17/13 Alphabet - 2nd Trial

Thanks to the World Cup I've fell behind a little bit :) This post will hopefully be a short one, where I'll just run through a second trial of the alphabet, which I promised to do a few weeks back.

I'll trial the alphabet with two more short texts.

The first one;

Can you make any sense of it with just the 13 consonants?

Adam and Eve lived in þe Garden of Eden.

God had ghreadhed Eve oudh ovh Adam's rib.

A serbhendh dhembhdhed Eve to dhri þe vhruidh vhrom þe Dhree ovh Noledy.

Eve in dhurn dhembhdhed Adam.

Havin dhasdhed þe vhruidh Adam and Eve beghame aware ovh þeir naghedness.

Þa were ghast vhrom þe Garden of Eden.

With the 17 consonants it gets a little easier.

Adam and Eve lived in þe Garden of Eden.

God had kreated Eve out of Adam's rib.

A serpent tempted Eve to tri þe fruit from þe Tree of Noledy.

Eve in turn tempted Adam.

Havin tasted þe fruit Adam and Eve bekame aware of þeir nakedness.

Þa were kast from þe Garden of Eden.

And finally for reference in its original form.

Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden.

God had created Eve out of Adam's rib.

A serpent tempted Eve to try the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Eve in turn tempted Adam.

Having tasted the fruit Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness.

They were cast from the garden by God.

As per usual the version using just the thirteen consonants looks a little bizarre. With the seventeen it makes much more sense - providing you remember the [th/þ] substitution. Once again the lack of a [y] vowel means that I've had to play with certain vowel renderings too, which may make things look a little tricky on first view. I've had to replace they with þa - unfortunately I couldn't just drop the [y] as it would have been indistinguishable from the word the (or rather þe).

The weirdest looking word in the text is probably noledy - a rendering of the word knowledge. It looks strange and altogether wrong at first, however once you remember that we now use [y] in its consonant form only, and that we sounded out the [j] sound as [d] + [y], it makes slightly more sense. Nolej so to speak.

The second text;

With just 13 consonants.

In 1969 Dyon Lennon and Yogho Ono held dhoo Bed-Ins vhor bhease.

One in Amsdherdam and one in Mondhreal.

Þe aim was dho adverdhise bhease mudhy þe same way þadh someone would adverdhise breaghvhasdh sereal or Ghogho-Ghola.

With 17.

In 1969 Dyon Lennon and Yoko Ono held too Bed-Ins for pease.

One in Amsterdam and one in Montreal.

Þe aim was to advertise pease muty þe same way þat someone would advertise breakfast sereal or Koko-Kola.

And in original.

In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two Bed-Ins for peace.

One in Amsterdam and one in Montreal.

The aim was to advertise peace much the same way that someone would advertise breakfast cereal or Coca-Cola.

I quite like the look of the thirteen consonant version :) For some unknown reason I find it quite aesthetically pleasing. Again it looks very bizarre though. The seventeen version is much, much easier in this case. With the word much itself perhaps being the only one that would be difficult for people to decipher. It's worth recalling that we decided that the [ch] sound is analogous to a [t] plus a [y]. Much like the [j] sound is a [d] plus a [y]. If you physically mouth these sounds out with your own mouth you'll more easily grasp the reasoning behind this.

Yoko Ono - Imagine video

Finally, as a side note I thought it was worth looking at the name Yoko Ono. I have a great interest in the Beatles, and have been looking into the life and death of John Lennon recently (hence what led me to use the above example). It might actually be a topic I'll write upon at some point in the future come to think of it.

Anyhow, Yoko Ono is often blamed for the break up of the Beatles, and has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism and negative press over the years (quite unfairly in my opinion). However, following on from my investigations into the consonant sounds I was wondering if maybe part of it stemmed from her actual name.

I've previously mentioned that some sounds are more attractive to us than others, due to their associations. For example, the [m] sound has positive connotations because we associate it with eating - particularly breastfeeding and motherhood it seems. So we have words like mother, milk, mam, mammary, etc which I've mentioned in this blog series before.

[Another word that has recently sprung to mind is mastication, meaning chewing. I also recently read that the word Amazon is said to mean without breasts (a -'without' + mazos - 'breast'). The story being that the fabled Amazonian warriors would cut off their right breast so they could utilise a bow and arrow more effectively.]

The name Yoko Ono seems to fall on the opposite end of the spectrum though. Firstly we have Ono - which sounds exactly like oh! no - quite a negative statement. Then we have Yoko which contains the [g/k] sound, which we make at the back of our mouth, and that seems to pop up in many words that have a negative feel - yak, yuck, ick, sick, gag.

So perhaps her name inspires associations that we aren't consciously aware of when we hear it - yak, oh! no. I wonder if she would've been received more fondly by the public had she been called something along the lines of Mamma Yes.

As for the alphabet I think I'll leave it for a good long while now so I can return to it afresh at some point in the future. I think I've reached a point with the consonants where I'm reasonably happy with things, the only annoyance now is the vowels. Maybe I may have some eureka moment some point down the line, but for the time being sorting out a useful phonetic alphabet for the vowels seems an impossible task. So I'll draw a line under things for now ..plus I want to start looking at maths as well, which I may start tentatively looking into in the next article :)