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Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z, for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee. Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta Ζ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order, which also may vary by language.
The names of the letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and Etruscan) names. (See Latin alphabet: Origins.) The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are: palatalization before front vowels of Latin /k/ successively to /tʃ/, /ts/, and finally to Middle French /s/. Affects C.
A language may represent a given phoneme by combinations of letters rather than just a single letter. Two-letter combinations are called digraphs, and three-letter groups are called trigraphs. German uses the tetragraphs (four letters) "tsch" for the phoneme German pronunciation: and (in a few borrowed words) "dsch" for [dʒ]. [87]
The letter m has three, the left, middle, and right stems. The central stroke of an s is known as the spine. [6] When the stroke is part of a lowercase [4] and rises above the height of an x (the x height), it is known as an ascender. [7] Letters with ascenders are b d f h k l. A stroke which drops below the baseline is a descender. [7]
The adoption of alphabetical order was part of the transition from the primacy of memory to that of written works. [8] The idea of ordering information by the order of the alphabet also met resistance from the compilers of encyclopaedias in the 12th and 13th centuries, who were all devout churchmen.
For further levels, the order is started over again. Each numeral or letter is followed by a period, and each item is capitalized, as in the following sample: Thesis statement: E-mail and internet monitoring, as currently practiced, is an invasion of employees' rights in the workplace. I.
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The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. [note 7] For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed.