1

We pronounce most of the characters as if they were words and not characters. For example,"C" is pronounced as "See" but when used in a word, we pronounce it as "K". This is the same case with other characters too.

So my question is, why not pronounce single characters the same way as they are pronounced in words?

In this question, it is answered how we started to pronounce single characters differently. Why not pronounce them in a similar way? It's thus easier to learn for children. Also many(or maybe most) languages use similar pronunciation.

Does anyone know why it evolved in such a way?

tchrist
  • 134,759
Registered User
  • 141
  • The English letter "K" is not pronounced "Ka" in a word. Unlike Hindi, the letter K is only a consonant and the symbol K does not represent a consonant - vowel combination. – oerkelens Jan 29 '14 at 13:08
  • 2
    Letters of the alphabet have names. The name of the letter k happens to be /kɛɪ/ in English. In French, it happens to be /ka/; in Danish, it happens to be /kɔːˀ/; and in Greek, the corresponding letter, κ, happens to be named /kapa/. K is not pronounced /ka/ in any word in the English language, ever. It is pronounced /k/ in words. I don’t understand what your question actually is, or if there even is one—if anything, it appears to be a mixture of the English language and abugidas such as Devanāgarī. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 13:08
  • 1
    Your revised question is a matter of opinion, not fact, and so there is no one correct answer. However, many children learn their alphabet as /a b k d e/ etc. – Andrew Leach Jan 29 '14 at 13:19
  • yes.although I have changed it now.Sorry,but my mother tongue is Marathi and I have always used devanagari ,so I made that mistake. – Registered User Jan 29 '14 at 13:19
  • 2
    Language change is a strange thing in that it happens all the time, yet it's next to impossible to force it. We use the strange letter names because that's what everyone else does. It's a Catch-22. No one prevents you from calling an A an "ah", or a 2 a "three", or a cat a "grandma", but you'll need a critical mass of people for it to have any effect whatsoever. Worse still, written language is always an approximation and a compromise, and so would be your new system, so you wouldn't even be gaining as much as you think you would. – RegDwigнt Jan 29 '14 at 13:25
  • 2
    Your example is still incorrect :) The letter C is pronounce as /s/ or as /k/ in a word, never as /see/ or /ka/. In the word "caliber", the letter C only represents the /k/ sound, the letter A cannot be removed, it separately indicates the /a/ vowel. – oerkelens Jan 29 '14 at 13:27
  • I think you pronounce "ka" as cha from Charle.While we pronounce it as what you say /k/ .Probably a difference in Indian an Us/UK english.Just for example,my name is pronounced as aaditya but written as aditya.(2a=1a,1a=0a) – Registered User Jan 29 '14 at 13:31
  • 3
    @oerkelens, and then there are the cases, of course, where c is pronounced neither /s/ nor /k/, such as when it’s part of the digraph ‹ch›, which can be pronounced both /t͡ʃ/, /ʃ/ (or to some speakers even /ʤ/ in some words), and /x ~ k/. All of which just goes to show that pronouncing the name of a letter “as it’s pronounced in words” is not realistic in English: there is no letter in the English alphabet that can be pronounced only one way in words. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 13:34
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Correct(Now even this word has atleast two pronounciations, karrect and korrect) lol – Registered User Jan 29 '14 at 13:37
  • @aditya, it’s not a difference between Indian and non-Indian English, but a difference between English and various Indian Languages, where ‹ka› represents (or can represent) /k/, the inherent vowel being ignored. Think of English more like Sanskrit, though, where a virāma is needed to represent /k/, and ‹ka› actually represents /ka/. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 29 '14 at 13:40
  • 4
    We can just cut to the chase and sum up Janus's comment and mine to say that letters are not pronounced at all. It is not letters that are pronounced, it is sounds that are written down. Spoken language is primary. So the name of each letter is not its sound by design, by definition, and in all writing systems, not just English. And since the name of the letter A is but a name, it might as well be Susan. All that matters is that when I use the name, you understand which letter I mean. – RegDwigнt Jan 29 '14 at 13:42
  • So we pronounce sound,write sounds,words are group of sounds and characters have no importance when alone except in case where it is used in codes(eg. 4g35d) – Registered User Jan 29 '14 at 13:47
  • I think that sums it up nicely :) Sometimes characters get different names to make them clearer to understand, like in the NATO alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, etc.) – oerkelens Jan 29 '14 at 13:52

0 Answers0