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.

Taking A Stand

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there is a bit of a controversy going on about some books on Amazon’s listings. People want them taken off because of the topic. What topic? you ask. What book is riling people up this week? Speak? Twenty Boy Summer?

No. A book on the joys of pedophilia.

Pedophilia.

Let’s just let that sink in.

Pedophilia is one of the most reprehensible crimes there is, and Amazon has permitted a book encouraging people to partake in it to be put up on their website. Brief aside: the book that started this has been taken down. But there are others, self-published of course, up there like rotten teeth that need to be pulled.

I’m all for freedom of speech, but this is advocating an illegal, not to mention disgustingly immoral, activity. It’s one thing if someone is writing about the benefits of marijuana. Smoking a joint very rarely hurts anyone (maybe they get dizzy and fall down a flight of stairs or something, but that’s a topic for another day). Pedophilia, however, is a sickness that pollutes everything it touches. And I swear, if one person tells me ever that people said that about homosexuality, you’ll read about what I do to them in the national news. An act between consenting adults is a far f*cking cry from the rape of a child.

And there are books up there talking about how “wonderful” it is! Amazon: what is wrong with you? These are books about one of the most depraved acts known to humanity! And don’t tell me everyone has a right to their opinions. Yes, they do, but you are a private company. Refusing to sell books on illegal acts isn’t going to ruffle many feathers. You have the right, damn it, to say no, and are powerful enough to throw off any lawsuits. Hell, the Boy Scouts are allowed to refuse membership to gays (I disagree, but they’re, again, private and can do what they want, no matter what I think; I won’t support them, but I won’t deny their right to say no). You’ll be allowed to delete this filth, Amazon. Don’t permit this to continue.

I’m not shopping there as long as any of these books are up. Christmas is coming, which will make it difficult, but I managed to shop before Amazon and I’ll manage now. I ask you, my friends, to do this with me because the voice—and patronage—of the many is greater than that of the one.

Goodbye, Amazon. I’ll miss the convenience but I won’t miss the cowardice.