'cush' in these parts.
 
arthwollipot said:
Rob Words is great. Highly recommended for anyone who has the vaguest interest in English.

This one might be of interest to our OP:
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There are some Gaelic words that switch meaning completely depending on whether there is an accent. Sabaid (fighting) vs. sàbaid (Sabbath) for example. Ban is a feminine prefix (banrigh = queen for example) but bàn is fair-haired. Then we get into the realms of bhoid/bhòid and most hilariously of all, fèis/feis, and if you can get Google translate to tell you what these mean, good luck to you. (It knows, because it will back-translate, but it's really prissy.)
 
malbui said:
My Irish-speaking family use the Irish form of my name and I’m very happy about that, but also very happy that my parents registered me with the form that is standard in both English and French because that has no doubt saved me from endless administrative headaches.
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I believe that right into the middle of the 20th century if you showed up at a registry office in the Gàidhealtachd with a name like Catriona or Mairead for your darling offspring, the registrar would simply write down Catherine or Margaret. I'm wondering about my father, because his name was officially James, but everyone called him Hamish and he explained to me that it was really a Sheumais, the vocative of Seumas. I was too little to understand what he was getting at then, though.

Fortunately my name is common in its original Gaelic version and doesn't even have an entirely agreed English equivalent, so I was spared any complications. There are three of us in the local Gaelic psalm-singing group.
 
junkshop said:
How many laws have we found in the alphabet? ONE! We have found A LAW in the alphabet! Can we find another? No, because we have used the letters L, A and W, which are the only letters that spell LAW.
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Yet, paradoxically, we must be able to find at least one more LAW, because it is undeniable that we can find LAWS in the alphabet. So, since we cannot find a STATUTE there, do we have to elevate the more humble status of a mere RULE?

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
Yet, paradoxically, we must be able to find at least one more LAW, because it is undeniable that we can find LAWS in the alphabet. So, since we cannot find a STATUTE there, do we have to elevate the more humble status of a mere RULE?

Dave
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Well
There’s of course WET.
Which is the Dutch word for LAW.

So now it appears there are indeed multiple LAWs in the Alphabet. Both in different places but overlapping and as such clearly linked.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Yet, paradoxically, we must be able to find at least one more LAW, because it is undeniable that we can find LAWS in the alphabet. So, since we cannot find a STATUTE there, do we have to elevate the more humble status of a mere RULE?

Dave
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Damn it all to Erith and fiddlesticks , you out-thunked me. You are my new savour.

[Not a typo. Don't be scared, it stresses the flesh Sorry, no, wrong words. What I meant was don't worry, be happy.]
 
erwinl said:
Well
There’s of course WET.
Which is the Dutch word for LAW.

So now it appears there are indeed multiple LAWs in the Alphabet. Both in different places but overlapping and as such clearly linked.
Click to expand...
I made it very plain in post #whateverthe****itwas that I am a dull and simple lad. I will not, and cannot countenance these high falutin' brainy posts being all clever at me. My proof of the troof of the OP is what it is. It stands or falls and maybe rises once, twice again, indefatigable, eternal, what the ◊◊◊◊ am I going on about?

Time for bed. Boing.
 
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theprestige said:
I'm still struggling with the idea that orthography isn't such a big deal in written Vietnamese.

Anyway scholars of language already have a set of universal rules for describing, mapping, and representing the mouth noises we call speech.

If there's a law to be found, it'll be found in that alphabet - an alphabet that doesn't have an H, as we casuals know the character.
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Spelling in English Writing is mostly about abracadabra magic of word creation, while spelling in Vietnamese Writing is mostly about phonetic alphabetic of word creation. For example, the word "eye" has the same sound as "i", because both are just the abracadabra magic of English. While in Vietnamese Writing the word "eye" and "i" both would be "ai", because "ai" is phonetic alphabetic.
 
8enotto said:
As a native speaker of American English, Midwest states version I have learned that the sound of each of the letters will vary some depending where we learned it.

To apply a sort of fixed law to 10,000 local dialects of a base language could be quite a challenge. The number of exceptions would outnumber the points of compliance by just crossing a nation.

It is interesting how Vietnamese works. And quite simple compared to other languages.
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Norman Alexander said:
Great. What exactly is this law? Be concise.
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this Alphabet Law states H is the central of consonants, and I is the central of vowels. It unified and pointed out the elemental vowels and elemental consonants inside the human speech sounds. This is similar to the way the elements in the periodic table were found; and it ended the era where alchemists were trying to make gold out of lead, i guess.
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
Spelling in English Writing is mostly about abracadabra magic of word creation...
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It's actually not abracadabra magic. It's an artefact of English's adoption of words from many different languages - Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon Old English, Scandinavian Norse, Norman French, even Indian and Hawaiian. Each language has its own spelling conventions, which are ported into English alongside the words that are adopted. When you understand the etymologies of various words, you will find that the words that share a common origin also share the same spelling conventions.

Why do we raise pigs but eat pork? Why do we raise sheep but eat mutton? Why do we raise cows but eat beef?

Because during the feudal period of English history following the Norman conquest of 1066, Anglo-Saxon speaking serfs served under the Norman French speaking aristocracy. As a result, farming words (pig, sheep, cow) come from Anglo-Saxon while culinary words (pork, mutton, beef) come from Norman French.

So English spelling is chaotic, yes, but it's because of the many origins of its words, not because it is abracadabra magic. There is method to the madness. It's a fascinating field of study if you're really interested in the reasons behind it, rather than just making up your own explanations.
 
Rolfe said:
I believe that right into the middle of the 20th century if you showed up at a registry office in the Gàidhealtachd with a name like Catriona or Mairead for your darling offspring, the registrar would simply write down Catherine or Margaret. I'm wondering about my father, because his name was officially James, but everyone called him Hamish and he explained to me that it was really a Sheumais, the vocative of Seumas. I was too little to understand what he was getting at then, though.

Fortunately my name is common in its original Gaelic version and doesn't even have an entirely agreed English equivalent, so I was spared any complications. There are three of us in the local Gaelic psalm-singing group.
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The most savage line in all of Irish literature:

"Your name is Jams O’Donnell”
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
Spelling in English Writing is mostly about abracadabra magic of word creation, while spelling in Vietnamese Writing is mostly about phonetic alphabetic of word creation. For example, the word "eye" has the same sound as "i", because both are just the abracadabra magic of English. While in Vietnamese Writing the word "eye" and "i" both would be "ai", because "ai" is phonetic alphabetic.
Click to expand...
How is that different from, for example, Spanish, which is phonetic but using the Latin alphabet?
 
junkshop said:
I made it very plain in post #whateverthefuckitwas that I am a dull and simple lad. I will not, and cannot countenance these high falutin' brainy posts being all clever at me. My proof of the troof of the OP is what it is. It stands or falls and maybe rises once, twice again, indefatigable, eternal, what the ◊◊◊◊ am I going on about?

Time for bed. Boing.
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The OP liked your post, so I will consider you the leading expert on the abracadabra magic of the alphabet people, and hang on your every word, wherever they may lead me. (Astray, is what I'm betting on. So be it.)

Great thread, btw!
 
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