Thursday, March 4, 2010

Phonetic Alphabet

Hello everyone. Sorry I haven't posted in a while I've been preparing to go to OCS.

In my studying before leaving I have to learn the Phonetic Alphabet. You know, A-Alpha, B-Bravo, C-Charlie, etc. In doing so I discovered that in the phonetic alphabet only Q and X are not phonetically represented by their own letter. The words begin with that letter (Quebec, X-ray), but the pronunciation does not (kay-bek, ecks-ray). Does this mean these letters are completely superfluous seeing as how other letters or letter combinations could replace them? Many languages remove the letters they find useless. Or, as in French, reserve letters for special sounds (the C replaces the hard K sound or is used with H for a CH sound, and the K is almost never used).

Your thoughts are welcome, which is what makes this blog so interactive.

Thanks for reading and best regards,
Alya

1 comments:

Emily Norton said...

I never realized that before- interesting observation. Maybe the point is that they make spelling certain words shorter.