大家很熟悉26个英文字母,字典中,为什么有的字母开头的字较多,有的字较少,而以J、U、Y、Z开头的最少?
英文字母来源于拉丁字母,而拉丁字母来源于希腊字母。原来的英文字母不是26个,而是23个!
ABCDEFGHIKLMOPQRSTVWXYZ
英文字母里,I和V同时用作元音和辅音,J和U只是I和V的变体。字母W只是两个V连在一起写。Y和Z只用于希腊语借词。
这就可以解释为什么这几个字母开头的英文词这么少了。
The Latin alphabet acquired the form we're familiar with sometime around the first century B.C. It originally had 23 letters:
ABCDEFGHIKLMOPQRSTVWXYZ
In fact, Y and Z were late additions that were used only for words borrowed from Greek. The letters I and V were used as both consonants and vowels, and J and U were just variant forms of I and V. The letter W was a special ornamental ligature that was used when two V's appeared next to each other. It wasn't until the Renaissance that I and U became consistently used as vowels and J, V, and W as consonants. That gave us the 26-letter Latin alphabet with which we're so familiar today。
英文字母来源于拉丁字母,而拉丁字母来源于希腊字母。原来的英文字母不是26个,而是23个!
ABCDEFGHIKLMOPQRSTVWXYZ
英文字母里,I和V同时用作元音和辅音,J和U只是I和V的变体。字母W只是两个V连在一起写。Y和Z只用于希腊语借词。
这就可以解释为什么这几个字母开头的英文词这么少了。
The Latin alphabet acquired the form we're familiar with sometime around the first century B.C. It originally had 23 letters:
ABCDEFGHIKLMOPQRSTVWXYZ
In fact, Y and Z were late additions that were used only for words borrowed from Greek. The letters I and V were used as both consonants and vowels, and J and U were just variant forms of I and V. The letter W was a special ornamental ligature that was used when two V's appeared next to each other. It wasn't until the Renaissance that I and U became consistently used as vowels and J, V, and W as consonants. That gave us the 26-letter Latin alphabet with which we're so familiar today。
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