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A Trickster Tale From West Africa
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Alpha
Latin alpha ( majuscule: Ɑ, minuscule: ɑ) or script a is a letter of the Latin alphabet based on one lowercase form of a, or on the Greek lowercase alpha (α). Usage Although is normally just an allograph of , there are instances in which the two letters must be carefully distinguished: * In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents an open back unrounded vowel, while represents an open front unrounded vowel. It has the shape of a script-a. * Also in the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages, usually represents an open back unrounded vowel, while represents an open front unrounded vowel. The former is used in the orthographies of several languages of Cameroon, including: ** Fe'fe' ** Mbembe ** Mbo (?): but not Akoose, though it does have phonemes /aa/ and /ɑɑ/; nor Bakaka. ** in some languages, the script-a form (also called literacy form) of the letter , with the lowercase much like the IPA , is used and should not be confused with the Latin alpha of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Latin-script Digraphs
This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order according to their base: is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Apostrophe (capital ) is used in Bari for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for when it appears in a dark or ''yin'' tone. It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in Niger, Hausa is replaced with . A is used in Taa, where it represents the glottalized or cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ʾalp
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of ''*ʾalp'', the West Semitic word for ox (compare Biblical Hebrew ''ʾelef'', "ox"). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А. Phonetically, ''aleph'' originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well as Syriac, the ''aleph'' is an absence of a true conson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Article (grammar)
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as . Types Definite article A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles such as English ''the'' are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Articles
The articles in English are the definite article ''the'' and the indefinite articles '' a'' and ''an''. The definite article is used when the speaker believes that the listener knows the identity of the noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence). The indefinite article is used when the speaker believes that the listener does not have to be told the identity of the referent. No article is used in some noun phrases. English grammar requires that, in most cases, a singular, countable noun phrase start with a determiner. For example, ''I have a box'' is OK, but *''I have box'' is not. The most common determiners are the articles ''the'' and ''a''(''n''), which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun. Other possible determiners include words like ''this'', ''my'', ''each'' and ''many''. There are also cases where no determiner is required, as in the sentence ''J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italic Type
In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed text, to identify many types of creative works, to cite foreign words or phrases, or, when quoting a speaker, a way to show which words they stressed. One manual of English usage described italics as "the print equivalent of Underline, underlining"; in other words, underscore in a manuscript directs a typesetter to use italic. The name comes from the fact that calligraphy-inspired typefaces were first designed in Italy, to replace documents traditionally written in a handwriting style called chancery hand. Aldus Manutius and Ludovico Arrighi (both between the 15th and 16th centuries) were the main type designers involved in this process at the time. Along with blackletter and Roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letter Case
Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order. Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper and lowercase letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often prescribed by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. In orthography, the uppercase is primarily reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of a Sentence (ling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , which is the West Semitic word for " ox". Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter А. Uses Greek In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced and could be either phonemically long ( ː or short ( . Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: Ᾱᾱ, Ᾰᾰ. * ὥρα = ὥρᾱ ''hōrā'' "a time" * γλῶσσα = γλῶσσᾰ ''glôssa'' "tongue" In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel . In the polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (), and either of two breathing mark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic Greece, Archaic and early Classical Greece, Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in Archaic Greek alphabets, many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BCE, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today. The letter case, uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /ς, , , , , , . The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin script, Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Alphabet
The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word ''alphabet'' is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, '' alpha'' and '' beta''. The alphabet originated around the 7th century CE to write Old English from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current letters: The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the standard printed form may differ significantly from the shape of handwritten letters (which varies between individuals), especially cursive. English Vowels and English Consonants. The English alphabet has 6 vowels and 20 consonants. Written English has a large number of digraphs (e.g., ''would'', ''beak'', ''moat''); it stands out (almost uniquely) as a European language without diacritics in native words. The only exceptions are: * a diaeresis (e.g., "coöperation") may be us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the other modern European languages. With modifications, it is also used for other alphabets, such as the Vietnamese alphabet. Its modern repertoire is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Etymology The term ''Latin alphabet'' may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case, fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" or "oh" , produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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