alphabet – thoughts on mind

And sometimes i

Most English speakers know the vowels as “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y”. The reason for y’s ambivalent status is because it is often used as a consonant, as in “yes”, “you”, “kayak”, and “player”. It can also be used as a vowel, as in “sky”, “psychology”, “byte”, and “city”. Less often considered…

Stories in the history of written language (part 6)

Writing systems in fiction Back in part 2, we looked at some writing systems that were invented rather than developing naturally over a long time. There are many more invented writing systems, namely those invented for fictional languages. J. R. R. Tolkien was a pioneer of fictional languages, being a real-world language expert himself. His…

Stories in the history of written language (part 3)

In Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at some of the ways in which written languages have developed and creative ways in which they have been used. Here, we’ll look more into the interactions between languages and the relationship between language and speech. Writing another language’s sounds When two language communities come into contact,…

Stories in the history of written language (Part 1)

Homo sapiens is the only species known to have developed language. Many other animals have the ability to communicate, especially through vocalization but also through visual displays, pheromones, etc. Human language is thought to have originated from more basic vocalizations. However, no animal aside from humans uses anything quite like written language. Like most technology,…