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

OK here it is how do you spell the letters of the alphabet like do you spell d dee or is it just d and if do what's with the sounds of other letters you don't pronounce when you use it in a word it's really confusing

Boy, do you need to keep taking the tablets! Be glad you speak English, because if you spoke French you would call your letters by different names. You could try this out on your unsuspecting family, and spell words the French way...

A = ah: B=bay: C=say: D=day: E=ay: F=eff: G=zhee: H=aash: I=ee: J=jay: K=kay
L=ell: M=em: N=en: O=oh: P=pay: Q=coo: R=air: S=ess: T=tay: U=oo: V=vay
W=doo ble vay: X=icks: Y=ee greck: Z=zed

That should sort out the question, and give you a fighting edge in conversations.

Doc

As the good Doctor said, letters do get spelled out like that, but the sounds that you use in words are different from letters. Letters are just the written symbols used in that particular language to represent the sounds that we make, where the symbols are the same in most European languages because they all (almost) descended from the same language, Proto Indo-European, which used the same alphabet system that the English speaking countries now use.

The actual sounds used in speech are called phonemes, which have a single symbol for every single sound that you can make with your mouth, whereas letters, as Doc showed, can pick out 20 different sounds each. A good example are the words pin and spin. Say each of these holding your hand in frontof your mouth. You'll notice that after the p in pin there was a slight exhalation of air that wasn't present when you said the word spin. This is difference is unimportant to most of us, but in some languages the difference is enough to warrant seperate 'letters' for each (japanese, and several other asiatic languages, for example).

I hope that made sense to you, because I'm trying to explain in 6 sentences what took me a year of study, because there is a lot more to it than just that, but much of it isn't very interesting

I like Spanish sorta better than English and French better than either cause they are much less confusing I think one day I'll write my own language but maybey not any time soon

Well, your holiness the one suggestion I would make is that you type 'Esperanto' into the search field and have a read of what you find there - maybe putting off starting isn't such a good idea, they can be tricky things, languages. But hey, with the internet, maybe everyone will be inventing languages in 20 years time - bon chance, Saint Lys

I've had 5 years of Spanish from school and 3 years of Latin but that was independent thing so I can read alot of it but not pronounce much I'm taking French this year cause my Grandma and aunt and mom are all fluent in it and the only person in my age group in my family who knows any is my cousin Lauren.But Spanish and French are branched off Latin and English has alot of Latin and French causeof that time in England where all the noble people spoke those so they got mixed in with English so I probably should be taking Chinese or something cause it would be more of a challenge and there are like a billion something people who speak it so it could be useful of maybey Arabic cause my cousin Eric knows alot of that since he lived in Saudi Arabia for 7 years and he could help I don't know yet I'm trying to find another language where you don't have to roll your r's I can't do that at all I sorta like languages I like Elizabethan English best though cause the words are all weird but they make since and there fun to say especially the insults I found this page full of them http://www.tower.org/insult/insult.html and it's really cool when you insult people with them cause they all react funny but anyway I think I'm rambling now so I'll stop

I've heard Finnish is a pretty cool language Or maybe, just to be really esoteric (since you seem to already have most of the European language families in one way or another) you could try to learn Gothic, which is a dead East Germanic language last spoken around 800AD and regarded by many linguistic scholars as a 'perfect' language. Being a Germanic language it shares several similarities with English (though it's no closer to English than is High German - in fact, slightly further removed).

And whatever gave you the impression that insulting peole is fun?

I believe it's my family it can be very entertaining or maybey it was the all the late shows I watched as a kid who knows I think if i can find someone to teach me I'll try that gothic language sounds cool

Good luck - I don't think it exactly gets taught as a standard language in schools anymore. Maybe you could try Oxford........

It *is* fun to insult ones family, isn't it. I wonder why that is.....

They tend to take it better than big biker guys and stuff and usually they wont beat you up

I don't doubt that that's true, but only *usually*?......

Well that depends on how insulting you are and what kind of mood they're in don't tell me you never got into fist fights with your brothers and sisters it's essential practice for school and they are less likely to hurt you in any permanent way then people you don't know cause of your parents so you get to practice with only minor injuries

I only have two older sisters...who I did occasionally get into fights with, but it didn't take that long until I was bigger than them......and rather than bully them, I was afraid to fight them because I was so much stronger the injuries wouldn't necessarily be minor.......if you need practice for school, maybe you should take up martial arts of some kind......