Talk:Glottal stop (letter)

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[edit] Letter of the Latin alphabet?

Not according to Latin alphabet it isn't. And if it isn't a letter of the Latin alphabet, of what alphabet is it a letter? And if it is not a letter of the Latin Alphabet, of what alphabet is it a letter? And if it is not a memeber of any alphabet, is it a letter at all? And if it is not a letter at all, what of the name, and even the existence, of this article? Kevin McE 10:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Latin alphabet doesn't attempt to give a complete list of every letter. It is a letter of the Latin alphabet. --Ptcamn 10:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's be more specific. It is not even mentioned on Latin alphabet (which states the Latins finally adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters and during the classical Latin period the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters, neither of which lead me to conclude that the article does anything other than list all the letters of the alphabet at the time on question), nor on History of the Latin alphabet, which does seek to trace the evolution of what letters are included in the Latin alphabet at various stages. It is not mentioned in the alphabet section of [[List of Latin letters, but is included in a table in a section marked modifications, extensions, ligatures. It does not seem to meet the definition of letter in letter (alphabet). Your unevidenced assertion that this is a letter implies that any other description in Wikipedia of what a letter is, or what letters constitute the Latin alphabet, are flawed. Either the title of this article, or the content of several others, needs addressing. Kevin McE 23:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

History of the Latin alphabet doesn't attempt to give a complete list of every letter, either, and list of Latin letters is a crappy article.

In what way does it not meet the definition in letter (alphabet)? --Ptcamn 03:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

History of the Latin alphabet says Now (in the Classical Latin period) the new Latin alphabet contained 23 letters and lists them all, therefore it, like Latin alphabet, does list all that the editors of these articles consider to be letters. It goes on to say By the 18th century, the standard Latin alphabet comprised the 26 letters we are familiar with today. That very familiarity renders the listing unnecessary.(Kevin McE; 1st April; 13:56: signed, but comments subsequently split.

I guess that means Spanish ñ, Danish ø, Icelandic ð and so forth aren't letters? --Ptcamn 14:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

They are indeed letters, of the Spanish, Danish and Icelandic alphabets: while each of these alphabets are derived from the Latin alphabet, it would not be true to say that ñ, ø and ð are letters of the Latin alphabet. Kevin McE 17:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The other article begins A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing: I have never seen the glottal stop symbol used in writing of any language that uses the Latin alphabetic system. If you can establish that any written language that uses the Latin alphabet that includes this symbol as part of its regulalar orthography, I will concede and be happy to have learned something new, but if not, I can see no justification for the title of this article, and would suggest something like Glottal stop (symbol) instead. Kevin McE 13:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The article lists several language that use this as part of their regular orthography. Scanned images of it in use can be found in this document. --Ptcamn 14:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Good, thank you: you have now given the justification for the name of the article. You must excuse my ignorance of native Canadian languages and their orthographies. Might I suggest that all you needed to do in answer to my initial query was to say that it is a letter in the alphabets of a few native North American languages. Kevin McE 17:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think there's a confusion here about what "Latin alphabet" means. Besides the alphabet used to write the Latin language, it is also (probably more commonly) used to refer to the writing system itself, independent of any particular language (From Latin alphabet: "In modern usage, the term Latin alphabet is used for any straightforward derivation of the alphabet used by the Romans."). So it's true to say things like "English has been written using the Latin alphabet since around the ninth century." (from English language), even though English uses letters that Latin does not.

We need to specify that it's a letter of the Latin alphabet, because for all the reader knows it could be a letter in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or some other script. --Ptcamn 04:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I can see that the modern Latin alphabet is not the same as the alphabet used for Latin, but I see this as something of an exception to the norm for naming alphabets: the Estonian alphabet, for example, is precisely the alphabet used for writing the Estonian language. There is an entire Category:Latin-derived alphabets, which would not be necessary, or accurate, if every letter used in any Latin-derived alphabet was said to be a letter of the Latin alphabet. I refer again to the quote above from History of the Latin Alphabet that it, by the 18th century, comprised 26 letters. You seem to be suggesting that any grapheme in any alphabet derived from the Latin (another page whose disappearance would be a logical conclusion of your position) can be described as a letter of the Latin alphabet. I cannot assert that in academic circles this is not the practice: maybe it is, but there is at best enormous non-compliance in Wikipedia (and non-specialised parlance) with this convention if such it be. Kevin McE 16:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

First, I note that the History of the Latin alphabet article has no references.

Secondly, what does "standard Latin alphabet" even mean? We've established that it's not the same as the alphabet used for Latin. What alphabet is it, then? One might think that it was the basic alphabet, to which individual languages added their own letters—but it's not that, since (to take one example) J, K, W, X and Y are considered foreign letters in Italian. So what on earth could the author of that statement have been talking about? Perhaps they meant to write "standard English alphabet"...

For what it's worth, the Unicode name for this character is LATIN (CAPITAL/SMALL) LETTER GLOTTAL STOP. --Ptcamn 17:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polynesian languages

The Polynesian languages (Māori, Tongan, Hawaiian, etc.) have the glottal stop—and they are each written using some of the letters in the Roman alphabet (and no letters from other alphabets, such as the Cyrillic). 207.69.139.145 19:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

They have a glottal stop sound, but they do not write it with this letter. They use apostrophes. --Ptcamn 22:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)