Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 March 9

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March 9

Questions

1. Why has Arabic not switched to Latin alphabet?
2. Why has Russian not switched to Latin alphabet?
3. Are there any words in English which have two identical checked vowels separated by consonant.

--40bus (talk) 22:17, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

1 and 2: Why should they? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

 4. Why has Finnish not switched to the Klingon alphabet?  --Lambiam 06:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Because of resistance from advocates of tengwar (Quenya mode). —Tamfang (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

3. Going down the list of checked vowels given in Checked and free vowels#English:

• /ɪ/: digit.
• /ɛ/: couldn't find anything here, and I learned along that renege is not pronounced with two /ɛ/s.
• /æ/: badass (although it's also a compound of two words.)
• /ɒ/: walkoff (again, a compound of two words), if you just count consonant sounds rather than letters.
• /ʊ/: couldn't find anything here.
• /ʌ/: cutup (yet again, a compound of two words.)

GalacticShoe (talk) 07:07, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Not a compound: hubbub (/ˈhʌbʌb/).  --Lambiam 10:21, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Counting CC^* as a consonant:

• ɛɛ compound: deckhead;
• ʊʊ compound: cookbook.

--Lambiam 10:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

how about tenet ? —Tamfang (talk) 00:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The second vowel is weak, /ˈtɛnət/ (or /ˈtɛnɪt/, but not /ˈtɛnɛt/).  --Lambiam 23:41, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

(2) You may be interested in Latinisation in the Soviet Union although this was mainly aimed at the Turkic and Arabic languages of the USSR. Given that nice Mr Putin's views on Western civilisation, I wouldn't hold your breath. Alansplodge (talk) 17:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Why has Arabic not switched to Latin alphabet?

It did. Maltese alphabet --Error (talk) 12:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

And the population of Malta is predominantly Christian, and the Maltese language is no longer in a diglossia relationship with Classical / Qur'anic / Modern Standard Arabic. A large number of Muslim Arabic-speakers would feel that abandoning the Arabic alphabet, and writing local dialectal Arabic separately in each individual country or region (without reference to the traditional literary standard), would be almost the same thing as renouncing Islam... AnonMoos (talk) 18:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)