Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with alphabet

"F" stands for Freeway not Farm

MasonDixon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:26:36 -0800

Is there a set of Urban Alphabet Flashcards? Alternatively, I'd like to create my own for my kid. Time to begin teaching the little one letters and things, and I guess I'd like the flashcards to provide me some entertainment value too. Many are dry and they often have a pastoral bent, which seems unhelpful given the urban landscape we live in. Know of any creative/funny/atypical sets?

If I can't find something, I plan on making them myself. Your helpful suggestions for what "A," etc. should stand for appreciated.

cartoon hero names A-Z suitable for monkeys

miagaille — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:24:25 -0800

I work in a lab with rhesus monkeys. They need names. For reasons of historical precedent and notational convenience, lab animals are usually named alphabetically, from A ("Abe") until you run out of monkeys. For reasons of awesomeness, we're naming our monkeys after spunky cartoon characters. So, please help me come up with the best comic/cartoon/superhero names for each letter of the alphabet. We currently have two monkeys: Zim and Yogi (we started from the end of the alphabet). Eight new monkeys are arriving next week, and probably more in the months and years to come. The names should be short (no more than two syllables) or have shortened forms. Both male and female names would be great. We're especially in need of the rare letters (X?); we could skip them, but that would be less awesome.

Note: no monkeys were harmed in the preparation of this AskMe, and no monkeys are maimed/killed/dissected in our lab, either. They live long, healthy lives, which is why we need good names from the start. Thanks!

How would YOU illustrate pewpewpew?

reflecked — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:33:33 -0800

Please help me with a list of "Gamer Lingo". IANAGamer. I've spent a bit of time with searches and asking people, but my list is not very satisfying so far.

I'm at the beginning stages of setting up a collaborative effort to make a Gamer's Alphabet book to sell as a fundraiser for a family with a special needs child. I want to have a few terms for each letter for the participants to choose from for illustration.

Here's what I've accumulated so far:

A: Arena, Aggro, Assault, Ammunition, Attack, Assassinate, Arena, Avatar

B: Buff, buffed, Battleground, Backup, Blaster, Bomb, BFG, Bots, Boosh

C: Class, Clicker, CC (Crowd Control), Control Point, CTF, Camping, Chaingun, Crosshairs, Clan, Carebear

D: DPS, DKP, Dungeon, Debuffs. Dominating, Destruction, Deathmatch, Dual Wield, Dex, Ding (new level)

E: Epix, Explosion, Enraged, Emote

F: Facemelt, Focus, Flagged. Flag, Frag, Flak Cannon, Free-for-all, Farm, fps (frames per second)

G: GM, Gear. Grenade, Godlike, Gravity, Godmode, Gank, Griefer

H: Healer, Hardcore, Headshot, Healthpack, HUD

I: Instance, Incendiary, Instagib

J: Jargon

K: Keybinds, Killing spree, Killshot, kek

L: LFG (looking for group), LEEEROOOOY JEEENKINS, Loot, LoS (Line of Sight), Lava, Love tap, Last Man Standing, Lag, Lowbie

M: Melee, Mount, Merked/Merced, Multikill, Mutilate, M-M-M-M-M-Monsterkill, Mule

N: Noob, Nerfed, Nerfbat, Nerdrage, Ninja (looter / pull), Nailgun, NPC

O: Overpowered, Overkill, Owned, Opposition

P: Pull, Pet, PVP/PVE, PEWPEWPEW, pwn, Physics, Portal, Pistol, PEW PEW PEW LAZOR!

Q: Quad Damage, QQ ("stop crying" -this is coldhearted)

R: Raid, Ranged, Ragequit, Respawn, Railgun, Red Vs Blue, Rockets, Run & Gun

S: Spec, Steamrolled, Shotgun, Sniper, Sentry, Suicide, Shield, statswhore, Smurf

T: Tank, Tanking, Target, Team, Team Fortress, Teleport, Teamspeak, Turtle, Twink

U: Underpowered, Undergeared, Ultrakill, Upgrades

V: Viable, Victory

W: wtf

X: Xray

Y: Yell

Z: Zone, Zap, Zerging

I'd really like more words that are "in" lingo like zerg, rather than general terms like victory. I had NOTHING for J until I stuck jargon in there. I know X is especially problematical, and will happily take words with X in them somewhere.

I promise to let real gamers define the terms, but if you want to include an explanation, that would be lovely.

What are some fun, cool online alphabets as unusual and clever as the Butterfly Alphabet?

Jennifer S. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:18:21 -0800

Where can I find a photo/art "alphabet" of found objects, science/nature stuff, or anything just really cool? Kind of like the Butterfly Alphabet, but either public domain or usable with attribution? I'm looking for some cool online illustrated/photo/found-object alphabets like the ones below that are either in the pubic domain or free to use with attribution. (I'm not really looking for novelty typefaces.)

I'd like to draw from multiple sources, so I welcome everyone's ideas. There isn't one definitive alphabet I'm looking for, but rather some fun suggestions of alphabets anyone can use with the creator's permission.

Alphabets need to be something you can share in a link.

Ideas?

Sample alphabets:

Nature's Own Alphabet

found object alphabet

Butterfly Alphabet

Nature's Alphabet

Fire Typography

Natural Letters

Phonetic alphabet for communicating with non-native English-speakers

scharpy — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:48:55 -0800

I'm finding the NATO phonetic alphabet is confusing when I speak with with people who are not native English speakers over the phone (e.g. they don't recognize the words alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, etc). I trying to find an phonetic alphabet made up of words that non-native English speakers would have learned while learning English--maybe something like apple, boy, cat, dog, etc. I could take a guess at making one, but it would be nice if there was a standard?

Translate a line of Hebrew pertaining to a pomegranate?

Tufa — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:19:57 -0800

Would someone translate the text around this pomegranate, please? I'd appreciate if you could provide the names of the individual letters as well.

Looking for a solution to finding and using special characters.

iamkimiam — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:25:05 -0800

What is the best, most efficient FREE way to get a bunch of people on the same page with IPA or special character fonts, across platforms? My fellow linguists and I are having a hard time figuring out the best way to allow ourselves to write our documents and papers containing special (IPA) characters. Some of us are on a mac, some PC, and we even have a Linux user or two. Most of us use Microsoft Word.

Keyboard shortcuts only take us so far, because crucial letters like Thorn and Eth are unavailable (as far as I can tell), but what is nice about the shortcuts is that you can pass the document around, change fonts, etc. and the characters are unchanged (epsilon still looks like epsilon in Times, Arial, etc.)

OR, using the SIL IPA fonts, requiring all of us to have them installed...I know the IPA special characters are included in the font of course, but how do we find/see them?* Does MS Word have a character map or keyboard shortcut feature that will let us see how to pick/make the characters we need?

What has worked best for you? Is there an industry standard method for this type of work/document creation?

I would like to figure this out, and then set up some simple step-by-step instructions for the rest of my classmates. Your help in understanding how this works is greatly appreciated!

*I have no problem seeing the entire glyph set in Adobe InDesign, so I know the characters are there, but nobody else has that program of course, and we need to be able to do this in Word. Typing alphabet strings while holding down various keys to map it all out is SILLY. Somebody has got to have already figured this out.

Turn my scrawl into something good

peachfuzz — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:23:43 -0800

Help! I urgently need ideas for a birthday card cover-up. It's noon on press day, nothing's good to go yet, and my head's all over the place. In the middle of this, a circulating birthday card crossed my desk, and I just had a complete idiot moment and congratulated the wrong person on it. I managed to fit in the correct name on the first line, so at least it now says "Happy, happy birthday, CorrectName!" as it should, and it doesn't look bad, but the second line still says "Debbie!" before my name. What can I turn the Debbie into? It's scrawled, but clearly readable. There is not much more room between the Debbie and my name, perhaps room for a couple more letters. If I squint, it could potentially be "Bubbles" or "Rabbit" or "Coffee"- the most limiting factor is the long extenders at the tops of the bs, the capital letter, and the exclamation point.

Options:

-Some sort of congratulatory exclamation? The best I can come up with so far is Bubbly! As in, have a glass, maybe I could draw a little flute next to it.
-some kind of drawing, but it would need to be very heavy to fix it and would look fairly shitty.

NOT options:

-not fixing it, leaving it as a joke, or starting over with a new card. I was like the last person of 30 to sign this thing and the b-day celebration is this afternoon. I don't normally work in this office and don't know this person very well at all (and she's a very reserved older woman, who I constantly think I've offended in some way), so I'm pretty sure it would make me look like a giant asshole.

Help! I will try to take a photo, but any ideas in the meantime would be VERY helpful.

Analytic/Isolating languages in Latin alphabet?

zeek321 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:15:04 -0800

Analytic/Isolating languages that have standardized, highly phonetic writing in the Latin alphabet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_typology

I want to learn another language using flashcard software [Anki]. I'm already using the flashcard software for other things, so it would cost me almost nothing, in terms of time, to throw in more flashcards.

The biggest bottleneck, and a deal breaker, is adding cards. It takes forever. However, an analytic language would mean vastly less data entry. If this language used the 26-letter alphabet, that would save even more time.

So, what's my best bet? Does it have to be Mandarin, or is there cool stuff I'm overlooking? I'm less inclined to do Mandarin because of the non-phonetic, non-Latin characters. Pinyin et al. seems like cheating. (I will consider synthetic and agglutinating(sp?) languages, too. And I know that all languages have exceptions. I'm just looking for strong tendencies.)

Note: Anything that inflects is out. Spanish, etc., are definitely, definitely out.

anybody recognize this alphabet?

garfy3 — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:54:27 -0800

anyone familiar with the language/alphabet used in this WWII-era document from western China? my best guess is something related to the Yi language, but that could (of course) be totally wrong.

Where can I find a set of nice free XP alphabet icons?

russmail — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:02:28 -0800

Looking for (free) XP alphabet icons that are easy on the eye. I've had a bit of a hunt around but it's taking me ages and so far I'm just getting really basic (read kinda ugly) designs. Is there such a resource, or am I just going to have to pay?

Is this right? How to write it most simply?

pax digita — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:02:17 -0800

For engraving purposes: Tell me (a) if this is right (b) what it looks like in one of the Japanese alphabets. Got a really good friend who has a birthday coming and who, I fervently hope, does not read AskMeFi. He's seriously into bears and is somewhat ursine in appearance himself, and he's living in Japan these days, so in a fit of guesswork, I nicknamed him Kuma-chan for pet bear.

Is that the right way to express that?

I don't know much about Japanese writing systems other than that there's more than one -- I think some symbols are phonic alphabet like Latin and Cyrillic while others are basically a Chinese set of ideograms -- haven't Wikipedia'd to see if that's right. There's...two...?...or five...?...different writing systems?

Anyhow: If Kuma-chan is correct, what's the most engraving-friendly way to represent that in writing? Or if there's a better way to say it, what is it, and how should that look?

Arigato in advance, y'all.

Help me alphabetize my blog links dynamically.

fenriq — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:31:44 -0800

I want to be able to set up links to my blog posts by letters in the alphabet, is there an easy way to do this? I have a blog that consists solely of invented words. For ease of navigation I would like to make all the posts come up under their corresponding letter. I would also like to able to do this on an ongoing basis.

The only solution I can currently come up with is tagging each post specifically and then hand-building an alphabet to pull all those tagged links when a letter is clicked. But there has to be a better and cooler way to do it.

With these twenty-six letters...

avocet — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:23:59 -0800

Popping the question with movable type (not Movable Type). I've got a twenty-six letter (A-Z) set of metal type sitting around, along with four ligatures (fi/ff/ffi/ffl) and two large wooden Gs. Is there any way I can ask the love of my life (who will take one of the large Gs) to marry me, in one beautiful way or another, without duplicating any letters?

If I can't pull it off in metal, I'm willing to set less important words in rub-on or vinyl type, and I also have rub-on hiragana, katakana and a Polaroid camera at my disposal.

I'm hoping to pull this off by the end of the day...it's 2pm, hivemind, grab your Scrabble boards and help me figure out if this will work!

Easy Spanish-language typing on a U.S.-type keyboard?

killdevil — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 15:39:06 -0800

Easy Spanish-language typing with a U.S. computer keyboard? How can I make typing the common accent marks encountered in Spanish (properly considered extra letters, I suppose) quick and easy on my U.S.-format keyboard? I need to write quite a bit of Spanish and typing ALT+[Unicode string] (or however one does it on a Windows-based computer) seems terribly unpleasant and time-consuming.

A quick and dirty solution is preferable to an elaborate yet elegant one. Thanks!

Do you know the name of this children's book?

OhPuhLeez — Tue, 09 May 2006 10:31:33 -0800

I'm looking for a children's book that was a collection of rhymes, based on the alphabet and kids' names. Each letter of the alphabet was represented by a short rhyme about a child, and it was the child's name that started with the appropriate letter. I don't remember many of the rhymes, however I do remember a couple.

The letter "J" was "Jeremy Jimpson" - Jeremy Jimpson, alone by the river, singing and humming a well-a-down day...

The letter "X" was for "Xavier" - Xavier is frenchified...that's all I remember.

Why A

rongorongo — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 09:11:51 -0800

Why do the letters of the alphabet occur in the particular order that they do? Nothing I could find in a trawl of Wikipedia articles on the Latin Alphabet, the Greek Alphabet or the History of the Alphabet seemed to have the answer. There is a lot of discussion on history and on particular letters - but nothing that seems to explain to me how we came up with a sing-song sequence somewhere between the Pheonicians and Sesame Street.

The un-phonetic alphabet

Mwongozi — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:48:06 -0800

Help me construct an "un-phonetic alphabet". Can you think of at least one word for every letter in the alphabet, where the sound it starts with does not match the letter it starts with?

For example, "Knight" for K, or "Pneumatic" for P.

Video all in lphabet letters.

zouhair — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 04:10:48 -0800

I just want to remember a video song. hint : All the video is made of Alphabet letters, it's all Big building alphabet, Motorcycles Alphabet, Car Alphabet... and we can see the traffic in Alphabet and even an helicopter in Alphabet. I can't remember neither the song's name, neither the artist. But if you have already seen it you could remember it.

Can you burp the alphabet?

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:09:27 -0800

EructationFilter! One has often heard tell of people who can burp the entire alphabet. But has anyone got firsthand experience? Because try as we may, my SO and I can't get past "C". "Archaeology", "Aardvark" and "Architect" are also faves. But we seem to have a 3-syllable limit.