Writing of your language?

[Karl Henning]

Wild, but a good one. Kerala; the language being Malayalam.

All too few languages are palindromes IMO.

[Opus106]

Sri Opus106, are south indian languages semi-intelligible by diverse south indians?

Not generally. With regard to how they are colloquially spoken, you can find words common to some of the languages here and there (some borrowed from Sanskrit) and you will find people generally familiar with basic words and phrases of the languages from the neighbouring states, but otherwise not everyone speaks or even understands them (semi-) extensively.

All too few languages are palindromes IMO.

The language itself isn't one, you know. The word 'Malayalm' is one of the first English palindromes a child learns in this country (well, at least it was the first I learnt).

[arkiv]

Not generally. With regard to how they are colloquially spoken, you can find words common to some of the languages here and there (some borrowed from Sanskrit) and you will find people generally familiar with basic words and phrases of the languages from the neighbouring states, but otherwise not everyone speaks or even understands them (semi-) extensively.

The language itself isn't one, you know. The word 'Malayalm' is one of the first English palindromes a child learns in this country (well, at least it was the first I learnt).

Returning to the theme, I have observed the highly stylized scripts of the subcontinent.
The Malayalam letters:

[Wakefield]

Which alphabet does your language use and how many letters does it have?



My language, Spanish, has 30 letters: a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, rr, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z   
and is written in the Latin alphabet.

Hi, Epicous, apparently we have just 27 letters in Spanish now because "ch" and "ll" will be no more considered as "official" letters:

[arkiv]

Which alphabet does your language use and how many letters does it have?



My language, Spanish, has 30 letters: a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, rr, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z   
and is written in the Latin alphabet.

If you want to pronounce rr (that is equal to r at the beginning of a word) check this:

https://www.youtube.com/v/9I58brXq-bE

[Ken B]

All too few languages are palindromes IMO.

English is. Like Bolton.

[jochanaan]

While my first language is English, I have also studied Hebrew.  (Thus my handle, transliterated in the form used in Strauss' Salome.)  Hebrew has 22 letters, mostly very regular in pronunciation.  But none of them are vowels.  The vowel signs are not included in ancient texts or in modern Hebrew; you're supposed to know them by the context.

[(poco) Sforzando]

While my first language is English, I have also studied Hebrew.  (Thus my handle, transliterated in the form used in Strauss' Salome.)  Hebrew has 22 letters, mostly very regular in pronunciation.  But none of them are vowels.  The vowel signs are not included in ancient texts or in modern Hebrew; you're supposed to know them by the context.

But for people just learning Hebrew, there is a system of vowel points called nikkud that is still in common use. Fluent readers however do not consider these necessary.

[Karl Henning]

My second language is also English.

[DaveF]

29 in Welsh: a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y.  We also use acute, grave, circumflex and diaeresis accents on vowels.

Happily there are no moves, as in Spanish, to downgrade ch and ll - they're our favourite letters, as anyone who has seen a page of written Welsh will know.

[Jo498]

What is the difference in sound between "d" and "dd" or "f" and "ff" in Welsh?

I find it somewhat confusing to call a diphthong or double consonant a separate letter. Is this really common? They may stand for a different sound/phoneme but are they really an extra letter?

E.g. in German, the umlauts ä, ö, ü are (usually) counted as separate letters. But the most important sounds expressed by letter combinations, "sch" (like "sh" in English) and "ch" (similar to the same in Scottish) are not separate letters.
The odd ß arose from the typographical joining of s and z and/or two different letters for "s" (the one that almost looks like an f and a variant of the s). Therefore its name "Eszett" (s z), but it is better understood as a double s ("sharp", voiceless). The Swiss got rid of it decades ago (probably because they needed some extra keys on their typewriters for French stuff) and only use ss. So in a sense there is a distinct Swiss German alphabet that lacks this letter.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I find it somewhat confusing to call a diphthong or double consonant a separate letter. Is this really common? They may stand for a different sound/phoneme but are they really an extra letter?

And yet in English we have the W, a letter which we call "double U" even though it looks like two V's, and which we pronounce as a consonant that you don't have in German, while you pronounce W as our V, V as our F, and to make things more fun I have heard Germans who otherwise speak excellent English mispronounce our V as our W (e.g., Wenice, reserwation). In early printing the W was indeed often printed as two VV's close together or even overlapping:

[Ken B]

29 in Welsh: a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y.  We also use acute, grave, circumflex and diaeresis accents on vowels.

Happily there are no moves, as in Spanish, to downgrade ch and ll - they're our favourite letters, as anyone who has seen a page of written Welsh will know.

Which one means the "choking on a fish bone" sound? 

[jochanaan]

My second language is also English.

[Jo498]

Sure, new letters can arise, like the w or the ß. But if a graphem is exactly corresponding to two letters, like "ll" in Spanish or "ch" in Spanish or German, I would not call this a letter. But maybe it is done like that in some languages or for teaching purposes. I am pretty sure that when I learned to write/read, "ch" or "sch" were not taught as letters. Of course this is conventional to some extent. As someone already wrote above, the slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet need lots of combinations for those sh, zh, c, etc. sounds each of which has its own nice cyrillic letter.

Latin had only one letter for u/v until some printers in the 17th century or later used both (and for Latin one will still find prints with only u, only v or both). Apparently? it was originally pronounced like a (English) w between vowels but when this had changed, w was introduced for the sound in English, while in German this sound never existed (I think) and v came close to the f. Actually, in German it is now more complicated because in "German" words like Vater and Vogel, v is pronounced like f, whereas in "Latin" words like Vase, Virus or Vene it is pronounced like (German) w and this is also the usual "German" pronunciation of Latin. We don't say feni, fidi, fici

Your experience with German speakers shows a form of "overcompensation". As ve all know, wonn off se typical German errors is to mispronounce w as v. So speakers with fairly good pronunciation are often aware of that but fall into the trap of pronouncing w's where there aren't any. (I am more team ve than team willage, I guess.)

[DaveF]

What is the difference in sound between "d" and "dd" or "f" and "ff" in Welsh?

I find it somewhat confusing to call a diphthong or double consonant a separate letter. Is this really common? They may stand for a different sound/phoneme but are they really an extra letter?

"D" in Welsh is the same as English; "dd" is ð, as in English "them".  "F" is as English "v"; "ff" as English "f".

I suppose the reason for referring to digraphs like "ll" and "ch" as single letters is that, grammatically, they behave differently from the single letters 'l' and 'c'.  I'll have to get slightly technical here: Welsh, in common with the other Celtic languages, employs initial consonant mutation - or, as someone once said, other languages have endings, Welsh has beginnings.  So the initial consonant of a word can change according to context - which makes finding words in a dictionary a bit of a challenge until you get used to the rules.  For example, a singular feminine noun preceded by the definite article undergoes "soft" mutation - so cath, cat, but y gath, the cat.  (This happens rather a lot, as you can imagine.)  Now, if "ch" were two letters, "c" followed by "h", then feminine nouns beginning "ch" would mutate - for example, chwaer (sister) would have to mutate to "y ghwaer" - very un-Welsh and very unpronounceable.  As it is, "ch" does not undergo mutation at all, so "the sister" remains as y chwaer.

Which one means the "choking on a fish bone" sound? 

That would be Llwyngwril.

[Jo498]

Thanks, that sounds very interesting. Changing beginnings sounds hard to learn for those of us who were raised on changing endings in German, Latin etc.
Is the "ch" a guttural like in Scottish "Loch" or like in English "chain"

[DaveF]

Thanks, that sounds very interesting. Changing beginnings sounds hard to learn for those of us who were raised on changing endings in German, Latin etc.
Is the "ch" a guttural like in Scottish "Loch" or like in English "chain"

Oh, it's very entertaining - our National Anthem, which you'll be hearing at three more Euro 2016 matches  , is called Hen Wlad fy Nhadau, Old Land of my Fathers - the word for land is gwlad, but the adjective hen before it makes the G disappear; and the word for father is tad, plural tadau, but when preceded by the possessive adjective, nhadau.

Just to add to the fun, Welsh changes endings to form the plurals of nouns, too - and there are many, many ways for that to happen.  I once saw a table of "The seven ways in which Welsh nouns form plurals" - well, to my limited mathematical skill, there were 13 entries in the table, and no.13 was "by means other than those set out above".

"ch" is as in Scottish - the "chain" sound doesn't occur in native Welsh words and is quite hard to produce using Welsh spelling - the only word I can think of that needs it is the name of that large country where they make all our toys, Tsieina.  Pronounced roughly the same as in English.

[Karl Henning]

"D" in Welsh is the same as English; "dd" is ð, as in English "them".  "F" is as English "v"; "ff" as English "f".

I suppose the reason for referring to digraphs like "ll" and "ch" as single letters is that, grammatically, they behave differently from the single letters 'l' and 'c'.  I'll have to get slightly technical here: Welsh, in common with the other Celtic languages, employs initial consonant mutation - or, as someone once said, other languages have endings, Welsh has beginnings.  So the initial consonant of a word can change according to context - which makes finding words in a dictionary a bit of a challenge until you get used to the rules.  For example, a singular feminine noun preceded by the definite article undergoes "soft" mutation - so cath, cat, but y gath, the cat.  (This happens rather a lot, as you can imagine.)  Now, if "ch" were two letters, "c" followed by "h", then feminine nouns beginning "ch" would mutate - for example, chwaer (sister) would have to mutate to "y ghwaer" - very un-Welsh and very unpronounceable.  As it is, "ch" does not undergo mutation at all, so "the sister" remains as y chwaer.

That would be Llwyngwril.

Lord save me, but I cannot help thinking of the unflattering comments on the Welsh by certain characters in Waugh's Decline and Fall.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Lord save me, but I cannot help thinking of the unflattering comments on the Welsh by certain characters in Waugh's Decline and Fall.

DOOLITTLE ["most musical, most melancholy"] I'll tell you, Governor, if youll only let me get a word in. I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.   
HIGGINS. Pickering: this chap has a certain natural gift of rhetoric. Observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes wild. "I'm willing to tell you: I'm wanting to tell you: I'm waiting to tell you." Sentimental rhetoric! thats the Welsh strain in him. It also accounts for his mendacity and dishonesty.

- Shaw, Pygmalion

That's Shaw speaking, nicht ich. And not even Shaw - Shaw's characters.