Benjamin Franklin’s Phonetic Alphabet

It’s the last Thursday of the year—somehow—and as usual, I’m doing something slightly different. This year I’m sharing the phonetic alphabet Benjamin Franklin came up with (which you should have realized by looking at the title of this post).
 
Apparently I’m the only one who finds it much easier to read and pronounce. I was able to get the hang of it in a few seconds. It isn’t perfect, since the letters he uses for both “th” sounds and the “sh” sound look like other variations of h, making things kind of confusing to tell apart. I also think it needs the “juh” sound as its own letter, while he uses the combination of Z and the sh letter, because seriously, I’m not spelling my name with a Z. Although that might make it cooler...

Still, I like the elimination of the letter C, which is completely useless when we have K and S. Overall, I think it’s much easier to understand. Unfortunately, no one else agreed, though it did inspire Noah Webster, the guy who shaped American English, to eliminate extraneous letters from several words, and I have a hard enough time figuring out the spelling of words like paleontology without an extra A being in there.

 
What do you think? What would you change about the alphabet and spelling if you could?

Secret Origins: W

I’m sure this won’t be another rehash of U, like the letter V was. Or maybe it will as I’m already rehashing the opening statement.

The alphabet gif has a short lineage for W. See, it turns out, most other languages just used U/V for W. In Etruscan, a version of it was figure 8 they used for the F sound. It was the Germanic languages that used two U’s, or W, to signify the sound for V. It didn’t become “wah” until later, again in Germanic writings (where they also kind of used a P like symbol for the W sound).

So, in neater, list format:

Etruscan:

F = V sound (it’s a soft F, so basically a V)

8 = HF sound (this would be a F like we know it)

V = U (makes the U sound; there is no W sound at all)

Ancient Latin:

F = F (really only used for F as they didn’t use a V sound)

Y = U/W (It looks like a Y, but it’s really a V and it makes the U sound; still no W sound)

Roman Latin:

F = F (again, just F)

V = U (the sound)

VV = UU (started by Germanic languages for the V sound they had; later, it started to be wah instead of vah)

Modern Latin:

F = F

U = U

V = V

W = W

           

Sources

Alphabet Gif

Omniglot

Ancient Scripts

Mysterious Etruscans

Medieval Writing

The Forgotten Letters

All of us who type solely in English are probably used to twenty six and only twenty six letters (some other languages get more, the lucky ducks), but as I’ve mentioned in several Language of Confusion posts, there have been tons of changes to the Latin alphabet over the years. Some letters have appeared out of nowhere (we’re all looking at you, J) and many have just disappeared.

These are their stories.

…I miss Law & Order.

Yogh (capital Ȝ, small ȝ, although it evolved over time much like other letters) came from an Old Irish form of the letter g. The pronunciation was a hard, throaty y-g sound, if that makes sense. Because it looked like a Z, a lot of words that were supposed to have yogh instead had a z. It’s how the name Mackenzie got its Z.

Thorn (capital Þ, small þ) is one of the old th sounds. It has a straightforward pronunciation, like th in math or thesaurus. The reason old timey signs say “ye” is because that y is supposed to be a thorn, making it “the”. It’s because thorn kind of looked like a y in some of its evolutions.

Eth or edh (capital Ð, small ð) is the other of the old th sounds. It’s pronunciation is much softer than thorn’s, more like if you barely said the th (compare how hard you th when you say the word “math” to when you say the word “this”).

Wynn or wen (capital Ƿ, small ƿ), from an old runic alphabet, is an old character for w back before w existed. When W showed up, wynn wasn’t cool anymore and faded into obscurity.

And there are plenty more where those came from, but I’ve bored you enough for today.

Sources

Omniglot

Mental Floss

Medieval Writing

Evertype

Briem.net

Secret Origins: O

It’s definitely been too long since I’ve done this! Really, I’m way too excited about it : ).

O is a circle, such a basic symbol that it also represents the mathematical nothing. If you look at the alphabet gif, our O is the same in Etruscan, the language of the people who passed on the symbols (although not the language) to the Roman Empire, which would one day spread it to England and make its way through the years to us. That symbol came from the Greek omicron, where it’s the fantastical symbol…O. And lowercase o. Shocking, right? But interesting side note: omega (Ωω) is also an O in Greek (mega and micron, big and small). It used to specify the long o vowel while omicron was the short, but these days they’re mostly the same.

Back to business. The Greeks came up with their alphabet by copying that of the Phoenicians, who used the symbol O, but not as a vowel. See, the Phoenician language is what’s known as an abjad, or consonant alphabet, meaning they had no symbols for vowels—making it the “oh” sound was the Greeks idea. The Phoenician O, or Ayin, did not symbolize a sound at all. Way backwith the letter A I mentioned that the Greeks made a letter from the symbol for a glottal stop (basically it’s like not saying a hard consonant, like t, before another consonant (“pet dog” becomes “peh dog”)). Anyway, the Greeks did the same thing with O, this time taking a symbol for a voiced pharyngeal fricative. I can’t really explain what that is, but they have an audio example on the Wikipedia page for it. It’s something like “aaah”.

The voiced pharyngeal fricative (say that three times fast) is also how the Proto-Sinaitics the Phoenicians descended from used the letter. It also means eye, although the letter is pronounced something like ‘en or enu. Sure enough its original symbol was a flattened oval or an elongated one with a dot in the center. They took the symbol from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the Proto-Sinaitic word for eye was attached to the Egyptian symbol for it.

TL;DR: More than four thousand years ago O was an oval with a dot, but since then it’s been a circle, even when it didn’t represent the sound we know it as.

Sources

Omniglot

The Mysterious Etruscans

Phoenician.org

Ancient Scripts

Harry Foundalis’s page on the Greek language.

Alphabet gif.

Macmillan Dictionary

“Letter Perfect: The A-to-Z History of Our Alphabet” by David Sacks.

And Wikipedia. But just for the sound! It wasn’t research, I swear.

Secret Origins: E

It’s been a while! What mysteries will unfold about the letter E, the most frequently appearing letter of our alphabet? You know this means we’re going back to the .gif. As you can see, earlier versions had a little tag at the bottom. Some, like the Etruscan version, were facing the other way! The little backwards flag E can be traced back to a little stick figure in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

When we go from Greek further back to Hebrew, we also learn that e used to be…he (ה). Early Semitic writings didn’t have vowels (I talked about this during A), and he meant a rough aspirate (it was tough to find a source for rough aspirate but basically, it’s a sign for a noise we don’t have in English; think of how you’re supposed to say Hanukkah; that h noise is a rough aspirate). It became a letter in the Phoenician alphabet, but unsurprisingly, it represented the H sound.

It was the Greeks who started using he as their letter e—epsilon—for their short e sound (or adding an apostrophe when they did need the h sound—you’ll see more about this when I finally get to h). And because it was the Greeks, one of the most dominant, lasting cultures, other languages followed suit.

Sources

Alphabet.gif 

Temple Study.com’s post on the letter E

Pathguy’s post on the alphabet.

Omniglot, which has pages on Etruscan, Phoenician and Proto-Sinaitic (for better looks at the old versions of letters)

Phoenician Encyclopedia

Ch-Ch-Ch (ch-k-sh)

The origin of the ch sound is significant to deserve its own post, although it isn’t exactly a letter. What is it about c combined with h makes the “ch-” noise of leach or churn? And what makes it sound like k, as in choir or mechanic? And if mechanic has the k sound, why does the similar “machine” sound like sh?

I have a feeling this is going to be a confusing one.

Time to go back to Latin, where the ch sound was pronounced x. Once the language spread to France, the k sound (which was c because Classical Latin only uses k in Greek words) became “tsh,” or roughly what we would call a hard “ch”. It became a part of Old French, the begetter of English, and they started spelling the sound ch, as we know it today. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Saxons started using ch in their words. As Middle English evolved, words that had been previously pronounced with a k started being pronounced with a ch (kinn became chin, carite-charity).

Meanwhile, Old French turned into Middle French, where the hard sound of ch was dropped completely, making it sh. Words continued to cross back and forth between the languages and in some words (like charade, from the eighteenth century or chastise from the thirteenth), the sh sound stuck.

As for the third pronunciation of ch, the hard k sound in character, chorus and the like stems from Greek. Like I said, Classical Latin uses k only in Greek words. The Latin for character is from the Greek word kharakter; the Latin speakers just switched the letter to c, which was a “true” letter of their language. And some places, English pronunciation followed suit. 

Sources here are The Online Etymology Dictionary, Eyewitness History, and Omniglot-the guide to languages, alphabets and other writing systems.

Secret Origins: C

Yes, it's that time of week again. New followers: hi! Every Wednesday I do etymology or, like today, the origins of letters in the English alphabet. Why? ...

Let's just get started, shall we?

C is a tricky letter. It can be pronounced “kuh” as in car or “suh” as in census. Often times it is affected by the letter following it; a, o and u tend to make a hard sound, e, i and y usually soft (at least in English; don’t make me get into other languages). When combined with h, it becomes something else entirely, perhaps a whole other post. This information comes from from the New Students Reference Work. And, you know. Sounding it out myself. Further craziness, it can be silent. You don’t hear the c sound in sclera, muscle or indict. I think that’s more of an evolutionary spelling than part of its pronunciation, though.

You can look at it in the Alphabet history I’ve used with the past two letters, but you see C’s origin is derived from G. I’ll get more into G, gamma, gimmel et al. when I get to it, but I suppose Γ (capital letter gamma) could be considered a C made at an angle.

The question becomes where did c break away from gamma and become its own letter? It seems that while the other languages had K, S and Q, C doesn’t show up anywhere in the history of the Latin alphabet. That’s because unlike most letters, it comes from somewhere else.

C formed after the Romans introduced their Latin alphabet to the British Isles. In the Old English Period (seventh to twelfth centuries CE), writing was influenced by both the Romans and the Irish Celts. In the Irish language (yes, they have a language of their own, not English), they do not have several letters, including k and q. Also in the Irish languages, consonants have different pronunciations depending on the vowel that follows (a, o and u are broad, e and i are slender…hm. Seems familiar.). 

From the Irish, the Old English got to pronouncing C as hard and soft (called palatizing) and obviously it had to separate from gamma. And so, with much effort, that is how C is related to G and how it became its own letter because of Irish influence.

Thanks to these sources:

The New Student’s Reference Work – C Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co. 1914.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Cambridge University Press. Britannica.com

Dictionary.reference.com

Omniglot.com

Secret Origins: B

Welcome new friends! PK Hrezo gave me a Blogger Oscar be cause she thinks my posts are more than just ramblings from an insane mind. Shh. No one tell her the truth. Anyway, in order to keep up appearances, I'm going to tell you where the letter B came from. You would not believe how hard it is to find source material for letters.

B has many forms: B or β (Greek), ב bet (Hebrew), ب beh (Arabic), Б or б be (Cyrillic). Also, the Cyrillic letter ve looks familiar: B. B is also the symbol for a sonant labial stop. Remember the glottal stop from alef, which is taking a breath? Yeah, we’re getting into phonetics again. Sonant labial means voiced by the lips. When you pronounce B, you must use your lips. It is the symbol for the sonant labial stop because of this, meaning a B indicates you stop using your lips to pronounce something. I think.   

Anyway, look here for a more direct line of B’s creation. In Latin (modern), the language English takes its letters from, we see it as B with two humps or b with one. In Etruscan it shows up as what we know it as, but also reversed, so the two humps point left. The Greeks wrote their B quite similarly, but the early it gets the more pointed the humps are, almost like peaks.

In Hebrew, it looks quite a bit different. ב bet or beth looks more like a square with one open side. And, like alef, it has a particular meaning: house. I assume the reason the Greeks chose the word is the same as alef, as well. They wanted a symbol that began with the character they were looking to represent.

Before Hebrew was Phoenician, whose symbol for house looked a lot more like a g. But it does resemble the early Greek b, only facing the other direction. Next we get into proto-Sinaitic, whose B was pronounced bayit. And if you look at the chart, we can see its symbol is a square or a square with an open top (like a chimney! or the Arab b above). In ancient Egyptian, it was a square with a hole in the bottom. Squares are often associated with houses and I guess the hole is the doorway.

Other sources used: Old English Grammar and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Secret Origins: A

I said I’d do it. And here it is!

What are the secrets and mysteries of the letter a? You know, the stuff they don’t teach on Sesame Street?

For one thing, the letter A came from an ox. What? Really? Yes, really : ).

Here is a chart of A’s evolution. It’s a little unclear, but basically A evolves from the Latin A, which is close to the Greek A (alpha). In Hebrew, the word for ox is aleph, obviously close to alpha despite the difference in the symbols. Even before that was the language of the Phoenicians, who had a similar word for ox: alep. As you can see, the symbol is similar to a sideways A, and in other cases was an A with the line across at an angle. And if you go back to Proto-Sinaitic, the symbol for ox is pretty much a picture of an ox! The Ancient Egyptians, famous picto-symbologists, also used a picture for the word ox.

Like words, letters were also changed when they were adopted by different languages. The Phoenician language didn’t have vowels and when the Greeks started speaking it, they needed something for their “ah” and “ay” sounds.

The Hebrew A (aleph/ox) comes from Phoenician, but what prompted the Phoenician’s to use alep (ox)? For them, alep meant a glottal stop. If you’re like me when I first read this, you have no idea what that means. A glottal stop is the stop in the back of the throat before a consonant. Say “The cancer isn’t terminal.” Between the end of isn’t and the beginning of terminal is a glottal stop. They wouldn’t write “stacked.” It would be something like “st’ ked.”

Anyway, Phoenician came directly from Proto-Canaanite. If you go to this website here and scroll down to the alphabet chart, you can see that the main difference between Proto-Canaanite and Phoenician is the symbols. Proto-Canaanite (Proto-Sinaitic on the first chart I linked to) is a lot closer to Egyptian. The Ancient Egyptians liked to use glyphs for words. To simplify things, in about 1700 BCE Proto-Canaanite evolved only using twenty two symbols for the consonant sounds (vowels weren’t important!). Apparently, they decided which ones to use by picking a symbol that’s word began with the consonant they were looking for. So alep— represented by an ox’s head—became the symbol for the glottal stop we now know as A.

Some excellent texts on letters are available on WikiSources, which is where I got most of this information. Used here are Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, the Letter A and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, letter A.

I also looked up stuff on the Phoenician’s language and the glottal stop. Because I care. And also, I'm a bit obsessive.