Conference thebay::joyoflex

    I guess it depends on what you call a word. If you include proper
    names, as in your example, what about that other-dimensional imp that
    used to plague Superman in the comics (danged if I can remember that
    jumble of letters)?
    

    of course, the W can be a vowel...sometimes...
    
    The Superman imp was Mr. Mxyzptlk, I believe.

Certain Slavic languages (Czech?) sometimes use "r" as a vowel.  I remember
seeing a person's name that had no (English) vowels at all -- it may have
been Krch.

    Serbian and Croat use 'r' as a vowel--there's an island named 'Hrd'
    and I think 'Srb' is the root for 'Serbia'.
    
    Other languages use 'l', 'm', 'n', and so on for vowels--any voiced
    continuant will do.  I'm not aware of any language which uses a
    voiceless continuant, but there may well be some.  That would give
    words like 'kst' or 'pfp' which I can pronounce.  But they're not
    English!
    		-John Bishop

	"Cwm" is a Welsh hill -- and legal in Scrabble!  Fellow
	Scrabblers: are there any other 2+ words out there (I 
	believe we've already done the q's without u's issue some-
	where in this conference).
	
		-- Cliff

re .6:

Isn't one of (Serbian, Croat) written in Arabic script or something?

    Since .0 was not concerned with English, there is also the Czech word
    "z" (which I think means "with").
    
    Re .7, words "approved" for use in American English-language Scrabble,
    there is also the Welsh word "cwld" or "cwlth" (variants of one word).
    
    If U.S. civil rights law is applied to Scrabble, then the game which
    allows transliterations of Greek names of Greek letters and allows
    transliterations of Hebrew names of Hebrew letters will also have to
    allow transliterations of Japanese names of Japanese letters.  In that
    case, there will be words like "ra" and "fu" and ... um ... whoops,
    this one can't be played in Scrabble after all, but it answers .0 ...
    "n".
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    re: .7
    	Actually "cwm" is a valley rather than a hill.
    
    	"w" is a perfectly valid vowel in Welsh, and there are many Welsh
    words in which it is the only vowel.
    
    	"cwm" is rather interesting, because it hasn been adopted into
    English in two ways, once with its original spelling, and then as well
    with the anglicised spelling of "combe". Perhaps we could make a
    separate topic for words which have been adopted twice, because I am
    sure there must be others.

    re .8
    
    Croat uses the Latin alphabet (as does Slovenian), Serb the Cyrillic
    (as does Macedonian).   I believe Albanian uses the Latin alphabet too.
    
    The Croat/Serb situation is paralleled by the Czech/Slovak one: in each
    case there was one ethnic group which was converted to Roman Catholicism
    from the West and to Orthodoxy from the East, each set of missioniaries
    using a variant of their native alphabet when creating a written form of
    the native language. 
    
    		-John Bishop

    ...if you don't consider 'y' to be a vowel (I don't!)
    
    Nick

.11						each set of missioniaries
.11    using a variant of their native alphabet when creating a written form of
.11    the native language. 

Which, incidentally, is where `Cyrillic' got its name. For details, ask John.
(I know the story's complex enough for me, with a limited memory, to get it
wrong for sure).

b

    Re .13: If I remember well, Cyril, whose actual name was in fact
    Constantine, invented the glagolitic (sp?) alphabet, from which later
    Bulgarian monks evolved the cyrillic one.
    			Denis.

No doubt the glagolitic alphabet was the one that the Flintstones used.

    Sanskrit?
    

Well, if you allow slavic languages, how about the russian words:

  c - pronounced "s" (NOT "ess"); means "with"
  B - pronounced "vuh"; means "to, into"

    	"KRM KPGTTNI H ZT KRJ HGY KNYSSK"
    	"H NM KRJ HGY KNYSSK KRTK CSNGTNI"
    
    	The above is from my Hungarian translation of Winnie the Pooh. The
    original English is :-
    
    	"PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD"
    	"PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID"
    
    	If you compare the consonant to vowel ratio between the two it is
    apparent that Hungarian is an almost vowel-free language.

    Vowel-free languages aren't really vowel-free.  They may be free of the
    letters we speakers of Western European languages call vowels, but that
    categorization is arrogantly self-centered.  Other languages that are
    written in the Latin alphabet use letters we call consonants in ways
    that include vocalized sounds; hence, those letters, or certain
    combinations of them, constitute vowels for those languages.
    
    -dick

    For example, in Welsh the "w" is pronounced like ... a double "u".
    
    							Ann B.

    As in "vacwm" cleaner?

    	All right, I'll admit it.  .18 was rather tongue in cheek, but I
    thought someone might have guessed since I gave the English version. A
    quick scan through the book doesn't indicate a much different vowel
    ratio from English, though it has some that I cannot even make with the
    <COMPOSE> key. In particular, it has "�" and "�", but it also has
    accented versions where the two dots above the letter become slanted
    dashes, similar to the accent on "�", but doubled.
    
    	Quoting that particular passage was rather like quoting a small ads
    column to prove that English is vowel free. I was putting it in as a
    teaser to start a discussion about how essential vowels are in a
    written language.That Hungarian is presumably both intelligible andd
    amusing to an intelligent 8-year-old. Small ads would preesumably not
    exist if the majority of the population couldn't understand them. My
    younger daughter is studying Arabic, and assures me that in many cases
    vowels are only inserted by pedants, since going back to put in the
    dots breaks up the smooth flow of writing.

    Hebrew is roughly the same as Arabic in this respect, with vowels that
    resemble accents and are usually omitted.
    
    However, there is one case that is even more severe, a language that
    contains no vowels whatsoever:
    
    UNIX(tm) operating system command language.

    Norman,
    
    I suggest you ask your nearest cat whether UNIX� has vowels.
    
    -dick
    
    --------
    � UNIX is a registered trademerk of UNIX� System Laboratories, Inc.

Why do you say the unix command language has no vowels.  The first two
commands I thought of were 

	ls

	cat

Sure, ls has no vowels, but cat does.

What were you trying to sa

    'Tw's slght xggrtn.
    
    Yes, I know that the UNIX command language has vowels, since it would
    be impossible to tell a story otherwise...
    
    
    From: [email protected] (Andrew Arensburger - RMS)
    Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
    Subject: story(1)
    >[Another one of those things that crop up from time to time. This
    >one just happens to be original. -AA]
    
    >whereis biff? crypt at source. biff cut yacc tail, yacc cut biff finger.
    >"awk!," sed biff.
    >"ar, ar!" sed yacc.
    >ksh, bash! man cut head, kill yacc at last, make strings.
    >exit crypt, find mail from su. od. "date? yes." biff find su nice. make
    >  time, date. find su at wall. tee, talk.
    >ed: "tip: find jobs, biff."
    >"yes, make tar," sed biff.
    >su, biff date more: touch, strip, sleep.
    >"su, inetd perl," sed biff.
    >"yes!" sed su.