Questions tagged [alphabet]
Questions regarding the English alphabet.
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Does the letter "é" exist or not in English? [duplicate]
When we write in English, what alphabet should be used to represent all the words of standard English?
Are ASCII codes enough to represent all the English words?
Say, the word "café" is it ...
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Did English have any alphabet or writing before it adopted Latin?
I wonder if the English language had any writing or script before the adoption of Latin.
This question came about in a conversation I had with a friend about the writing of vowels in English. ...
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How did English come to use a writing system which makes spelling it so hard?
Alphabetic writing systems use graphemes to represent
phonemes. But in their “Psychology of Reading”
chapter
of 2003’s Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science,
researchers Simon Garrod and Meredyth Daneman
...
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Is a letter considered to be in alphabetical order with itself? [closed]
We've come across a maths problem regarding car license plates. Their format is XXN where each X is a letter from A-D, and N is a digit. For example "AA0, AB1, CB9, etc"
One of the questions ...
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Letter shaping/orientation/positioning of {M, F} vs {W, M} (signifying/denoting gender in forms/data tabulations/presentations] [closed]
For W and M (Woman and Man) there is equal logoey balance logologically.
However for M and F (Male and Female) the orientation just the logo of the letter F is sideways at a 90° angle change and drops ...
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Why is the letter 'E' the most commonly-used letter?
It is well-known that the letter 'E' is the most common letter. In my corpus, I found that 12.478% of the used letters is 'E'. What makes me surprised was that 64.219% of words contain the letter 'E'. ...
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Does English have written words for each letter in the alphabet? [duplicate]
In Spanish or in Catalan (not sure if also true in other Latin languages) we have a word for each letter in the alphabet. For example, letter "H" is written as "hache", in Spanish or "hac" in Catalan. ...
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When did '&' stop being taught alongside the alphabet? [duplicate]
I've just discovered that "&" was considered the 27th letter of the alphabet, being part of alphabet songs.
It was easy to discover its history (the information on the website Fast Company is ...
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Why is letter "z" the last letter of alphabet? [duplicate]
it's been on my mind for sometime, why is Z last letter of alphabet, why is A the first, why is D the 4th letter, are these letters just based randomly then people agreed on them, therefore creating ...
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Why does the Greek letter lambda often get substituted for the letter A? [closed]
It happens a lot with commercial products, for example the car company Kia. Except they spell if Kappa Iota Lambda (KIL). Why? That is just one example among many I see nowadays. Are all these ...
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What is the difference between "Alphabet" and "Alphabets"? [duplicate]
I am just having a debate with one of my friend regarding the use of the word "Alphabet". when I use the word "last alphabet" instead of "last letter of Alphabet" she told me that I used the wrong ...
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Phoneticised alphabet letters [duplicate]
Do all letters of the English alphabet have phoneticised dictionary entries? I'm thinking of the word Vee for the letter V or Zed for the letter Z? For example is there an entry for H? Aitch?
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How to write letter "K" as a full word correctly? [duplicate]
If I want to write for example "Mr. K". I don't want to use just a single letter. Should I write it like "Mr. Kei", "Mr. Kay" or "Mr. Key"?
Update:
Let us imagine there was somebody with name Mr. ...
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Is "I" an alphabet or a letter?
I came across this sentence,
"Modi understands only one alphabet, and that is the capital I"
in the Indian writer Dr. Shashi Tharoor's recently published book "The Paradoxical Prime ...
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Specific type of abbreviation in textese
I would like to know if there is preexisting metalanguage or a term to describe the following types of abbreviations often present in textese or SMS language:
see → c,
you → u,
are → r,
your → ur, ...
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Why are names starting with a "J" common, while words starting with a "J" are uncommon?
There's a reason "J" is worth 10 points in Word feud, it's a quite uncommon letter.
According to Lewand, arranged from most to least common in appearance, the letters are: ...
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Do English alphabet come under latin characters? [duplicate]
I haven't been able to infer whether latin characters are different from English alphabet or English alphabet are a subset of latin characters, as I came across several versions of latin.
Trying to ...
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Languages and their alphabet(s)
Why do we say English language has only one alphabet if English words (and as an extension sentences and phrases as well) can be written in alphabets of many other languages?
EDIT
Adding the ...
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Is there a collective word for the different "alphabets" used by different languages?
As I believe "alphabet" refers specifically to the latin a-z, is there a term that collectively refers to all collections of writing characters. ie, if I had a list that contained the entries "Latin, ...
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I need an alernative to "before" and "after", which alphabetize with after after before
Some software I use likes to alphabetize things, so I'd like an alternative to before and after, where sorting lexicographical is the same as sorting by time.
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Meaningful English sentences containing very few distinct letters
An English pangram is a sentence that contains each of the 26 letters used in English, the classic example being `the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.' What I am looking for is precisely the ...
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Why do some nicknames have no apparent relation with their original counterparts? [duplicate]
I find it unusual and rather contrary to common sense and logic that some nicknames should have no apparent relation to their original names, such as "Jack" for "John(eg. JFK)" or "Jonathan", "Patsy" ...
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Can I spell a voiced "th" without using IPA?
Is there a way to unambiguously convey that the "th" in a word should be voiced, like in the word "the", but without using the International Phonetic Alphabet (or any non-alphabetic characters)?
...
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Similarities between Latin Letters
Have there been any studies done into the similarity between individual latin letters? I'm hoping for something (preferably with letters in Arial font) where a letter has been given and the chance of ...
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Alphabetizing band names when the name includes a member's name [closed]
When one is alphabetizing band names which are named after a member of the band, do you put the last name first?
For a few examples, the following bands are names, but not of actual people:
Pink ...
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List of characters with diacritics accepted in English words [closed]
Some diacritics and special characters (like ligatures) are accepted in Contemporary English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical_marks
Examples of English spellings: ...
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Why is J often used to represent a "Y" sound in Romanizations of other writing systems?
I am not referring to IPA. I am referring to examples in textbooks. For example, my Ukrainian textbook says that the letter Я is pronounced as "ja". Most native English speakers would pronounced this ...
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List of inverted letters and their applications
Upside-down letters, as in ∀, and left-side-right letters, as in ∃, are used in mathematics and logic to indicate for all and there exists. Do you know other examples of such inversions ...
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'When was the use of Þ diminished by the digraph 'th'?
Wikipedia does not mention the exact date, nor do any other sites that I have visited.
While no Shakespearean book that I have read ( later 16th Century ) has the use of Þ in it, and the 15th ...
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Letter 'Z' pronounced as 'Izzard' : how widespread and where?
I read at Which is the correct way to refer to the letter "Z" — "Zee" or "Zed"?
that the letter Z is pronounced :
'Izzard' (/ˈɪzərd/) in Scottish English.
as opposed ...
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Guide to alphabetizing upper case versus lower case? [closed]
Does there exist a general guide to the alphabetization of degenerate cases?
For example, which is to be listed first, "hamburger" or "Hamburger"?
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& as a letter in the alphabet?
I've been googleing and ran across this little blog post. It has a bit of information stating the the & symbol was at one point the 27th letter in the alphabet.
For years the & symbol (now ...
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Is there a proper name for counting with letters?
How should one refer to the practice of using letters instead of numbers for counting?
I'm referring to this:
"A, B, C, ... X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG... ZX, ZY, ZZ, AAA,
AAB..."
...
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What Character Was Removed from the Alphabet?
From:
http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/
the ampersand today is used primarily in business names, but that small character was once the 27th part of the alphabet.
Is this true? Are there any ...
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Why did Old English use C while other Germanic languages used K?
During most the first millennium CE, North and West Germanic languages were written in runic alphabets. Gradually, each language shifted from the runic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. The people who ...
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Why don't ligatures have names?
It is common to see ligatures such as Æ or Œ in reference to classical works such as Œdipus or Æsop but these do not seem to have names. Strangely enough in the Old English alphabet there were similar ...
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Is there a formal spelling for the English letter names?
The English alphabet has a common pronunciation. For example, the letter b is pronounced like the word bee, the letter c like the word see, and the letter i like the word aye.
Is there a formal ...
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Roman alphabet vowel arrangement [duplicate]
Is there any significance to the pattern we get when the Roman alphabet (upon which English is based) is arranged by giving vowels a "lead" column (which I hope you will be able to see as a grid)?
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How is the name of the letter "Z" pronounced in Indian English?
How is the letter "Z" pronounced in Indian English?
I assumed that Indian English is more similar to British English than to American English, and therefore would pronounce it "Zed". But I came ...
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What does "is for" mean exactly? [closed]
I get the main idea in phrases like "L is for the way you look at me" and "A is for Apple", but I don't know the exact meaning.
If you were to use other words instead of "is for" which synonym would ...
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Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
Why does English omit diacritics from foreign names that still use the Latin alphabet? For example, why are the Czech tennis player Tomáš Berdych, the Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, or the Polish ...
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What characters are used in English for a person's name? [closed]
[Edit]
To be clear, this is not a programing question. What is sought an example of set of rules, a government or a business (in an English speaking locale) uses to determine the acceptable character ...
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With character or sign
Is there a character or sign for 'with', similar to & for 'and'? Also, for 'without'?
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Where does “ö” fall in alphabetical ordering?
Much to my surprise, I just learned that some English-language documents use the ö character. I need to know, when sorting words in an English-language document, where is ö placed?
before A?
...
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What non-alphabetic characters are valid in English spelling?
Is ' (the apostrophe) the only character which is not part of the English alphabet that can appear in the correct spelling of an English word?
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NATO and US Finance Spelling alphabets - Which is more commonly used in everyday situations?
This is mostly related to US "normal" day to day usage of the spelling alphabet. I am new to the country and most often emails/names etc needs to be spelled and I find it difficult to determine which ...
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Why is the letter "w" not pronounced "double v"?
Was "w" written with smoother curves back then?
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A perfect (honest) pangram that is understandable for a regular native user?
Pangrams were pure wordplays, that because of IT has become a nice tool to test keyboard and fonts, assuming they are easy to remember and short. Therefore perfect pangrams are so nice: you don't need ...
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Difference between Letter and Alphabet in English [closed]
Can anyone please explain what is the difference between "Letter" and "Alphabet" in English?
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Why hasn't the pronunciation of w been shortened?
"Double u" is a rather long pronunciation for a letter. Why do we not yet have a shortened pronunciation yet? Is the letter simply too young, or are there other reasons?
user66219