letters of the alphabet

[Lynne Murphy]

Mark Mandel said:
> Agreed... except that they don't use the same alphabet. French has [pause to
> write and count], I make it thirteen letters that English doesn't:
>
> diacritic
> acute               e
> circumflex     a    e    i    o    u
> grave          a    e              u
> dieresis            e    i               y
> cedilla    c
>
> That's not relevant to the answer, of course.
>
> And French is nearly as bad as English in this respect.

I was aware that French and English don't have all the same letters (e.g.,
you'll only find K in borrowings), but this doesn't necessarily mean that they
don't have the same alphabet.  Depends, of course, on how you define alphabet.

True:  English and French both use the roman alpabet.
(which is what I was meaning in my message)
i.e., their alphabets come from the same source and share most of the same
symbols, so that you can basically use the same keyboard for both (although
there are different keyboards available for each).

True: English and French have the same sets of letters.
if you define letters (as I do) as unanalysable units that represent sounds.
The letter-diacritic combinations that French has are, in this view, more akin
to digraphs like 'ph' than to letters.  But Mark's defining letters as units
that can have more than one part (but apparently only take up one space on a
line of type).

But,

False:  English and French use the same symbols for writing.

False: English and French have the same orthography.


Lesson learned: I have a tendency to say things that are both true and false!

Lynne