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The 27th Letter

poetryfoundation.org

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Re: The 27th Letter

#31

Post by cafard »

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…

Odd phrasing indeed. At first, the "word" appears to be "and per se and", as in an intensive of "and" But is and-squared really that plain?

Re: The 27th Letter

#32

Post by wanderingstan »

avgcorrection wrote: post #2

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

Note that there are a lot of ligatures in our symbols:

- ! from “Io”

- ? From “Quo”

- W from UU (or VV, back before U and V diverged)

- And German of course has the ß, ligature of soft s with s.

There is not really a clear delineation between when a ligature becomes a letter, at least before formal systems like ASCII required them.

Re: The 27th Letter

#33

Post by graypegg »

That was actually really enjoyable to read! A bit of bouncy poetic prose is something I don’t see much of on HN (for good reason) but it’s fun in this context.

Re: The 27th Letter

#34

Post by tdba »

ampersandwhich wrote: post #30
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.

Perfect username chef's kiss

Re: The 27th Letter

#35

Post by avgcorrection »

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.…

I wish for once on this website that people would just harangue me for making bad jokes instead of dumping their well-actuallys.

Re: The 27th Letter

#36

Post by avgcorrection »

dragonwriter wrote: post #10
avgcorrection wrote: post #2

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

> ASCII is so bloated that it even has a ligature from a dead language. It was actually an english letter (at least as recently as the late 19th Century), considered part of the alphabet; its current name being a corruption of the end of the alphabet recitation including it, “... and, per se and”.

It was in fact used in old timey spelling like “Well &ctually” by the more high-brow.

Re: The 27th Letter

#37

Post by avgcorrection »

wanderingstan wrote: post #32
avgcorrection wrote: post #2

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

Note that there are a lot of ligatures in our symbols: - ! from “Io” - ? From “Quo” - W from UU (or VV, back before U and V diverged) - And German of course has the ß, ligature of soft s with s. There is not really a clear delineation between when a ligature becomes a letter, at least before formal systems like ASCII required them.

It’s considered a logogram now.
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