Museamuse's query regarding "ize-ise" has left me wondering why we who speak English haven't incorporated some additional letters and standardis/z/ed the use of others. Russian, f'rinstance, has letters added to their basically Greek alphabet to properly render "shch" and "zh." Now why didn't WE think of that!

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Now why didn't WE think of that!

'Cause, if we can't even reform our spelling, how can we add letters. The older English alphabet had extra characters, e.g., þ, ð, but we dropped them. The letters j and w are rather new, i.e., the Roman alphabet didn't have them. We also seemed to have gone more for two-letter combos like ch, sh, and th. When Kyril and Methodius adapted the Greek alphabet to Russian, they got to do whatever they wanted because they were starting from scratch.

Ancient Greek had an F and a J but these were dropped (and then later picked up again by the Roman alphabet?)

I'm aware of "phi," but a "J" sound? I had assumed the Romans borrowed "iota" as the "J" sound, but pronounced as "YE" or YI."

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Ancient Greek had an F and a J

Not sure about the Greek j, but, besides Ϝ digamma, they also had a Ϟ qoppa, (not in Unicode) san, and Ϡ sampi.

In Latin, Jehovah is spelled with an I.

Indiana Jones memories from this thread, anyone?

Jndjana Iones?

I love those movies, Sean!

I found this interesting site on spelling reform.

[/QUOTE]Not sure about the Greek j[/QUOTE]

The Greek J was called 'jiot'.