Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Remember that g, i, o, and q are not in the alphabet, as we Deccies
    know it. If you are a hardware field-support engineer, you can recite
    the Digital alphabet, forward and backward, with no pauses, leaving out
    those letters. It does make "The Song" sounds a bit odd. 

     What was the Dr. Seuss (I think it was by him) book about
     the letters that come after "z"?
     
     Dan

    
    	Okay, here it is... henceforth, the letter "w" shall be pronounced
    	"uu" (or, "oooo", if you like).  That is essentially the sound
    	it emparts on a word anyway, and it certainly sets the mouth
    	in the correct position.
    
    	- Greg

    In French, the 'w' is called a "double-v".
    
    If you are looking for new names, how about calling 'c' "ocean"? ;-)
    

     The "J" and "U" seem to be younger than the other letters of
     our alphabet.  I've seen the "V" taking the place of "U" on
     pvblic bvildings, for example.  I also read that the early
     Romans used "IIII" instead of "IV" because the latter was
     the first two letters of Jupiter's (Ivpiter?) name.  And of
     course "w" is pronounced "double you" instead of "double vee".
     
     So what is the history of the different letters of the
     alphabet?  Why are some of them relative newcomers?  And
     what about the "compose character" letters like "���"?
     
     Dan

    Re: .2
    
     On Beyond Zebra
     ---------------
    
    (I love Dr. Seuss)

>                  I've seen the "V" taking the place of "U" on
>     pvblic bvildings, for example.  

It was that way because it was very difficult to engrave a proper "U" in 
stone with the tools available to the romans (which is where the custom 
came from.)  

>     So what is the history of the different letters of the
>     alphabet?  Why are some of them relative newcomers?  And
>     what about the "compose character" letters like "���"?

"J" is a relative newcomer to the alphabet -- I believe it wasn't there
for most of the Roman's big section of history.  The new characters get 
added from languages other than english.  I think the middle Europeans 
brought the "J" in.  The letters with diacritical markings come from 
languages that didn't use the roman alphabet but switched over so they 
could use standard printing type.  Sometimes they'd try to replicate 
letters they already had (the English "thorn" for example) and other 
times they'd just indicate an alternate pronounciation was to be used.

					>>>==>PStJTT

    Many many years ago, when I was an vndergradvate at the avgvst
    Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology and a member of the crew,
    we vsed to do sitvps while spelling ovt ovr alma mater's name.
    And, course, we always shovted, at the tops of ovr lvngs,
    
    	emm aye ess ess aye see aitch VEE ess ee tee tee ess
    	eye enn ess tee eye tee VEE tee ee
    	oh eff
    	tee ee see aitch enn oh ell oh gee wye 
    
    Now, regarding this vbiqvitovs assertion that U vndvly stresses some poor
    stonecvtter, why aren't all the Os rendered as boxes or diamonds?
    
    len.
    

    The Roman alphabet is descended from a archaic Western
    Greek one, and the source alphabet went something like this:
    
	    A B C D E Z F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y
    
    The Latin of the time needed neither "Z", nor "Y", and so they
    were dropped.  But it distinguished between the sound /k/,
    (written "C") and the sound /g/, and so created a new letter
    "G" to represent it. This new letter went into the position
    freed up by dropping "Z":
    
	    A B C D E G F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X

    Once Rome became successful, it wanted culture, and words to
    express that culture.  Many words were borrowed from Classic
    Greek, which re-introduced "Y" and "Z".  Of course, as additions,
    they went to the end.

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

    In the later Empire scribal convention lengthened the letter "I"
    in certain circumstances (e.g, when initial before another vowel
    or final in a number).  Similarly, "V" was split into two forms,
    one rounded and one not rounded.  This probably follows an underlying
    phonetic difference between /i/ and /y/ on the one hand, and /u/
    and /v/ on the other.  In both cases the vowel form was the first
    in the sequence:
    
    	    A B C D E G F H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z
    
    Old English was written with extra letters: thorn, edh and yodh,
    but we moderns have dropped them.  This dropping is probably due
    to the fact that the first fonts were cast for printing Latin,
    and thus did not have the supplementary letters of English.
    Somehow "W" made it into the alphabet at this time, no doubt
    due to the fact that it could easily be faked by "VV".  Thorn
    was faked with TH, edh was rare (scribes having replace it with
    thorn in most cases), and yodh was replaced with "G" (and I
    think "GH").  The result was our familiar sequence:

    	A B C D E G F H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
    
    It is an interesting side-light on such limitations to note that
    Welsh orthography suffers from the same restriction to a Latin
    alphabet, even to the use of "C" to prepresent /k/, due to the
    large number of /k/s in Welsh and the small number of "K"s in
    the font available to the early printers in Wales.
        
    			-John Bishop

    How did G and F get inverted in the alphabetical order?

    Re .9, .10: order of "G" and "F"
    
    I'm not certain what the position of "F" ("digamma" to the
    Greeks) was in the source alphabet.  Digamma was dropped
    from the alphabet used for Classical Greek, as was "Q"
    ("qoppa"), so I had to guess a bit at the actual location.
    
    A comparison with the Hebrew order has "waw" ("F"?) before 
    "zayin" ("Z"),  so that gives the ...EFG.. order, but I'm
    not certain that "waw" and "digamma" are the same letter
    (in form and history, of course, not sound!).  The location
    of "Q" is pretty clear from the Hebrew order.
    
    		-John

     Thanks for the history.
     
     Dan

    After a quick check of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I
    can confirm that "waw" is "digamma", and so the order
    "...E F Z..." (and thus later "...E F G...") is correct.
    
    The Britannica also feels that the Latin alphabet is
    taken from the Etruscan, rather than directly from a
    Western Greek one.
    
    The Britannica fails to give the "alphabetical" order
    of runes (the "futhark"), or the "beth luis nion"
    order, so it's not the last word...
    
    			-John Bishop

� So what happened to W?  Double You?!!! ...

� Other exceptions, arguably, are H, Q and Y.
    
    "W" is best pronounced "Woo-woo!".
    
    "H" - "Hotcha", pronounced as in "Hot-cha-cha!"
    "Q" - What's wrong with "Queue"?
    "Y" - "Yip"
    
    Ray