How Letters In English Dictate What The Word 'is?'

[JMJones0424]

Building bridges to what?  Your own fantastical imaginations?  You've offered utterly nothing worthy of consideration, in fact, everything you've claimed has been easily disputed.  What is your point?

[BrettNortje]

Building bridges to what?  Your own fantastical imaginations?  You've offered utterly nothing worthy of consideration, in fact, everything you've claimed has been easily disputed.  What is your point?

 

Why don't you ignore me, or try to help me? what do you suggest?

[BrettNortje]

Okay, i think i have a lead! how about the amount of strokes in the letter showing the shape of your mouth when you make the sound?

[JMJones0424]

I will not ignore you because you are posting on a public forum that I participated in before you showed up.

 

I can't help you because I honestly don't know what you are trying to do.

 

All I do know is that you are proclaiming as fact something that is easily shown to be false.  I don't have anything to suggest because I don't honestly know what it is you are trying to do.  The claim that English letters have a specific significance in and of themselves is ludicrous.  You have failed, utterly, to show that to be the case.  I don't know what your ends are, but when your means are so easily shown to be laughably ludicrous, then I frankly don't care about supporting your ends.

[JMJones0424]

Okay, i think i have a lead! how about the amount of strokes in the letter showing the shape of your mouth when you make the sound?

That sounds like hangul.  What do you know of it?

[BrettNortje]

That sounds like hangul.  What do you know of it?

 

I googled it. okay, how do you think we started with language written and spoken?

[JMJones0424]

That entirely depends upon which "we" we are speaking.  Your goalposts are moving so fast that I can't keep up.  Are we still talking about English, or are we now talking about Korean?

[BrettNortje]

That entirely depends upon which "we" we are speaking.  Your goalposts are moving so fast that I can't keep up.  Are we still talking about English, or are we now talking about Korean?

 

Okay, you can be my heckler, but please don't get personal? ;)

 

Now, i suppose we can show that the way the lips are shaped will show which letter represents them. this is based on phonetics, where word's sounds are based on syllables. if we were to observe why a certain sound sounds that way, we could - us English speakers at least? or even all of mankind? - make a certain related sound for as to why we make that sound when we see that thing, touch that thing, or are affected by that thing?

 

Is that better? sorry to drop and go so much, but when challenged about something i have only a foggy clue about, i tend to become more resourceful by opening the envelope more, so as to broaden the question or way of looking at the question, or, challenge.

[JMJones0424]

I will certainly be your heckler, though I hope to not be the only one.  When you state as fact that which is pure supposition, then you should expect to be confronted.  I suppose we've given up on the ruse of the great significance of the letter "s"?

 

The way the lips are shaped only shows the letter that represents them in scripts that are designed to do so.  In a language that is built around pictograms, such as Chinese, then the statement is meaningless, as the glyphs don't represent sounds.

 

I don't doubt you have but a foggy clue about which you are speaking, that much is clear.  What I don't understand is why you assert so much and ask so little.

[BrettNortje]

I will certainly be your heckler, though I hope to not be the only one.  When you state as fact that which is pure supposition, then you should expect to be confronted.  I suppose we've given up on the ruse of the great significance of the letter "s"?

 

The way the lips are shaped only shows the letter that represents them in scripts that are designed to do so.  In a language that is built around pictograms, such as Chinese, then the statement is meaningless, as the glyphs don't represent sounds.

 

I don't doubt you have but a foggy clue about which you are speaking, that much is clear.  What I don't understand is why you assert so much and ask so little.

 

Well, you have certainly showed me some new things.

[JMJones0424]

Well, you have certainly showed me some new things.

Honestly, this is a far better outcome then I could have imagined possible.  I am a largely ignorant lout.  When it comes to physics or chemistry I'm clueless.  I'm glad that whatever little knowledge I have may have been useful to you.

 

I am a native English speaker that has had, and forgot, quite a bit of Korean language training,  In my opinion, Chinese is to Korean as Latin is to English, in both historical and linguistic realms.  I'm sorry if I came across too harshly, but you've got to understand that the majority of the people that come up on this site are quite nonsensical.  I'm glad that we were able to come to an understanding.  I find this too rare.

Edited January 22, 2015 by JMJones0424

[JMJones0424]

There are "created" languages, at least scriptually.  Korean is an obvious one that I know of, but Vietnamese and Cyrillic are two others that may be interesting to you, in that they are phonetic alphabets that were imposed upon an already existing language.  If nothing else, I'd like you to realize that sometimes the written alphabet of a language post-dates the spoken language in significant ways.

[BrettNortje]

There are "created" languages, at least scriptually.  Korean is an obvious one that I know of, but Vietnamese and Cyrillic are two others that may be interesting to you, in that they are phonetic alphabets that were imposed upon an already existing language.  If nothing else, I'd like you to realize that sometimes the written alphabet of a language post-dates the spoken language in significant ways.

 

Now that is helpful, thanks.

[CraigD]

Let's start with the letter "i." if this letter is used a lot because it is a vowel...

A remarkable choice.

 

Not all writing systems’ alphabets have vowels, or are even phonetic. Some well-known phonetic ones that don’t are Hebrew and Arabic. Phonetic writing systems that don’t have vowels are called abjads, or consonant. It’s believed that the earliest phonetic writing systems were abjads.

 

Some writing systems aren’t phonetic, so don’t have vowels or consonants.

 

is there a universal constant to letters in every language?

A language is not the same thing as a writing system for a language, so there’s no requirement that a language even have letters.

 

Phonetic writing systems, by definition, have letters that represent sounds in their spoken language, which one might call a “universal characteristic”.

 

Language is very well-studied subject, so it's a good idea, I think, to get acquainted with its literature and terminology. It's also deep, and fun. :)

[pgrmdave]

when challenged about something i have only a foggy clue about, i tend to become more resourceful by opening the envelope more, so as to broaden the question or way of looking at the question, or, challenge.

When you only have a foggy clue about something you're best served by asking questions, reading accepted information, and not throwing theories around willy-nilly without considering whether there might be any shred of evidence to support them.

 

I don't know anything about string theory, but that doesn't mean I'm going to learn it if I start asking whether the universe is really just a knitting pattern.

[Eclogite]

Brett, it may seem as if some of use are being critical of you. That is not exactly true: we are being critical of your approach.

 

As pgrmdave has pointed out - and you have identified yourself - you do not approach learning in a systematic way, taking advantage of what our species already knows. And that raises an interesting observation.

 

There are around seven billion of us on the planet today. The total number of people who have ever lived on the planet is estimated to be a little over one hundred billion. As far as we know no one of those one hundred billion has ever learned anything of value using the approach you are using. Not one. You might want to ask yourself if it is worthwhile to continue using a, thus far, unsuccesful method, or to take the advice we are offering and learn by study and questioning. What do you think?

[LaurieAG]

Brett, there may be some associations but they are mainly in the past and refer to branching of languages and dialects. One example of this is the Irish Celtic (q goidelic) vs the Scottish Gaelic (p goidelic).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goidelic_languages#Comparison

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Scottish_Gaelic_and_Irish#Orthographic_differences