I’m reading Blazer Drive… And I’m enjoying it.
Why am I such a sucker for typical shounen art?
First exam on Wednesday – English. Still awaiting response to question involving how English can be both a syllabic and an alphabetic writing system. If the question does come up again, hopefully 1] it will be worth few marks or 2] my lecturer won’t be marking my paper. Especially since she keep telling us to refer to our textbook for an explaination and the book clearly states that English is an alphabetic writing system – sigh… But outside of that I’m fairly confident.
Nantalith Teglan 
Thanks for adding comments on my blog. I truly appreciate it.
Now to change the subject, how do you pronounce your first name? My first pronunciation was Nan-tall-lith. Is that right? Or is it Nant-all-lith? Or is it Nan-all-ith, and the “t” is silent? Regardless, it’s an interesting name.
You know what’s so funny! I’m an English major, and I have know idea what your taking about here. “Syllabic and alphabetic writing systems?” Huh? Is that apart of a linguistics class? All I can say is good luck with that.
Till next time…
Nan – ta – lith. ‘Ta’ as in ‘tap’. Yeah, I rather like it as well.
A syllabic writing system uses symbols that represent syllables [Japanese] while an alphabetic writing system uses symbols that represent sounds [Latin alphabet].
Would it help to know the module has more to do with communication study than English study? I am not study English as in the literature of English. My English studies are to do with the linguistical aspects of English – meaning that I’m studying it as a language among languages.
Where are you from, by the way?
Oh gosh! Thank goodness I never had to take a linguistics class, but both of you (Nantalith and Jo) provided very insightful responses. I now feel like I understand the two basic concepts of the English language.
Anyway, I was close at pronouncing your name right. Does it have a meaning? Oh yeah! Like I mentioned in my DA comment, I’m from the US. I realized you were from South Africa when I first looked at your Fanfiction profile. (The net makes this world seems like a small place, huh?) The city you’re from looks like a beautiful place from the pictures I’ve seen through Google. I’m so envious. I want to go to one of Cape Town’s beaches. They seem much more majestic than the ones here in Southern California.
From the looks of your blog and Fan Fiction page, you’re definitely a dedicated writer. It seems like you’re whipping something out everyday. I’m sure if you choose a career in writing, you’ll be quite successful.
Well, till next time…
Oh-key, I am going to take a wild stab here and guess that English is mostly alphabetic since we have a symbol for each letter sound, and put several letters together to make syllables. But if pressed, perhaps English could be partly syllabic because sometimes a combination of letters sounds different than you’d expect when they are put into syllables together – for example, in “com-bi-na-tion”, “tion” is pronounced “shion” because the letters together make a syllables that sound like that. “ti” is pronounced “shi” in this syllable, but in say “fit-ting”, “ti” is pronounced “ti”. So a person learning English can’t just learn the letters and know “ti” is “ti” – they have to learn individual syllables and how they sound?
That’s my best guess. Good luck with the exam!
Jo
I thought maybe that was the case as well so I looked further. It seems that syllabic alphabets are sets of set syllables – ‘ka’, ‘ga’, ‘ta’, ‘da’, for example. Meaning ‘ka’ is the syllable; there is no individual ‘k’ sound, it must be with an ‘a’. The syllable break is always ‘ka’. Where as alphabetic can have ‘ka’, ‘a’ or ‘k’ – the syllable break can be anywhere – ‘ca-r’, ‘c-a-t’,’k-i-ck’, ‘a-t’. A sound (letter) that relies on surrounding sounds (letters) for pronunciation.
I’m pretty sure I’m right but some clarification would be good 🙂
And thanks.
My notes have such a simple explaination:
syllabic: symbols represent syllables
alphabtic: symbols represent phonemes (individual sounds)
And Nantalith means nothing but seeing as I make it up, I could make it mean something.
Off to write 🙂