Episode list

Name Explain

What's Up with Silent Letters?
Two thirds of English words contain silent letters not to mention names. And almost every letter of the alphabet is culpable. Some silent letters have a purpose. Trailing E's are are often diacritic letters that change the pronunciation of another letter. There there are digraphs, inert letters and empty letters.
0 /10
Why Is Q Always Followed by U?
QU is a digraph, two letter that represent a single sound. There are many others digraphs English but the letter Q is the only one that appears only in a digraph. The QU digraph came to Englind in the Norman conquest. Before that the sound was represented by CW in English. But the beginning of the Q and U relationship goes all the way back the and Phonecian letter qoph and the Etruscan letter koppa.
0 /10
Hawaiian's Tiny & Rushed Alphabet
When Protestant missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 they were frustrated by the lack of a written language to help them teach the Hawaiians the lessons of the Bible in their native language. So they set about creating a written language beginning with the Latin alphabet. But to make it simple to learn they dropped many of the letters leaving only twelve, a diacritical mark and the okina character which indicates a pause within a word.
0 /10
All Filters