there is a law inside the alphabet

[Norman Alexander]

I certainly would have voted to put the letters in alphabetical order.

Left-to-right? Or right-to-left?

Or like Korean and Japanese, where they can ge written horizontally or vertically.

 

[malbui]

Oh, most languages do that; depending on who you are occupying (for those who do), or are occupied by (for those who are), you fill your coffers with whatever takes your fancy. That goes for cultural "occupation" as well - French influenced many European languages during and after the enlightenment, and now English is giving a lot back to all of us, after having picked up so many tasty morsels from around the world. I don't mind at all; it's immense fun to watch the fairly rapid Swedification of English words, as they become assimilated, and turned into ours.

I was absurdly happy when I was in Sweden last year and read a sign that included the word miljö and didn't really register that it was spelled in an odd way.

 

[Wudang]

Left-to-right? Or right-to-left?

Why not both? I had to hack together some code years back to handle bidirectional text where switching direction happens when English phrases were embedded in Arabic text. I can't quite recall why though. Fortunately EBCDIC bidi support made it fairly easy.

 

[Rolfe]

Similarly in A.P. Herbert's "Uncommon Law" one sketch has a lawyer pronouncing Latin as his school believed the way Romans pronounced it with "ooltra weeres" for ultra vires as one example and being rebuked by the judge. From my junkheap of a memory. I couldn't see it on Gutenberg despite its age.

Picture teenage me complaining to my mother that "that's not how you pronounce Latin", in relation to Bach's B minor mass. Cue a lecture about "church Latin" which I received with some scepticism at the time. She was right of course. And we can add to that the difference between Italianate Latin and Germanic Latin depending on the source of the music.

 

[arthwollipot]

I certainly would have voted to put the letters in alphabetical order.

If the alphabet were in alphabetical order, it would go like this:

H R A I B D G W E F L M N S X J K Q O P C T V Y U Z

 

[Helen]

I was absurdly happy when I was in Sweden last year and read a sign that included the word miljö and didn't really register that it was spelled in an odd way.

May I introduce you to the Swedish word fåtölj? First spotted, in its original clothing in 1706, it's now fully Swedified, and a decidedly everyday word, even though it began its journey here in the salons (or salong, as we say now) of various castles.

 

[arthwollipot]

Picture teenage me complaining to my mother that "that's not how you pronounce Latin", in relation to Bach's B minor mass. Cue a lecture about "church Latin" which I received with some scepticism at the time. She was right of course. And we can add to that the difference between Italianate Latin and Germanic Latin depending on the source of the music.

I learned Cambridge Latin - "waynee, weedee, weechee".

 

[malbui]

May I introduce you to the Swedish word fåtölj? First spotted, in its original clothing in 1706, it's now fully Swedified, and a decidedly everyday word, even though it began its journey here in the salons (or salong, as we say now) of various castles.

That is glorious.

 

[Dave Rogers]

If the alphabet were in alphabetical order, it would go like this:

H R A I B D G W E F L M N S X J K Q O P C T V Y U Z

I'm not sure I agree with you on how to spell G.

Dave

 

[Mojo]

I learned Cambridge Latin - "waynee, weedee, weechee".

"The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them 'Weeny, Weedy and Weaky', lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts." - Sellar & Yeatman.

 

[Rolfe]

I learned Cambridge Latin - "waynee, weedee, weechee".

Nah, we didn't get that at our school.

 

[Helen]

That is glorious.

I know Swedish is littered with French words that have gone native, but that is my favourite example. You'd recognise it if yiu heard it; the only real difference is that the l isn't silent.

 

[Tero]

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.

I've studied several languages. I find English the most unpredicatble about how to pronounce vowels. Burrito. The second vowel, u, often sounds closer to ö, if you know the use of umlauts, such as in German or Swedish.

 

[Thermal]

I'm not sure I agree with you on how to spell G.

Dave

X, too. Eks comes before Es.

 

[sackett]

@Helen: Do you think it's time to explain phonemes to the group? Such a
simple and useful concept, and it seems to be an arcane mystery to 99% of speaking
humans. Hell, there are surely deafmutes out there who understand phonemes.

But I'll defer to you as to the wisdom of this. I studied linguistics
for some years, including a year at Berkeley, but it's not my field.

My late father in law quite envied my contact with spoken Cheyenne.
He said he wished he'd known me back then; I could have served as
an informant of sorts.

I blushed.

 

[malbui]

I am reminded at this juncture of Flann O'Brien's glorious "Cruiskeen Lawn" column in the Irish Times back in the day, which started in Irish, continued mainly in English, and occasionally wobbled between the two, sometimes even with English written with Irish orthography. This gave passages such as.

"Fbhait ár iúr méin traighing thú sae, Sairdint?
... Aigh tink dae ár tócuing abamht a bhuman cóld Agnes, a biútiful accomplas eigh supós
... Méic amht a bharant for thur airéist. Namh deintilmein..."

Magnificent stuff.

 

[Wudang]

I used to chat with a Japanese woman who translated IBM manuals from English. She mentioned she loved Swift so I sent her a copy of "The Best of Myles". I searched BofM for it and can't find it but it was a collection of his writings. Myles na Gopaleen being Flann's nom de plume. She loved it and told me she got stared at on the train in Japan as she was roaring with laughter at the sketch where people with various accents in London fail to communicate: "I pick up Auden".

ETA: If anyone knows where that story is printed can you let me know please? I'd love to read it again.

 

[Mojo]

I used to chat with a Japanese woman who translated IBM manuals from English. She mentioned she loved Swift so I sent her a copy of "The Best of Myles". I searched BofM for it and can't find it but it was a collection of his writings.

I'm sure I used to have a copy of that. I wonder what happened to it.

Myles na Gopaleen being Flann's nom de plume.

Flann O'Brien was Brian O'Nolan's nom de plume.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

If the alphabet were in alphabetical order, it would go like this:

H R A I B D G W E F L M N S X J K Q O P C T V Y U Z

No it wouldn't, for obvious reasons.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I used to chat with a Japanese woman who translated IBM manuals from English. She mentioned she loved Swift so I sent her a copy of "The Best of Myles". I searched BofM for it and can't find it but it was a collection of his writings. Myles na Gopaleen being Flann's nom de plume. She loved it and told me she got stared at on the train in Japan as she was roaring with laughter at the sketch where people with various accents in London fail to communicate: "I pick up Auden".

ETA: If anyone knows where that story is printed can you let me know please? I'd love to read it again.

I remember that line, and the story, although I thought it was set in Dublin, the only other collection of Myles' work I had was Myles Away from Dublin, so maybe it's in there? Don't have access to my copy atm to check.