John Cowan wrote: > > - "Alphabet" is a specific class of scripts, whose > principal characteristic > > is that tends to map each sign to one of the language's phonemes. > > I think that should rather be called an "alphabetic script", > e.g. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. You are right. I didn't consider "alphabetic script". > "Alphabet" rather means the repertoire associated with a specific > language which uses an alphabetic script. Thus Italian and English > share the Latin script, but the English alphabet is a superset of the > Italian alphabet. You are right, even if "alphabet" is also commonly used as a synonym of "alphabetic script". But now I agree that the distinction that you introduce is useful and improves precision. <who is a superset of whom> BTW, it is the Italian alphabet that is a superset of the English alphabet, because accents are often removed from Italian words used in English (see the spelling of "L'Unità" or "Libertà" on <http://www.demon.co.uk/eurojournalism/media.html>), whereas English origin maintain their j's, k's, w's, y's in Italian (see the spelling of "The New York Times" in <http://www.virgilio.it/canali/informazione/mini_guida/quotidiani.html>). (So *my* alphabet is bigger than yours ;-) </who> > I say "associated with" because particular graphemes may be used with > the language (e.g. accented vowels in Italian or French) and yet be > excluded from the alphabet by being consolidated with other alphabetic > letters. > There is also a distressing and non-English tendency to use "alphabet" > as a synonym for "alphabetic letter" (e.g. "English uses 26 > alphabets") which I have seen on this mailing list and elsewhere. > This is a barbarism. I have noticed that this is particularly common in Indian English. The "Learn <your favorite Indian language> in 30 days" series by Balaji Publications always uses it. Thank you. Marco
