The answer partly depends on whether we are talking about the sounds or letters of vowels and consonants. By mentioning “alphabetic languages”, the questioner is presumably asking why most versions of ...

Consonants are the rest of the letters in the alphabet: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y and z The letter 'y' is a bit different, because ...

From Latin and Chinese to Tamil and Telugu, discover the top ten most popular writing scripts used around the world ...

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. You might have learned it as a chant, a song, or a simple declaration, but this is how you learned the vowels of English. You may have wondered, why is Y so unsure of ...

Foreign languages can be intimidating for the novice learner, especially those that employ a whole new writing system. Any English speaker who has scanned a Chinese menu or glimpsed an Arabic ...

In a Lingua Franca post a few weeks ago, I needed to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the different pronunciations of the English word People still talk about speech sounds ...

A, B, C, D, E, F, G – makes you want to hum the alphabet song. But there’s no real reason why people should learn these letters in this order. There are plenty of ...

There are many fundamental categories in which we divide our world One such fundamental division that lies under our nose but seldom receives any attention, perhaps for a very good reason, is that ...