Sound & spelling in languages using the Latin Alphabet

-Variations on a theme --

A contribution by Peter PAUL

ANSWER: There is no single way. Although many letters have more or less the same name across the different languages which use the Latin Alphabet, there is a lot of variation, especially for some letters. In fact, even the speakers of English do not always agree on what to call some of the letters.

QUESTION: Do all languages which use the Latin Alphabet at least use the same 26 letters?

ANSWER: No. There can be considerable variation in the set of actual letters used in a given language which employs the Latin Alphabet. As the representative selection from different languages will show, not all languages use the full set of letters. (In part there are historical reasons for this. Another reason is cultural affinity between languages.) For more details select historical or cultural.

QUESTION: Can all languages be readily accommodated by the standard Latin Alphabet?

ANSWER: No. Although not all languages use the full set of letters, others add a number of 'modified' letters, to satisfactorily capture all the significant speech sounds in that language. Thus English makes do with the standard 26 letters, but needs to tolerate significant ambiguity in the link between spelling and pronunciation (cf. the many ways a letter like <A> can be pronounced in English.); other languages attempt to capture all, or at least most, of the significant speech sounds in that language by the use of 'modified' letters (cf. for instance Polish or Turkish.)

QUESTION: Why would this variation in the use of the Latin Alphabet be important?

ANSWER: This can be important in several distinct areas, in particular Choice of letters, Sound value of letters, Order of letters, Name of letters.

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Notes

HISTORICAL ASPECTS

It must be borne in mind here that, for instance, the letter <J> and the differentiation between <U> and <V> are mediaeval developments of the Latin Alphabet; thus the original spelling of justitia "justice" would have been iustitia or IVSTITIA, and "viva" would have been uiua or VIVA.

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CULTURAL ASPECTS

Note for instance the number of languages which call the letter <Y> "Greek I". Other cases are the essentially identical names for <J>, or for <Q>, in Dutch and Indonesian, or for <J>, or for <W>, in German and Polish.

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CHOICE OF LETTERS

Two thousand years ago the Latin Alphabet had only 23 letters. To these an additional 3 (<j> - a modification of <i> -, <v> - a modification of <u> -, and <w> - another modification of <u> or <v> (the "double U") -, were added a few centuries later. But not all languages use all 26 letters of the Modern Roman (or Latin) Alphabet; <k>, <q>, <w>, <x> and <y> being the least popular characters.

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SOUND VALUE OF LETTERS

There is a great deal of variation in the sound value of many of the letters, not only across languages, but even within English.

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ORDER OF LETTERS

This will be important in a dictionary or similar list (e.g. a library catalog or a book index). Unless we are familiar with the traditional order of letters in a given language, looking up a word in a dictionary or an item in an alphabetical list becomes a random choice.

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NAME OF LETTERS

The name given to each letter when referring to it becomes important if we want to spell a word or pronounce an abbreviation.

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Department of Linguistics, Monash University.

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