When editing the title to this question here on our sister site ELL: The “p” in Trump my childish inner self was tempted to try and make some sort of scatological pun on the “p” in the question. Now, if you play enough scrabble, you may be aware of the notional spellings for the names … Read more
I’ve been googleing and ran across this little blog post. It has a bit of information stating the the & symbol was at one point the 27th letter in the alphabet. For years the & symbol (now known as the ampersand) was the final, pronounced “and” but recited with the Latin “per se,” meaning “by … Read more
I don’t know too many languages, but the ones I know have more elaborate names for their letters than the monosyllabicity of names for English letters. (E.g. – I’ll pick on Greek here – ay instead of alpha, bee for beta, etc.) How did these short names evolve, and when? Further, why do nine of … Read more
Why is the letter ‘W’ pronounced like double-‘U’ in English and pronounced as double-‘V’ in French? I’ve always wondered this. Typographically, the letter ‘W’ can be written with curvy bottoms (sorry for the lack of typography jargon) which looks like two U’s side by side (uu). It can also be written with hard edges which … Read more
What is the correct sound of the letter H when reading the alphabet – is it ‘aych’ or ‘Haych’ ? Answer The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes has the question, “How do you pronounce the letter ‘H’?” Their current results: aitch (85%) haitch (12%) I use something else (2%) You can see a clearer … Read more
Why are there inconsistencies in the pronunciation of the consonants of the alphabet? For example: ‘b’ is pronounced like ‘bee’ but ‘m’ is pronounced as ’em’ rather than ‘me’. The pronunciation of ‘h’ matches nothing and ‘j’ and ‘k’ are orphaned twins. In Turkish (the only other language I have any knowledge of), the consonants … Read more
