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Volume 8 Issue 7
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Miles and Anders construct separate alphabet and language staff reporter
Learning a language is as easy as ABC, 123, however creating a language from scratch is not as simple. Corresponding letters with sounds can be quite tricky yet Freshman Aleea Miles has taken on the task to construct her own individual alphabet system, as did sophomore Shane Anders. “English has clearly had a lot of influence from other cultures and languages. We don’t have easy spelling and the rules that we do have are easily broken,” Miles said. “I feel like it’s all over the place and I’ve always been frustrated with it and so I thought, ‘I could fix this’. So I separated my alphabet’s letters into their own sounds so that things can be more phonetic.” Miles began creating her alphabet around late February of this year and her language in the middle of March. She is currently taking Latin and is self-teaching the spoken form of Mandarin Chinese through the help of audio learners. She uses what she absorbs from the two languages to help her make calculated improvements and additions to her language called, Daynocian. “I like all of it, building it, using it, the whole concept,” Miles said. “I like to be able to figure things out, it’s even kind of a challenge too. This is something I can do during my free time and it isn’t brain mushing.” As a young novelist Miles constructs her language with the intention of someday using it as a fully functional way of communication for characters in a novel she’s been creating since elementary school, likewise to the fictional universes of science fiction and fantasy movies like, Lord of the Rings’s Elvish language and Star Trek’s Klingon language. “I would say Daynocion is kind of a part of me, something I will never forget,” Miles said. “I don’t know about you, but when I’m laying in bed waiting for sleep to come, I’m making up stories in
Modern Hieroglyphics Emoticons have dominated the world, over the past year emerging across social media and text. This trend in a way is similar to the ancient Egyptians who utilized hieroglyphics as a way to commu-
nicate before a standardized alphabet was established. Emoticons allow people to display their body language and emotions without the use of words. Can you guess the message by the emojis?
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my head.” Similarly, Anders also has spent his time creating an alphabet for his language called Linfranic. “I made it to make it easier to learn and pronounce by expanding the alphabet to encompass all sounds produced by one letter and make it more efficient for people to speak a lingua franca and communicate,” Anders said. “It is shortening and taking out all the fluff in English and turning it into more of a fast speed informational device, almost like telegrams, how you can send things over in really short sentences and it’s more coherent.” Anders’ goal is to create a language that circulates more smoothly and phonetically than English does. Having the words flow together more effortlessly could eliminate some of the anxiety about reading aloud, because there wouldn’t be any confusion or exceptions in the language. “Linfranic even kind of pokes fun at the flaws of English in a way, like how words don’t make sense the way they are currently spelled. English, I feel, wasn’t put together well,” Anders said. “It was like Italy where they didn’t really think about street patterns so they’re kind of winding and not grid like. Sort of just built as we go rather than built to be efficient.” Both Miles and Anders plan to continue perfecting and improving both Daynocion and Linfranic as they learn more about language and its complexities, and how much language is a part of who we are as a society. “In Human Geography we talked about how in this one isolated place, their language only had words for light and dark,” Miles said. “Like how a place that has never seen ice isn’t going to have a word for ice and that’s very interesting to me. That you can tell a lot of a culture just by their language.”
Jennifer ly
staff reporter
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1. Computer virus 2. Jack in the box 3.Goody two shoes 4. You go girl
Rumor stojek
Origin of
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14 Life, Style, & Arts
English alphabet
Jannis Ly
staff reporter
With Latin as the foundation, the English alphabet has evolved over time by the influences it encounters while dispersing throughout the world.
1000 B.C. Phoenicians shorten the Semitic alphabet to 22 letters by designating certain symbols to signify vowel sounds.
600 A.D. Latin alphabet introduce by Christian missionaries
1800-1900 B.C.
The original 30 signs /Semitic alphabet use in ancient Phoenicia. The Semitic alphabet is the ancestor of all alphabets later on.
1200s After the Old English alphabet, Normans invade and English writing is popular again. Old English is altered and Middle English is formed.
Mid 1400s Introduction of printing press to Great Britain, making English more standardized and modern English appears.
1604 First English dictionary, Table Alphabet icall, published by Robert Cawdrey
2014 Over 150 new words have been added to the English dictionary since August 28, 2013