OT: Language and Power Frequency

Now, Munich has a lot of different names, like most old cities. Over the centuries the people developed their own name as they needed to name the city lets say for trading purposes. Also the name changed thru the centuries. Some of these chages depend on available information technology(!). Somewhen in the 11th century the name was Muninsch(n) (hard to write down a sound without having the propper letters :() But as used back in those days, paper was expensive, writing was expensive so the writers tend to leave out letters. Also every writer had his own code (rules) for writing a sound (word) - for example, the usage of c, s, ch, sh and sch was common for sch (English sh). Further the language of the inteligencia was Latin, so it had to be translated. Depending on these old source, Munich was written Munichen, Munich, Muni, MNCH. As you might see, the English term is derivated from one of these version, althrough, even in English the sound, associated with these letters has changed. For other Languages, they have also adopted this pelling, but with a complete different sounf, like in French (Munich), or they did evolve into their own spelling. Some Examples: Munich (English) Munich (French) Monaco (Italian) Mnichov (Czech) And not to forget, our own language: Minga (Bavarian :) Pronounced Do-itsh-laand (?) Simple, Very Simple: The language is 'Deutsch' and the name implies just: 'Country of the Deutsch speaking' - Mayge cruel for todays nationalism influenced idea, but the idea of nations and areas designed for nations is a bit alien to German history - Maybe because evolved from an empire spanning most parts of the (usefull to considere) world - I don't now. Also some 1000+ years in the past, Empires and people where different entities. The now used term Germany (and Germany) is quite new - until some 2-300 years ago, the usage of Deutsch/Dutch included all the German Lands, from the North sea until the Mediteran sea was, but due political changes the term was restrict the Netherlands, and do come up with a different name German/Germans/Germany was established. In fact, this process did continue until the turn of _this_ century, until the name was standard. No, not accented - letters like U"/A"/O" are real basic letters, jot just a morification (like long or shortpronounciation). The German language contains some 28(30) letters and 35 sounds 24 Sounds displayed on the 26 Latin Letters (no Y and V = F) the 3 Umlaute, the 'sharp' s, ch, sch, eu, au, tz/tsch, st and ck (maybe also th, but this sound is almost vanished from todays standard German). With the exeptions of these 7 additional combinations, all german letters just represent ONE single sound - there is (basicly) NO modifications. German IS spoken as it is spelled. Unlike English, where the pronounciation of one letter might differ within a context AND one sound might be encoded in many different ways (in this sense German is a lot more computer friendly than english) That are some explanations why spelling is changing, but the basic problem, and his basic question is why more than 26 Letters, and the answer is simple, because the there are more sounds than letters. The idea behind German is that every sound should have his specific and unique encoding, unlike languages like English or French, where encoding is random and historical based. Nice Fact, if you look at some non-german languges that have been encoded using Latin letters, you might see the German influence - especialy in Languages like Polish, Czech, Hungarian or even the Latin based Serbocroatian script (most codesystem has been formed while under German rule, or from persons with a German background (like the actual Czech script). All these scripts follow the German one-sound/one-letter rule and add a specific number of letters (expressed as basic Latin letters with additional marks) to represent their language sounds. You could even see the progress and 'age' of the usage of this system. Generaly, the 'younger' systems use the idea more strict than the older. For example, in Polish, the 'tsh' sound is expresses as 'cz', while the Czech did use the same system, but reformed their rules to use a c with a Caron (an inverted Circuimflex (ASCII 5E)) Serbocroatian with Latin letters as developed in/for Croatia (opposed to the cyrillic coding as used in Serbia) not only adds marks to some letters, they also did define some digraphs - combinations, that are treated as single letters, althrough written as two seperated - to match specific cyrillic letters. These digraphs include even again marked letters :). Also, when sorting these digraphs are treated as special letters in acording positions (the Czech also include one digrahp, the ch - a sound like a special h, ans cansequently sorted after h rather than between c and d). Sorting is also an interesting field for historic traces - for example, Basicly the German rule is sorting as equivalents or 'pictures' (if not possible as equivalent), oposed to sorting as additions. Example: In german A" is translated to ae before sorting, if you want to get the 'real' order. If this is not possible, A" is sorted between A and B - this 'picture' sorting is also the way used in French or Spanish. Other Languages, within the German language family (which includes English - oh BTW, English has a lot of additional letters :) sort their additional caracters after the Z (for example Swedish or Norwegian). Now, the interesting historic fact is if you look around: some Languages treat their letters seperate, some with special rules, and some like in Germany. English got also gender specificas, but most of them are faded in modern, US influenced English. Also, If you have problems with that idea, never ever try to learn polish - you have not only to obey gender when refering to persons or to insert the right article, you also have to change almost every second word - every verb is different, depending on the gender of the speaking person, or the addressed person, or even depending on the gender of a thing ... BTW trivia fact: Gender is Language dependant, even if looking at two languages of the same language family, using the same rules: In Standard German 'butter' (you know the yummy stuff below the Wurst on your Butterbrot) is female, but in Bavarian, butter is male :) Got it's advantages :) (private opinion) Gruss H. -- Stimm gegen SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/de/ Vote against SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/en/ Votez contre le SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/fr/ Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK