Some More Thoughts on Language.

There are some things concerning language that I find interesting that most of my friends find boring, or at least they do not seem to be interested. I think it is interesting that the first person singular pronoun in English and Russian in their respective alphabets is one letter, but when transliterated into the alphabet used in the other language they are two-letter words. "I" becomes "ай" in the Cyrillic alphabet, and "я" becomes "ya" in the Latin alphabet. (the one we use in English) When studying Russian and some other languages I became aware that some of the sounds that are represented by one letter in English are represented by two letters, because linguistically the letter represents two sounds. The letter "J" is actually two sounds d and zh or "Дж" the Cyrillic language. Similarly the sounds that are represented by the letters "ch" in English are spelled with more or less letters in other languages, "tch" in French, "tsch" in German and "ч" in Russian. Similarly there are some other letters in Russian that are represented by two or more letters in English, "ш" which is transliterated as "sh" and "щ" which is represented in transliteration as "shch." The same can be said for transliterating vowel sounds from one alphabet to another. One sound that I have difficulty pronouncing in Czech is the letter "ř," but I do not feel too bad about not being able to pronounce it precisely right. I do come close. I saw it as the "r" sound and the "zh" pronounced simultaneously. I do not know if that is accurate. When I have tried to make the sound I have been told by Czech speakers that I do come close. The reason I do not feel too bad about not being to pronounce it correctly is that there are Czechs who do not try to say it. They just make the "r" sound without the "zh." When I speak of the "r" sound I am not talking about the English "r" but a rolled "r." I find linguistics very interesting and a great deal of fun. I especially enjoy studying the sounds of letters and how they vary from language to language. That is one of the areas I like about the Polish languages, the sounds of letters and combinations of letters. I might write more about that another time, or maybe not. We'll see.