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    Map showing the Soviet Union's northern sea routes, 1930s. Big version here.

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      Map showing the number of letters in each alphabet across Europe.

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        Is that Czechia/Slovakia with over twice as many letters as Italy?

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          Česko, Slovensko & Magyarország going from left to right.

          I didn't realize that Slovene was so different from Serbo-Croat that they could make do with 5 fewer letters.

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            So what are the Italian missing letters?

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              J, K, W, X and Y are only used for loan words.

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                Welsh would be a different number I think. Although J is being adopted in slowly.

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                  Originally posted by Furtho View Post
                  J, K, W, X and Y are only used for loan words.

                  So how come Juventus then. Is that a loan word?

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                    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                    Welsh would be a different number I think. Although J is being adopted in slowly.
                    Just checked and it's 28 or 29 letters depending on who you ask. Which is pretty standard when it comes to questions about the Welsh language. (Always get a second opinion on translations, folks!)

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                      Originally posted by Greenlander View Post
                      So how come Juventus then. Is that a loan word?
                      It would have been iuventus in latin I think.

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                        The letter J is, as you mentioned, relatively recent, and originated as a variant of the letter I. Why that happens is a little complicated, and requires unpacking some assumptions in your question.

                        In the original languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) which provide us with the names Jesus, Joseph, Justinian, etc., the sound which we write as J was pronounced as the English letter Y. (Just to make things confusing for English speakers, the phonetic symbol for this sound is [j].) In Latin, the letter for this was I/i, in Greek it was Ι/ι (iota), and in Hebrew it was י (yod). Thus, the Greek spelling for "Jesus" was Ιησους, pronounced something like "Yeh-SOOS", and the Latin likewise was Iesus.

                        Subsequently, in the Latin alphabet the letter J was developed as a variant of I, and this distinction was later used to distinguish the consonantal "y" sound [j] from the vocalic "i" sound [i]. However, at about the same time there was a sound change in many of the languages of Western Europe, such that the "y" sound changed into a "j" sound ([dʒ], or sometimes [ʒ]). So we have it that in English, the letter J now represents a consonant [dʒ] which is not obviously similar to the vowel [i], despite the fact that they descend from the same letter and the same sound. (English also has many [dʒ] sounds spelled with J which come from native Germanic roots.)

                        You can see this history worked out differently in the spelling systems of German and many of the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, where the letter J spells the "y" sound [j], and the letter Y, if used at all, is primarily used as a vowel
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                          Hand drawn map depicting the indigenous peoples of western North America and their languages. Big version here.

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                            Animation of optimal driving routes from Beijing to cities across China (this is a .gif).

                            Last edited by Furtho; 15-11-2017, 11:56.

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                              That is fascinating.

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                                And it's a bloody big country.

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                                  Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                  Just checked and it's 28 or 29 letters depending on who you ask. Which is pretty standard when it comes to questions about the Welsh language. (Always get a second opinion on translations, folks!)
                                  It's 29.

                                  A B C CH D DD E F FF G NG H I J L LL M N O P PH R RH S T TH U W Y

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                                    I'm kind of astonished you can get across China in 2 days.

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                                      I don't think it shows that you can - you need to add the 20+ hours from Beijing to the eastern cities to the 40+ hours it takes to get from Beijing to the western cities to get the the full width. So that's about 60 hours, non-stop, which is more like a week of driving I suppose.

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                                        Originally posted by Furtho View Post
                                        Map showing the number of letters in each alphabet across Europe.

                                        Should include 18 for Irish alphabet - no J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z except in loanwords.

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                                          I realise it's not all the way across, but even so, I'm just remembering my own train travel from Shenzhen to Beijing via Shanghai, which took nearly two days combined.

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                                            The indigenous languages map is both beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure

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                                              Illustrated tourist map of Germany, 1930s. Enormous version here.

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                                                Arthur Gunn's poster for the Great Western Railway, some would say over-reaching (and indeed misrepresenting) similarities between Cornwall and Italy, 1907.

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                                                  Light pollution map of Great Britain

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                                                    What’s the story with the Isle of Man? Seems fairly lit up for somewhere that’s mostly hill and countryside.

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