THE English alphabet used to have extra letters that have been lost as centuries went by. While today our alphabet consists of 26 letters, the people of Middle Age Britain had an additional six cha… ...

One out of every 510 letters in English words is a Q, making it the least common letter in the English alphabet, according to an Oxford English Dictionary analysis. It is also the only letter not ...

If we were writing <Hiragana>, that would use eight graphemes in a transparent alphabet, but in a syllabary, it would only use four. The benefit of this is that more space can be saved when writing, ...

Written English, along with most modern tongues, is so deeply tied to its alphabet that we may take the pairing for granted. But long before Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, there were ...

This results in 46 distinct letters, almost double the number used in the English alphabet. The phonology of Japanese is mercifully quite simple. If we were to use a syllabic writing system for ...

So, after all that confusion, I hope you’re all the clearer on how confusing it is linguistically to call letters ‘letters’. If not, don’t worry, you can still call them letters! Whilst I won’t be ...

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Who created the alphabet and decided its ...

Letters inscribed along the edges of this slate slab from the 5th century B.C. are closely related to the Phoenician alphabet, which was hugely influential Latin, Spanish and English writing systems.

“When you are writing in English, you’re really using Canaanite.” The comb measures less than 1.5 inches wide and 1 inch high. On one side, it had six thick teeth used to untangle knots in hair.