Re: Optimum number of symbols

> Date:         Mon, 20 May 2002 14:42:20 -0400
> From: Jake X <alwaysawake247@...>
>
> All the Roman letters were originally named as the sound and "eh"
> (from bet), but english pronounces them as it does because of a
> glide. The letter "h" comes from the french who named that letter by
> its shape (there is no french phoneme for [h]).
Well, almost. The original Roman alphabet had pretty regular letter
names, /a:/, /be:/, /ke:/, /de:/ and so on, probably inherited from
the Etruscans --- the exceptions were the two velars /ka:/ and /qu:/,
/ha:/ probably by analogy with /ka:/ (the Etruscan value was some sort
of /e/), and the unvoiced fricatives /ef/, /es/ and /eks/.

The alphabet probably had three velar stops because the distinction
palatal/velar/labialized was phonemic somewhere along the chain of
borrowing, but I'm not sure where --- so the original names were more
like /ce/, /ka/, /k_wu/. I'm pretty sure the Romans themselves didn't
make the distinction phonemically, and that the context-dependent use
of the three letters was a matter of tradition --- but there's bound
to have been some allophonic variation in those directions still, as
evidenced by the later development of /k/ before /e/ and /i/.

Note: This was before the reintroduction of the Greek letters
/y:psilon/ and /ze:ta/ that were dropped somewhere, but felt to be
needed when the Romans bought into Greek culture. (X may also have
been reacquired then, I don't remember --- but in any case it got a
name by analogy with the older ones, as did G when it was invented).
J and V are even later additions, one getting it's name from Greek
/io:ta/, the other by analogy --- but if the Romans had had it,
perhaps it would have been /ev/?

About the French name for H: There's another story, the references for
which I didn't check out, that the name was changed to /aha/ when /h/
was lost in initial position, and then sharpened to /axa/ when /h/ was
dying out altogether. The h in the current spelling of the name would
then be spurious, or folk-etymological, since it is felt as quite
natural that the name should begin with the letter.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)