h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hadn't realised there was current controversy I'm not really too bothered whether the meaning of the letters is controversial, just concerned that you weren't 'following the crowd' in suggesting gaml could be equated with camel.

Also that link I provided only for the suggested meanings, that mostly tie in with yours, not for the guff about meditation (that I skimmed over)

Pimms

Excellent stuff as usual Gnomon...

Just to add my tuppenneth worth to the entry name bit...

Why not "The Development of the Western Alphabet"

You could always argue that this particular alphabet is mainly used in the western world

English Alphabet? Isn't that the Latin Alphabet?

Errrr...

Excellent Entry.

Aside that might interest: I read in Georges Ifrah (loosely translated to english his book is entitled: On the origins of numbers) - he also devotes a short chapter on the development of symbols in general - that 'alf' (the 'ox') derives from the Egyptian hieroglyph for ox, which is an upside down A (the two 'legs' being the horns). Rotations of symbols by 90° or 180° is not a rare thing in history.

The chinese hieroglyph for ox, was also an upside down A (the head of the ox), today it looks like a t with two dashes and a horn on the left side (the whole animal)

HELL

Great to see this here Gnomon

I don't have anything to add, except


F/b

Hell, the origin of our alphabet from hieroglyphs is one theory, but it is controversial. The Ox head as A for example. There's no doubt that A came from a picture of an ox head. But the Egyptian hieroglyph of an ox head meant something different, not A, and it was just one of about 750 hieroglyphs. It is equally possible that the early Semites saw an ox ('alef in Semitic) and decided independently that it should represent the first letter of 'alef (which incidently was ' not a, but the letter got changed to a later by the Greeks).

That was a tricky post to compehend without use of italics Gnomon

So was the "'" some sort of glottal back-of-the-throat sound then?

Okay. I just posted that because I read it somewhere, if it's controversial - comprehensibly - it's better to leave it out, indeed.

What about 'Latin' instead of 'western', 'our' or 'English'?

HELL

There were two sounds which are now represented by an apostrophe. One was the glottal stop, the sound you hear in the middle of the phrase "oh-oh!". The other was the ain sound which does not exist in English but is a throaty h.

Technically I should use a "closing single quote" for the glottal stop and an "opening single quote" for the ain, but I've used a symmetrical apostrophe for both. I don't think anybody will mind.

The official name of the alphabet is the "Roman Alphabet" but I deliberately kept away from that because lots of readers won't recognise the term. I'm reminded of the George Bush's apocryphal comment about Latin America, that he wished he could speak Latin so that he could speak to these people.

I don't want people skipping over this entry because they think it is about some foreign alphabet. It is our alphabet, the one that everybody reading h2g2 is using at the moment.

Recumbentman, I've taken your comments about Henry viij on board and re-written the sections on U and V, I and J accordingly.

Then 'our' is probably OK, even though it makes me go because it doesn't belong to us, maybe 'Roman' would still be better, no? Becasue that's what it is... Dunno. I definetly wouldn't use 'English', because there's nothing English about it.

Anyways. Brilliant Entry, I think I have said that already, haven't I?

HELL

If it's not about the English alphabet, should beta s's and accented letters be included as well?

It is really about the English alphabet, but most of it applies to the Roman alphabet as used by other countries as well.

Who would have thought the title would be the main bone of contention? It seems to happen with quite a few entries.

Tell me one specific letter in the 'English' Alphabet that is NOT used elsewhere. Accentuation is , it doesn't change the characters. The German 'ß' is a special character like the ampersand '&' (it is a contraction of two latin characters, a (very) stretched s and a z, which sometimes looks like a '3'.) - the ampersand is an 'e' and a 't' forming 'et' meaniong 'and'. There is absolutely NOTHING English about the alphabet we're using right now. There is nothing German about 'Ä' or Portuguese about 'ç', they are all contractions or stylised 'Roman' characters. This is why I really object to the use of the term 'English'. But this is just me.

HELL

I object to the term English as well, Hell. That's why the entry is called "The Development of Our Alphabet".

I was not complaining or anything Also, the post above was not aimed at you, Gnomon. I think 'our' is OK...

HRLL

"George Bush's apocryphal comment about Latin America, that he wished he could speak Latin so that he could speak to these people" -- that was supposed to be Dan Quayle; though Snopes says it's not true:

"In April 1989, Representative Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island told a gathering of Republicans that she had recently attended an event at the Belgian embassy, where Vice-President Quayle complimented her on her command of French. Then, Schneider said, the Vice-President added: "I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." Ms. Schneider concluded by admitting that the story was merely a joke, but not all the newspapers reported it that way.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quayle.htm

Of course Schneider being a Republican may well have backtracked to cover up for him after letting the story out . . .