164
votes
Accepted
Why did Old English lose both thorn and eth?
My understanding is that Old English had two letters, thorn and eth, which were used interchangeably to represent the sound th as in thin or father.
Pretty much. In some languages they were distinct, ...
- 64k
56
votes
Accepted
Why is “ß” not used in Swiss German?
It is because of the typewriter. A Swiss typewriter needs to support three languages: German, French, and Italian. Therefore on the Swiss typewriter, there was no ß key. It also has only lowercase ...
- 29.8k
42
votes
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Are there modern languages without standardized spelling? If not, why?
First, let's define our terms. Spelling is "standardized" if there's some authority that people listen to on the topic. This can be a government agency, like the Académie Française, or a ...
- 64k
36
votes
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Why are J, U, W considered part of the basic Latin Alphabet?
Despite its name, the ISO Basic Latin Alphabet isn't particularly concerned with representing Latin. It was developed in the modern day, so the fact that I~J and U~V weren't consistently distinguished ...
- 64k
35
votes
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Why isn't there a letter for /b/ sound in Greek alphabet while they have the sound?
The last time the Greek alphabet was truly overhauled was millennia ago, when a version tuned for the Ionian dialect (known as the "Euclidean alphabet" after the archon who championed it) ...
- 64k
32
votes
Why are the orthographies of Ancient/Proto Languages so Impractical?
First, it's worth noting that these are transcriptions, used by linguists, not actual orthographies used by native speakers. The ancient Sumerians didn't write their word for "god" as diĝir; they ...
- 64k
32
votes
Why doesn’t a language modernization initiative adopt pure phonetic spelling?
Because most of the benefits of such a change would be to learners, while most of the costs would fall on the existing users of the orthography.
Where there is no established writing culture (or ...
- 7,424
31
votes
Why can "autarchy" be spelled with an "k" while other words not?
Actually, “autarky” and “autarchy” are two different words. The former means “self-sufficiency” and comes from the Greek arkein “to suffice”. The latter means “absolute rule” and comes from Greek ...
- 23.7k
31
votes
Why is “ß” not used in Swiss German?
The Swiss government has an explanation on p. 18. One contributing factor is typography, namely the rise of use of the Antiqua font, which was claimed to not include ß. I have no evaluation of the ...
- 82.1k
30
votes
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Are there languages where a change of character casing can lead to a different meaning of a word?
It’s worth pointing out that uppercase and lowercase characters are mostly a quirk of the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.[1] While these alphabets probably make up a plurality of written texts,[...
- 1,160
26
votes
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What is the function of the soft sign (Ь) in Russian?
WARNING: The question is sooo many-sided, it is very wide and can be split into at least 3 different questions. I'll answer it all, don't tell me later that you haven't been warned the answer would be ...
- 17.7k
23
votes
Are there modern languages without standardized spelling? If not, why?
As Katai has pointed out in the comments Swiss German is a modern langauge that has no standardised spelling. In "Mundartwörterbüchern"(=Dialect dictionaries) one can see two different ideas ...
- 331
23
votes
Why doesn’t a language modernization initiative adopt pure phonetic spelling?
wʌn ˈɹʷijzn̩ iz ðæɾ ɪndʌˈvɪdʒl̩z ˈdɪfɹ̩ʷ səp̚ˈstæ̃ʃəli ɪ̃ ðɛɹ prʷəˈnʌnsiɛiʃn̩ ʌ wɹ̩ʷdz. In fact, it is extremely difficult to get undergraduate students in a linguistic class to produce an accurate ...
- 82.1k
20
votes
Accepted
Is calling a spelling "defective" acceptable in the linguistics of languages other than Hebrew/Aramaic?
A "defective" spelling in Hebrew is one without matres lectionis. This term exists in Hebrew because Hebrew is an abjad which doesn't always mark vowels, and consequently, words can be spelled either ...
- 2,765
20
votes
Ncuti Gatwa is, according to Wikipedia, pronounced /ˈʃuːti ˈɡætwɑː/ - where is the NC orthography derived from?
In Kinyarwanda, <nc> represents phonetic [n̥tʃʰ], at least in a somewhat-conventional style of IPA transcriptions. The [t] portion of the cluster is brief, and English speakers generally do not ...
- 82.1k
19
votes
Are syllable initial consonant clusters pronounced in Ancient Greek?
There is very little doubt they were pronounced: they are still pronounced in many languages other than English where they were loaned, and crucially in modern Greek; they were also spelled with those ...
- 1,848
19
votes
The letter "ff" in the name “Richard ffrench”?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary's page for F:
In manuscripts a capital F was often written as ff. A misunderstanding of this practice has caused the writing of Ff or ff at the beginning ...
- 438
19
votes
Accepted
Origin of h as a modifier letter
To my understanding, it comes from TH and PH.
In Ancient Greek, there were "aspirated" consonants written Θ and Φ, which literally sounded like "t followed by h" and "p followed by h". So when words ...
- 64k
15
votes
Why did Old English lose both thorn and eth?
The explanation I remember seeing for the rise of the digraph “th” and fall of the letters thorn and eth in English spelling is influence from French spelling habits.
You can see more details if you ...
- 17.8k
14
votes
Accepted
Why does Polish use "w" instead of "v"?
It wasn't always written this way: in the earliest records of written Polish (such as the Bull of Gniezno), the letters "u" and "v" were used for this sound as well. There was no official "standard" ...
- 64k
13
votes
Accepted
Recognize this script?
Sorry for digging up this old question but we finally have an answer.
I reposted this question to puzzling stackexhange thinking they would be better equipped to solve it. Surely enough, within ...
- 2,175
13
votes
Accepted
Why does the NATO Spelling alphabet contain words with more than two syllables
The goal of the NATO spelling alphabet is to make the symbols as easily-distinguishable as possible, even over noisy channels (such as radio). Brevity (keeping the words short) is secondary to that. ...
- 64k
13
votes
Are there modern languages without standardized spelling? If not, why?
It depends on what you mean by "standardized", also "are written down". In Logoori (a Bantu language of Kenya), there are multiple observed spelling practices, but they can ...
- 82.1k
13
votes
Why doesn’t a language modernization initiative adopt pure phonetic spelling?
Designing an orthography is a difficult task, and having a phonemic orthography is only one of several goals in this task. Other goals may may include recognisability of morphemes (this is why, e.g., ...
- 29.8k
12
votes
Are syllable initial consonant clusters pronounced in Ancient Greek?
I'll assume you're a native English speaker. Since English doesn't have these clusters, it's difficult for an English speaker to hear or produce them correctly. But it is not impossible, and there is ...
- 17.8k
12
votes
Why did Old English lose both thorn and eth?
Here are my notes on the question, a summary of most important linguistic research with relevant quotes; perhaps someone, who is more into linguistic theory, might find them useful.
Old English
Hogg ...
- 8,684
12
votes
Accepted
How is French written in telegraphy and other settings in which diacritics are not possible?
There is no common conventions in French for replacing letters with diacritics by digraphs. In contexts where the diacritics are not available, the usage is just to omit them. This is still common ...
- 236
12
votes
Why are there spelling inconsistencies in Spanish and Italian? What is the historical origin of this spelling pattern?
It is all about the spelling conventions in those languages. "Latin does not follow spelling changes" because the alphabet Latin uses was conceived specially for the Latin language, Latin ...
- 17.7k
11
votes
Accepted
Does any language using the Latin alphabet have a unique name for "w"?
In many Germanic languages it's /ve/, as fdb said
In other Germanic languages, including German, its name is similar to that of English V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W#Name
In Polish it's /...
- 792
11
votes
Spelling of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European
Typing these characters is fairly straightforward, if you have an appropriate keyboard (or can customize yours): they're simply the lowercase Latin letters <e a o>, followed by the character U+032F ...
- 64k
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