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Word Of The Day ... Or Week Or Whatever


Steph

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You know how sometimes people claim that some language or its alphabet has no vowels?  That's the kind of statement which can sound really smart-@$$, or which can make the other person in the conversation sound smart-@$$ because they want to argue with it because _of course_ the language has vowels.   Unless maybe it's a click language or something like that, it's got vowels.

Butttttt ... I learned yesterday that not every language has an "alphabet".

 

So, bear with me.   "Alphabet" has an "alpha" and a "bet" -- vowels and consonants -- written _separately_.  

 

Some languages have a "syllabary" ... which presents entire syllables in one unit.  So  all the consonant and vowels sounds in the syllable are represented with one symbol.  And the language has finite syllables you can piece together to speak it.  

 

AND ... the word which launched me into that lesson was "abugida".  That's a type of syllabary.  

Abugida (noun): a kind of syllabary in which the vowel is changed by modifying the base consonant symbol, so that all the forms that represent a given consonant plus each vowel resemble one another. 

 

And here is a video which explains one abugida, the one for the Inuktitut language.   This language has its symbols for its different consonants.  And then the direction the symbol is written tells which vowel goes with it. So your consonant will point up or point to the left or point to the right.  And that will tell you which of the three vowel possible vowel sounds goes with that consonant.  So Ti, Ta and Tu all look alike -- it's all done with the symbol for the T ... but the T is spun around to tell you which vowel to use.

 

So how is that for a word of the day? :)   

 

 

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What a wonderful view.  :)

 

I LOVE snow ... I want to move north.  Wisconsin is too far south for me. ;) 

 

But hopefully snow will hold off this year.  Have a little bit too much going on.  

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I remember when I learned the name for the long sandwich which I now know as a "sub".  

I was about nine.  It was fun to say the name of this exotic sandwich that my father bought us.  

But now I don't remember which name he called it.

 

It was either "hero" or "hoagie".   I think "hero".  

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Some of them seem to be valid. Funny enough "Slampadato" is not in the italian dictionary.

The "Iktsuarpok" I understand to be similar to impatience?

Zhaghzhagh = Zähneklappern :) hope this does not make you Kummerspeck.

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