“Jack” is the best word in the English language. It is the most versatile word we have, even more than the f-word, which is limited to R-rated conversations. The word “jack”, on the other hand, is a jack of all trades. Wiktionary lists 24 different definitions for “jack” and five definitions for “Jack” with a …
Back in my high school days, I spent a lot of time in the public library. One day I discovered an old red book that was an introduction to Esperanto. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Esperanto is an artificial language (also called a constructed language or a conlang). Unlike a natural language …
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at letters of the alphabet that didn’t quite make the cut. Some of the these letters were added to the alphabet and later dropped, whereas others were proposed additions that never got adopted. Some spelling reformers, however, have not been content to add a new letter here …
Over the centuries, many spelling reforms have tried to add new letters to the alphabet. Given that the Emperor Claudius couldn’t pull this off, you might think that no new letters have been added since ancient times. In fact, we’ve gained three new letters. “W” came about in the Early Middle Ages, as a doubling …
In previous installments of this series, we’ve looked at letters of the alphabet made and lost in the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Now let’s look at some of the Old English Letters that never made it into our modern alphabet. Anglo-Saxon Innovations After the Fall of Rome, the Latin Alphabet gradually spread across …
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