Old English Letter Ash

In Old English, the letter æ was pronounced ash. The pronuncation varied from the low front vowel of cat to the mid front vowel of ten. Though it is no longer used in English, it is used in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese.

Many English words used to be spelt with the letter æ. Examples include encyclopædia, hyæna, musæum, mediæval and phænomenon. However, the letter æ only survived until the thirteenth century.

Though the letter æ was used in Old English, it is no longer part of the English alphabet. However, it is used by the International Phonetic Alphabet and represents a low front unrounded vowel. It is also used in the alphabets of other Germanic languages.

Myers-Briggs Personality Types

The Myers-Briggs personality types are determined by a questionnaire. They indicate different psychological preferences regarding the way people perceive the world and make decisions. The test assigns a binary value to each of four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling and judging or perceiving. 

One letter is taken from each category to produce a four-letter test result. Examples include ESFP and INTJ. The test was developed by two Americans, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. They were inspired by the book Psychological Types written by Karl Jung.

Karl Jung speculated that people experience the world with four principal psychological functions- sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking. In his view, one of the four functions is dominant in a person most of the time. According to the Myers-Briggs test, each person has one preferred quality from each category, which produces 16 types.

The 16 types are indicated by an abbreviation of letters. They are the initial letters of the four type preferences with the exception of intuition, which uses the abbreviation N to distinguish it from introversion. 

The 16 personality types are the following:

ENTJ ENTP ENFJ ENFP

ESTJ ESTP ESFJ ESFP

INTJ INTP INFJ INFP

ISTJ ISTP ISFJ ISFP

The Myers-Briggs test does not measure aptitude. It simply indicates the preference of one quality in each category. However, the test does not indicate the degree to which a person prefers one quality over another. Nevertheless, Isabel Myers considered the direction of the preference to be more important than the degree of the preference.

French Homophones

French is a language with many homophones. Common examples of homophones in English include flour/flower, meat/meet and son/sun. However, French also has many homophones.

Here is a list of French homophones:

auteur/hauteur (author/height)

dans/dent (in/tooth)

guère/guerre (hardly/war)

maire/mer/mère (mayor/sea/mother)

pain/pin (bread/pine)

peau/pot (skin/pot)

renne/reine (reindeer/queen)

cent/sang/sans (hundred/blood/without)

sou/sous (cent/under)

ver/verre/vers/vert (worm/glass/towards/green)

The list illlustrates that French is a language of many homophones.  Many of the words from the list have silent letters. Though the words are spelt differently, they sound the same. 

Uvular Fricative of Eifel German

In Standard German post-vocalic /r/ is vocalic. It is pronounced similarly to the schwa in English. However, in an area of western Germany known as the Eifel area, it can be realized as a voiceless uvular fricative. The voiceless uvular fricative occurs before voiceless consonants.

The following words can be pronounced with the voiceless uvular fricative in Eifel German:

Berg (mountain)

dort (there)

hart (hard)

Karte (map)

Korb (basket)

Park (park)

Pferd (horse)

Sport (sport)

stark (strong)

Verb (verb)

The words Berg, Korb, Pferd and Verb end with voiceless consonants. This is the result of word-final devoicing. The word-final voiceless consonants create the environment necessary for the realization of the voiceless uvular fricative. The use of the voiceless uvular fricative before voiceless consonants is a feature of Eifel German.

Thought-Thaw Split in Cockney English

Cockney English is a well-known variety of English that is spoken in London. One of the distinctive features of Cockney is the thought-thaw split. The word thought is pronounced with a diphthong which consists of a mid back rounded tense vowel and a high back rounded lax vowel. However, the word thaw is pronounced with a diphthong which consists of a mid back rounded lax vowel and a schwa. The first diphthong occurs word-medially and the second occurs word-finally.

Words such as thought, taught, force, north, board, pause, clause and sword are pronounced with the combination of the mid back rounded tense  vowel and high back rounded law vowel. In contrast, words such as north, door, force, four, saw, bored, paws and claws have the mid back rounded law vowel and schwa. Though words such as bored and paws do not have a word-final vowel, grammatical endings do not affect the pronunciation. The result is that paw/paws and bore/bored have the same vowel.

In most varieties of English, word pairs such as board/bored, sword/soared, clause/claws and pause/paws sound the same. However, that is not the case in Cockney English. The word pairs are pronounced distinctly. In the first word of each pair, the first component of the diphthong is pronounced with a higher vowel than in the second word of the pair.

Many features serve to distinguish Cockney English from other varieties of English. One of the distinctive features is undoubtedly the thought-thaw split. It allows Cockney to distinguish words which are pronounced identically in most other varieties of English.

Two Finnish Words for Or

The word or is expressed with two forms in Finnish. They are tai and vai. The word vai is only used in questions.

Only the word tai is used in statements. For example, Hän nimensä oli Marja tai Martta means Her name was Marja or Martta. There are only two options, Marja or Martta.

In questions both tai and vai are used. The question Haluatko sokeria vai kermaa? means Do you want sugar or cream? The listener has four options. They are a) sugar b) cream c) both and d) neither. However, in the question Haluatko kahvia vai teetä? (Do you want coffee or tea?), the listener has two options. They are a) coffee or b) tea.

Let us look at two more examples. The question Puhuuko hän englantia tai saksaa? (Does he speak English or German) can be answered in three ways. They are a) He speaks English b) He speaks German c) He speaks neither. However, in the question Puhuuko hän englantia tai saksaa?, the listener has two options. They are a) English or b) German.

For yes/no questions, tai is used. In the question, Can you come on Monday or Tuesday?, tai is used if the answer is Yes, I can or No, I can't. However, if the answer is I can come on Monday or I can come on Tuesday, vai is used.

The conjunction vai is only used in questions, not in statements. It is used for questions in which the listener must focus on the options. However, the conjunction tai is used in situations in which the focus is on affirmation or negation of the question. The use of tai and vai in Finnish clarifies questions that may be ambiguous in other languages.

Word-Final Palatalization in Swedish

The palatal glide is very common in Swedish. Unlike in English, in which it only occurs syllable-finally in diphthongs, the Swedish palatal glide can occur word-finally in combination with liquids. Here are ten words which end with the palatal glide:

arg (angry)

detalj (detail)

familj (family)

färg (colour)

helg (weekend)

korg (basket)

medalj (medal)

sorg (sorrow)

varg (wolf)

älg (elk)

The use of the word-final palatal glide after liquids does not occur in the closely related Danish and Norwegian languages. For example, colour is farve in Danish and farge in Norwegian, and family is familie in Danish and Norwegian. Unlike in Danish and Norwegian, Swedish phonotactics allow the use of the word-final palatal glide following liquids.