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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ninalanyon Intriguing question! There probably are, though like that and Glossy's example, likely only as word-puzzles.
It led me to think of a more common aspect of at least the English language: letter-doubling, starting with those six:
E, O, R, T, also B, C, D, F, N, M, P, S.
I think aardvark and vacuum are the only examples of twinned 'A' and 'U' - and the former is from the animal's own country.
.
Welsh of course uses 'DD' (pron. TH), 'FF' (spoken as the English single 'F', given a 'V' sound in Welsh) and 'LL' (pron. something like THL - very hard to represent fairly in a text-message. So twins acting as single consonants.
Not always easy for non-Welsh speakers, especially in combinations as in Rheilffordd Ffestiniog (Ffestiniog Railway), Ystradfellte (a village near Merthyr Tydfil) or Ogof Ffynnon Ddu which I gather is the 'Cave of the Black Spring', also in S. Wales.
Whether Welsh has an equivalent to Tumbleweed's and Glossy's canine and bibulous English examples, I have no idea, but would it treat dd, ff and ll as being as different from d, f and l, as say, ø is from o in Norwegian?
It led me to think of a more common aspect of at least the English language: letter-doubling, starting with those six:
E, O, R, T, also B, C, D, F, N, M, P, S.
I think aardvark and vacuum are the only examples of twinned 'A' and 'U' - and the former is from the animal's own country.
.
Welsh of course uses 'DD' (pron. TH), 'FF' (spoken as the English single 'F', given a 'V' sound in Welsh) and 'LL' (pron. something like THL - very hard to represent fairly in a text-message. So twins acting as single consonants.
Not always easy for non-Welsh speakers, especially in combinations as in Rheilffordd Ffestiniog (Ffestiniog Railway), Ystradfellte (a village near Merthyr Tydfil) or Ogof Ffynnon Ddu which I gather is the 'Cave of the Black Spring', also in S. Wales.
Whether Welsh has an equivalent to Tumbleweed's and Glossy's canine and bibulous English examples, I have no idea, but would it treat dd, ff and ll as being as different from d, f and l, as say, ø is from o in Norwegian?
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@ArishMell I think dd would have to be counted as a single letter distinct from d. Just as ø has sometimes been written as oe and å used to be written as aa and æ written as ae.
In Norwegian it would have to have at least 29 letters. I've no idea how it would work in languages that use diacritics, are the letters with diacritics separate letters or just differently accented?
In Norwegian it would have to have at least 29 letters. I've no idea how it would work in languages that use diacritics, are the letters with diacritics separate letters or just differently accented?
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ninalanyon So that gives Welsh 29 letters in the alphabet, in theory. I don't know the language beyond a few place-name elements, but it's struck me that although the letter Y is common in it, I don't recall seeing 'Z' used anywhere.
I have an English-Norwegian / Norwegian-English dictionary, a hefty comprehensive tome intended for serious use, not simply an adjunct to a tourist's phrase-book. Although it has sections on grammar it does not seem to cover alphabets.
However, another book I have, introducing the Norwegian language and intended to be accompanied by a CD I don't have, does show the alphabet, with its 29 letters (and how their names are pronounced). So it does treat those three dipthongs, listed after Z, as letters in their own right.
Such characters used to occur in English too, usually where Anglicising foreign, especially Greek, roots; but have largely been displaced by two-letter pairs. E.g.:
ae from æ as in paed, for 'child'. (Ped, of course, refers to feet!).
I have also seen it in early spellings of speleology - cave science - but I forget whether in the first or second syllable. It is from the Greek word for 'cave'.
Also perhaps oe in some medical conditions, e.g. oedema? I could not find an equivalent.
I have an English-Norwegian / Norwegian-English dictionary, a hefty comprehensive tome intended for serious use, not simply an adjunct to a tourist's phrase-book. Although it has sections on grammar it does not seem to cover alphabets.
However, another book I have, introducing the Norwegian language and intended to be accompanied by a CD I don't have, does show the alphabet, with its 29 letters (and how their names are pronounced). So it does treat those three dipthongs, listed after Z, as letters in their own right.
Such characters used to occur in English too, usually where Anglicising foreign, especially Greek, roots; but have largely been displaced by two-letter pairs. E.g.:
ae from æ as in paed, for 'child'. (Ped, of course, refers to feet!).
I have also seen it in early spellings of speleology - cave science - but I forget whether in the first or second syllable. It is from the Greek word for 'cave'.
Also perhaps oe in some medical conditions, e.g. oedema? I could not find an equivalent.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@ArishMell Ah, but ø, æ, and å are not diphthongs.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@ArishMell One of my Norwegian colleagues used to complain that English had so many diphthongs making it difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce!
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ninalanyon Perhaps what is harder is remembering how to pronounce similar combinations in different words:
Climbing the tree, I thought the bough very rough.
Though at least English does not give almost every noun a gender even if abstract, as in French (which also has much more complicated verb forms than in English).
Climbing the tree, I thought the bough very rough.
Though at least English does not give almost every noun a gender even if abstract, as in French (which also has much more complicated verb forms than in English).