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The 27th Letter

poetryfoundation.org

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Re: The 27th Letter

#21

Post by Cpoll »

phnofive wrote: post #14

Do I need a coffee or is this just stilted: > In the alphabet recited by nineteenth-century schoolchildren, it followed Z. 'And per se and', they would say, 'and per se and'. A logogram masquerading as a letter, a letter that is also a word—like a and I and even o, but no—a letter that is only a word, the plainest word of all. A word we could do without, to be honest, if we had to. We don’t have to, and thank the lan…

I can't think of a sentence that can't be rephrased to avoid "and" (usually resulting in something that sounds less elegant, admittedly). For lists, it's helpful but optional. Sometimes you can make do with "with" instead. Compound sentences with "and" can be split up.

Re: The 27th Letter

#22

Post by wl »

Waterluvian wrote: post #4
bradrn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s used in English, which as far as I’m aware isn’t dead.

Opportunistically and not out of necessity, I think. As far as I know all it means is “and.” If any word deserves a character, it’s “the.”

It's also occasionally used in English texts as a ligature for "et" in the Latin abbreviation of etcetera: &c.

Re: The 27th Letter

#23

Post by wl »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #11

Tangential, since it's not what this article is about, but it's worth noting that the apostrophe acts as something of a 27th letter in English.

The problem with calling an apostrophe a letter is that in standard usage, it doesn't change how you read (prosody) or pronounce the text. Sometimes it's used in transliterating foreign words to indicate a glottal stop (an actual sound!) or as a syllable divider, but that's not really English at that point.

Re: The 27th Letter

#24

Post by smitty1e »

> My father died, & I was still in love

Niggling editorial point: if I'm going to blow away "and", then the preceding comma is going down with it. That's just how I roll.

Re: The 27th Letter

#25

Post by pacaro »

Waterluvian wrote: post #8
ironick09 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s used as a symbol in programming, I have a hard time imagining a symbol that could replace “the”. That’s not to say there isn’t one that would be suitable, I just lack the creativity or imagination to think of one.

The use in programming is also just a result of it being available. It’s a great fit for binary AND, logical AND, but there’s countless symbols that we just assign to operators because they’re available.

Prolog uses /\ and \/ for bitwise AND and OR respectively, which certainly tips a hat to one system of logic notation—of course for conjunction and disjunction between clauses it uses , (comma) and ; (semi-colon)

Re: The 27th Letter

#26

Post by midoridensha »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #11

Tangential, since it's not what this article is about, but it's worth noting that the apostrophe acts as something of a 27th letter in English.

And when it's combined with an 's', and added to the end of a noun, it denotes that the word is plural, in modern English usage.

Re: The 27th Letter

#27

Post by Symbiote »

gerdesj wrote: post #7
avgcorrection wrote: post #2

ASCII is so bloated that it even has a ligature from a dead language.

Ampersand is really not dead - I use it quite regularly. I always sign cards from me and the wife as x & y. It is shift 7 on a en_GB keyboard English also used to have the letter thorne. It looks quite a lot like a Y or y and leads to the notion that "Ye olde shoppe" is NOT pronounced as "the old shop". Here the the would probably have a long e so "thee". Modern thornes look more like a d - see Icelandic for example.…

Þorn was Þ (lowercase þ), þhough þe usual handwriting style gradually brought þe shape closer to y.

When printing presses were imported from continental Europe, þey didn't have þis letter, so þe letter y was used as a substitute.

Eð is Ð/ð, which has ðe same sound. Ðorn derives from runes, eð from Roman script. Eð is still used in Icelandic and Faroese.

I ðink English would benefit from a few more letters, alðough ðis one isn't ðe most useful. Æ or Ø, or accents on vowels, would be more useful for spelling and pronunciation.

"Thomas" is ðe only word I can ðink of with a TH ðat wouldn't be a þorn.

Re: The 27th Letter

#28

Post by Symbiote »

wiml wrote: post #20
colanderman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe "yͤ" is the character you desire. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Ye_form

I prefer the form with the þorn, but it's harder to enter on a phone keyboard. (In fact I don't know if there's any way at all to input that combining superscript "e" on my phone.) There are a bunch of old handwritten abbreviations that have fallen out of use probably due to typewriter/computer limitations.

Þ is a long press on T, and Ð a long press on D, on my phone.

But ðis might be because I have Danish as well as English installed, at at least Ð is required for Faroese names.

Re: The 27th Letter

#30

Post by ampersandwhich »

phnofive wrote: post #14

Do I need a coffee or is this just stilted: > In the alphabet recited by nineteenth-century schoolchildren, it followed Z. 'And per se and', they would say, 'and per se and'. A logogram masquerading as a letter, a letter that is also a word—like a and I and even o, but no—a letter that is only a word, the plainest word of all. A word we could do without, to be honest, if we had to. We don’t have to, and thank the lan…

Many languages lack an equivalent of "and". What you do is to just juxtapose the two concepts, or perhaps you have structural redundancies in the grammar.

Honestly, we could just use commas: After some discussion back, forth; we decided to get fish, chips. Then we droned on, on about this, that.

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