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33: Why spelling is hard — but also hard to change

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

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The Origins of the Alphabet in Arabic

Alife was a consonant sound, which is the glottl stop. Aliph was adapted to make the a sound by the greeks because they didn't have a glotl stop. But it also got adapted to make versions of the sound by arabic speakers even though they did still have a glottal stop. So that's why there's been some kind of complicated confusion. And so arabic re introduced a new letter, which is called hamsa, to actually stand for the glottle stop.

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