this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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Linguistics (mander.xyz)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's funny because a ton of these common errors are due in a huge part to the fact that we don't use the native alphabet for English. Lots of stuff has to be transposed in creative ways to deal with the romanization of English.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Native alphabet?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The Latin alphabet is not the original alphabet system used for English. There are modern alternatives that have been suggested to help eliminate some of the confusion created by using a non native alphabet, the Shavian alphabet for instance would theoretically solve much of the issue.

It's kind of what happens in other languages as well... English speakers like to quip that there are x number of dozens of ways to spell Mohammed. And for sure, in English, it probably feels that way. But there is actually only one proper way to spell it you just have to use the Arabic alphabet to do so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/origin-english-alphabet/

Here is a decent explanation of some of the evolution behind the alphabet. It's funny that a lot of what we consider special characters in modern typography are in fact actually original letters of the defunct alphabet systems. It's been under our noses the whole time, we just don't really teach that alot of these characters were once part of the working alphabet system. &, for instance... Was the last letter of the alphabet for some time. The story behind @ is even more interesting.