Alphabet N Quotes

(I)n reading . . . stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely.

Abyssinias "I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: A huge four-footed limestone form Sits in the desert, sinking in the sand. Its whiskered face, though marred by wind and storm, Still flaunts the dainty ears, the collar band And feline traits the sculptor well portrayed: The bearing of a born aristocrat, The stubborn will no mortal can dissuade. And on its base, in long-dead alphabets, These words are set: "Reward for missing cat! His name is Abyssinias, pet of pets; I, Ozymandias, will a fortune pay For his return. he heard me speak of vets -- O foolish King! And so he ran away.

History is ending because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley, and as the inevitable chaostrophie approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew. And the last sane moment we ever knew was on the plains of Africa 15,000 years ago rocked in the cradle of the Great Horned Mushroom Goddess before history, before standing armies, before slavery and property, before warfare and phonetic alphabets and monotheism, before, before, before. And this is where the future is taking us because the secret faith of the twentieth century is not modernism, the secret faith of the twentieth century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock-n-roll and catastrophe theory. The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter? It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity. And I tell you this because if the community understands what it is that holds it together the community will be better able to streamline itself for flight into hyperspace because what we need is a new myth, what we need is a new true story that tells us where we're going in the universe and that true story is that the ego is a product of pathology, and when psilocybin is regularly part of the human experience the ego is supressed and the supression of the ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product peddlers. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of the feeling of immediate experience - and nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience, but that's what holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of science, and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace what we discover through the psychedelic experience is that in the body, IN THE BODY, there are Niagaras of beauty, alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the self, the richest part of life. I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing-fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind, and the Gaian mind is what we're calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet. And without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience the compass of the self can be set, and that's the idea; figuring out how to reset the compass of the self through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, sexuality, intelligence, INTELLIGENCE. This is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.

-(I)n memory, remorse wraps the self.

Y That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? Me with my arms outstretched, feet in first position. The chromosome half of us don't have. Second to last in the alphabet: almost there. Coupled with an L, let's make an adverb. A modest X, legs closed. Y or N? Yes, of course. Upside-down peace sign. Little bird tracks in the sand. Y, a Greet letter, joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century -- a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy.

x, n. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.

Rushing toward her are all the letters of the alphabet. Each one moves in its own way, X cartwheeling over and over, C hopping forward, M and N marching stiff-legged and resolute.

the transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM:

—Mais, quelle que soit l'importance de l'événement, dès qu'il est écrit sur le papier, il ne fait plus qu'une ou deux lignes. "Mes yeux ne voyaient plus" ou "je n'avais plus un sou", il suffit d'une dizaine ou d'une vingtaine de lettres de l'alphabet. C'est pourquoi, quand on calligraphie des autobiographies, il arrive qu'on soit soulagé. On se dit que ce n'est pas la peine de trop réfléchir à tout ce qui se passe dans le monde.

THE CHRISTIAN ALPHABETS A = AMEN B = BAPTISM C = CHRISTIAN D = DISCIPLE F = FELLOWSHIP G = GOD H = HOLY SPIRIT I = INSPIRATION J = JESUS CHRIST K = KINGDOM L = LOVE M = MODERATION N = NEW BIRTH O = OBEDIENCE P = PRAYER Q = QUIET TIME R = RIGHTEOUSNESS S = SALVATION T = TESTIMONY U = UNDERSTANDING V = VISION W = WISDOM X = XMAS Y = YEA & AMEN Z = ZION BY : ADEWALE OSUNSAKIN

Patrice a vingt-quatre ans et, la première fois que je l’ai vu, il était dans son fauteuil incliné très en arrière. Il a eu un accident vasculaire cérébral. Physiquement, il est incapable du moindre mouvement, des pieds jusqu’à la racine des cheveux. Comme on le dit souvent d’une manière très laide, il a l’aspect d’un légume : bouche de travers, regard fixe. Tu peux lui parler, le toucher, il reste immobile, sans réaction, comme s’il était complètement coupé du monde. On appelle ça le locked in syndrome.Quand tu le vois comme ça, tu ne peux qu’imaginer que l’ensemble de son cerveau est dans le même état. Pourtant il entend, voit et comprend parfaitement tout ce qui se passe autour de lui. On le sait, car il est capable de communiquer à l’aide du seul muscle qui fonctionne encore chez lui : le muscle de la paupière. Il peut cligner de l’œil. Pour l’aider à s’exprimer, son interlocuteur lui propose oralement des lettres de l’alphabet et, quand la bonne lettre est prononcée, Patrice cligne de l’œil.  Lorsque j’étais en réanimation, que j’étais complètement paralysé et que j’avais des tuyaux plein la bouche, je procédais de la même manière avec mes proches pour pouvoir communiquer. Nous n’étions pas très au point et il nous fallait parfois un bon quart d’heure pour dicter trois pauvres mots. Au fil des mois, Patrice et son entourage ont perfectionné la technique. Une fois, il m’est arrivé d’assister à une discussion entre Patrice et sa mère. C’est très impressionnant.La mère demande d’abord : « Consonne ? » Patrice acquiesce d’un clignement de paupière. Elle lui propose différentes consonnes, pas forcément dans l’ordre alphabétique, mais dans l’ordre des consonnes les plus utilisées. Dès qu’elle cite la lettre que veut Patrice, il cligne de l’œil. La mère poursuit avec une voyelle et ainsi de suite. Souvent, au bout de deux ou trois lettres trouvées, elle anticipe le mot pour gagner du temps. Elle se trompe rarement. Cinq ou six mots sont ainsi trouvés chaque minute.  C’est avec cette technique que Patrice a écrit un texte, une sorte de longue lettre à tous ceux qui sont amenés à le croiser. J’ai eu la chance de lire ce texte où il raconte ce qui lui est arrivé et comment il se sent. À cette lecture, j’ai pris une énorme gifle. C’est un texte brillant, écrit dans un français subtil, léger malgré la tragédie du sujet, rempli d’humour et d’autodérision par rapport à l’état de son auteur. Il explique qu’il y a de la vie autour de lui, mais qu’il y en a aussi en lui. C’est juste la jonction entre les deux mondes qui est un peu compliquée.Jamais je n’aurais imaginé que ce texte si puissant ait été écrit par ce garçon immobile, au regard entièrement vide.  Avec l’expérience acquise ces derniers mois, je pensais être capable de diagnostiquer l’état des uns et des autres seulement en les croisant ; j’ai reçu une belle leçon grâce à Patrice.Une leçon de courage d’abord, étant donné la vitalité des propos que j’ai lus dans sa lettre, et, aussi, une leçon sur mes a priori. Plus jamais dorénavant je ne jugerai une personne handicapée à la vue seule de son physique. C’est jamais inintéressant de prendre une bonne claque sur ses propres idées reçues .

From his beach bag the man took an old penknife with a red handle and began to etch the signs of the letters onto nice flat pebbles. At the same time, he spoke to Mondo about everything there was in the letters, about everything you could see in them when you looked and when you listened. He spoke about A, which is like a big fly with its wings pulled back; about B, which is funny, with its two tummies; or C and D, which are like the moon, a crescent moon or a half-full moon; and then there was O, which was the full moon in the black sky. H is high, a ladder to climb up trees or to reach the roofs of houses; E and F look like a rake and a shovel; and G is like a fat man sitting in an armchair. I dances on tiptoes, with a little head popping up each time it bounces, whereas J likes to swing. K is broken like an old man, R takes big strides like a soldier, and Y stands tall, its arms up in the air, and it shouts: help! L is a tree on the river's edge, M is a mountain, N is for names, and people waving their hands, P is asleep on one paw, and Q is sitting on its tail; S is always a snake, Z is always a bolt of lightning, T is beautiful, like the mast on a ship, U is like a vase, V and W are birds, birds in flight; and X is a cross to help you remember.

harbinger, n. When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you’d twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed. Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn’t even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K. I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at J and put the apple back. You see, I didn’t trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn’t ready, I was going to pull that stem

La langue libyque a eu, cependant, une écriture particulière, dont nous possédons de nombreux témoignages. Ce n’est pas chez les Grecs et les Latins qu’il faut les chercher. Fulgence, un Romain d’Afrique contemporain de la domination vandale, est le seul auteur qui mentionne l’alphabet libyque, composé, dit-il, de vingt-trois lettres (3). 3 - De aetatibus mundi, préface, p. 131, édit. Helm : « Viginti et duobus elementis penes Hebreos ordo loquendi disponitur, uno itidem superiecto nostrae linguae profusio, sed et Romanae colligitur, etc. — nostrae linguae... ordinem..., quo non bis duodeno velbis undeno, sed Grecis uno elemento subducto et Hebreis uno superinposito unicus ordo Libido monstretur in numero. Conf. ibid., p. 132 : « Romuleis Libicisque litteris ». Dans quelques textes, le mot Libycus est synonyme de Punicus (voir t. I, p. 312). Mais, comme l’alphabet hébreu (mentionné par Fulgence), l’alphabet phénicien avait 22 lettres, et non pas 23. Il s’agit donc bien ici d’un alphabet proprement libyque. tome 6 - VIE INTELLECTUELLE ET MORALE

Every entry, whether revised or reviewed, goes through multiple editing passes. The definer starts the job, then it’s passed to a copy editor who cleans up the definer’s work, then to a bunch of specialty editors: cross-reference editors, who make sure the definer hasn’t used any word in the entry that isn’t entered in that dictionary; etymologists, to review or write the word history; dating editors, who research and add the dates of first written use; pronunciation editors, who handle all the pronunciations in the book. Then eventually it’s back to a copy editor (usually a different one from the first round, just to be safe), who will make any additional changes to the entry that cross-reference turned up, then to the final reader, who is, as the name suggests, the last person who can make editorial changes to the entry, and then off to the proofreader (who ends up, again, being a different editor from the definer and the two previous copy editors). After the proofreaders are done slogging through two thousand pages of four-point type, the production editors send it off to the printer or the data preparation folks, and then we get another set of dictionary pages (called page proofs) to proofread. This process happens continuously as we work through a dictionary, so a definer may be working on batches in C, cross-reference might be in W, etymology in T, dating and pronunciation in the second half of S, copy editors in P (first pass) and Q and R (second pass), while the final reader is closing out batches in N and O, proofreaders are working on M, and production has given the second set of page proofs to another set of proofreaders for the letter L. We all stagger our way through the alphabet until the last batch, which is inevitably somewhere near G, is closed. By the time a word is put in print either on the page or online, it’s generally been seen by a minimum of ten editors. Now consider that when it came to writing the Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, we had a staff of about twenty editors working on it: twenty editors to review about 220,000 existing definitions, write about 10,000 new definitions, and make over 100,000 editorial changes (typos, new dates, revisions) for the new edition. Now remember that the 110,000-odd changes made were each reviewed about a dozen times and by a minimum of ten editors. The time given to us to complete the revision of the Tenth Edition into the Eleventh Edition so production could begin on the new book? Eighteen months.

Tagore claims that the first time he experienced the thrill of poetry was when he encountered the children’s rhyme ‘Jal pare/pata nare’ (‘Rain falls / The leaf trembles) n Iswrchandra Vidyasagar’s Bengali primer Barna Parichay (Introducing the Alphabet). There are at least two revealing things about this citation. The first is that, as Bengali scholars have remarked, Tagore’s memory, and predilection, lead him to misquote and rewrite the lines. The actual rhyme is in sadhu bhasha, or ‘high’ Bengali: ‘Jal paritechhe / pata naritechhe’ (‘Rain falleth / the leaf trembleth’). This is precisely the sort of diction that Tagore chose for the English Gitanjali, which, with its these and thous, has so tried our patience. Yet, as a Bengali poet, Tagore’s instinct was to simplify, and to draw language closer to speech. The other reason the lines of the rhyme are noteworthy, especially with regard to Tagore, is – despite their deceptively logical progression – their non-consecutive character. ‘Rain falls’ and ‘the leaf trembles’ are two independent, stand-alone observations: they don’t necessarily have to follow each other. It’s a feature of poetry commented upon by William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral: that it’s a genre that can get away with seamlessly joining two lines which are linked, otherwise, tenuously.

Peeking at him where he sat perusing the stock market on his phone while chewing on some crisp bacon, she blurted out the momentous news. “I love you.” “I know.” Smugly said. She blinked. “What do you mean you know?” “Because of the letter A.” “What does A have to do with anything other than being the first letter in your name?” “Because it also stands for awesome.” “And arrogant.” “Are we back to alphabetizing my attributes? B is for brave.” She laughed. “Don’t you dare start again. Besides, there’s only one set of four letters that interest me.” “Oh?” he said, putting down his phone and ignoring his meal. “And what might those be?” “M.I.N.E.” The only word she needed to have him drag her onto his lap for a scorching kiss. A whispered, “I love you,” vibrated against her lips, his softly growled admission fueling her passion. And after they were done, panting, glowing, and cradled together, ignoring the pounding at the door, she held still as she tried to figure out what she heard. It should have been impossible. Arik was a lion, and yet he was— “Purring?” Indeed, he was. And when an alpha purrs, pleasure is sure to follow.

nightmaze”   N is for “nightmaze,” Though not often heard, It’s Finnegans Wake Summed up with one word.

L'étonnant, dans ces conditions, ce n'est pas que cet alphabet ait disparu, c'est qu'il se soit, chez les Touaregs, maintenu jusqu'à nos jours, qu'il ait pu poursuivre pendant si longtemps son existence précaire, objet de luxe sans vraie utilité sociale, étrange survivance d'un apport infiniment lointain. Partout ailleurs l'alphabet libyque est tombé est tombé en désuétude, non parce qu'il n'a pu soutenir le choc de l'alphabet latin, mais parce qu'il était celui d'un peuple qui n'en avait pas besoin, n'étant pas socialement apte à posséder une écriture courante. Quand, dans quelques rares régions, ce moment arriva, chez les hérétiques du Djebel Nefousa par exemple, ou dans le Sous, il y avait bien des siècles que les caractères nationaux étaient oubliés : pour écrire les quelques ouvrages qu'ils composèrent dans leur langue, les Berbère empruntèrent l'alphabet arabe.

She’ll fill your ear. She’s never really liked me. Whatever Tom’s problems, she’ll blame me if she can. Same with his brother. Macon was always coming after Tom for something—a loan, advice, good word in the department, you name it. If I hadn’t stepped in, he’d have sucked Tom dry. You can do me a favor: Take anything they say with a grain of salt.” The disgruntled are good. They’ll tell you anything, I thought. Once in the kitchen, Selma hung her fur coat on the back of a chair. I watched while she unloaded the groceries and put items away. I would have helped, but she waved aside the offer, saying it was quicker if she did it herself. The kitchen walls were painted bright yellow, the floor a spatter of seamless white-and-yellow linoleum. A chrome-and-yellow-plastic upholstered dinette set filled an alcove with a bump-out window crowded with . . . I peered closer . . . artificial plants. She indicated a seat across the table from hers as she folded the bag neatly and put it in a rack bulging with other grocery bags. She moved to the refrigerator and opened the door. “What do you take in your coffee? I’ve got hazelnut coffee creamer or a little half-and-half.” She took out a small carton and gave the pouring spout an experimental sniff. She made a face to herself and set the carton in the sink. “Black’s fine.” “You sure?

abcedminded FW 18.17 n. Alphabet-minded or interested in the origin of the letters of the alphabet and their uses in forming words. This suggests an Old English word for alphabet—abecede. The “abcedminded” are apt to become lexicographers or interested in the art of lexicography. With a slight stretch, absent-minded comes to mind, something literary and scholarly types are typically portrayed as being.

Il n'y a que vingt-six lettres dans l'alphabet. On n'imagine pas tout ce qu'on peut tirer de vingt-six lettres. On n'imagine pas tout ce qu'on peut faire ressentir en les mêlant pour former les mots.

On 7 December 1941, all major combatant ships at Pearl Harbor were in condition "X" with two machine guns manned and two 5-inch anti-aircraft guns with ready ammunition and crews near at hand. After the attack began, the ships assumed condition "Y" or "Z" as rapidly as possible. The battleships had been in port for several days and had been refueled. Most of the ships were ninety-five percent full of fuel oil. The degree of closure of water-tight doors and hatches is determined by the conditions named. Condition "X" is the minimum safety condition, while condition "Z" is the battle closure condition. Condition "Y" is between the two. These are usually designated by their alphabetical names, that is "X-ray," "Yoke," and "Zed.

When the fugitives arrived in Lawrence, most had only the clothes on their backs, and in many cases those were rags. “They were strong and industrious,” Rev. Cordley wrote, “and by a little effort, work was found for them and very few, if any of them, became objects of charity.” But while they were eager to make their new lives in freedom, they needed help translating their industriousness into livelihoods. Nearly all were illiterate because most slaveholding states had strict laws making it illegal to teach slaves to read or write. Fugitives arriving in Lawrence equated learning with liberty, so their thirst for education was overwhelming. But the town’s fine educational system was not able to accommodate the number of eager new students. Mr. S. N. Simpson, one of the town’s 1855 pioneers, had started the first Sunday schools in town when he arrived, and he conceived a system of education for the fugitives based on his Sunday school model. Classes would be taught by volunteers in the evenings, and the curriculum would include basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with lectures designed to help them establish themselves in the community. The people of Lawrence were as excited to teach as their students were excited to learn, and enough volunteers were available to split the first class of about one hundred men and women into groups of six or eight.214 Josiah C. Trask, the editor of the Lawrence State Journal, spent an evening in January 1862 visiting the school and devoted an article to his observations. Eighty-three students, taught by twenty-seven teachers, met in the courthouse. “One young man who had been to the school only five nights,” Trask wrote, “began with the alphabet, [and] now spells in words of two syllables.” He observed that there was a class of little girls, “eager and restless,” a class of grown men, “solemn and earnest,” a class of “maidens in their teens,” and “another of elderly women.” Trask observed that the students were “straining forward with all their might, as if they could not learn fast enough.” He concluded, observing that all eighty-three students came to class each evening “after working hard all day to earn their bread,” while the twenty-seven teachers, “some of them our most cultivated and refined ladies and gentlemen,” labored night after night, “voluntarily and without compensation.” It was “a sight not often seen.”215

Chap. II – Les origines du spiritisme : « On sait que c’est en Amérique que le spiritisme, comme beaucoup d’autres mouvements analogues, eut son point de départ : les premiers phénomènes se produisirent en décembre 1847 à Hydesville, dans l’État de New-York, dans une maison où venait de s’installer la famille Fox, qui était d’origine allemande, et dont le nom était primitivement Voss. Si nous mentionnons cette origine allemande, c’est que, si l’on veut un jour établir complètement les causes réelles du mouvement spirite, on ne devra pas négliger de diriger certaines recherches du côté de l’Allemagne ; nous dirons pourquoi tout à l’heure. Il semble bien, d’ailleurs, que la famille Fox n’ait joué là-dedans, au début du moins, qu’un rôle tout involontaire, et que, même par la suite, ses membres n’aient été que des instruments passifs d’une force quelconque, comme le sont tous les médiums. Quoi qu’il en soit, les phénomènes en question, qui consistaient en bruits divers et en déplacements d’objets, n’avaient en somme rien de nouveau ni d’inusité ; ils étaient semblables à ceux que l’on a observés de tout temps dans ce qu’on appelle les « maisons hantées » ; ce qu’il y eut de nouveau, c’est le parti qu’on en tira ultérieurement. Au bout de quelques mois, on eut l’idée de poser au frappeur mystérieux quelques questions auxquelles il répondit correctement ; pour commencer, on ne lui demandait que des nombres, qu’il indiquait par des séries de coups réguliers ; ce fut un Quaker nommé Isaac Post qui s’avisa de nommer les lettres de l’alphabet en invitant l’« esprit » à désigner par un coup celles qui composaient les mots qu’il voulait faire entendre, et qui inventa ainsi le moyen de communication qu’on appela spiritual telegraph. L’« esprit » déclara qu’il était un certain Charles B. Rosna, colporteur de son vivant, qui avait été assassiné dans cette maison et enterré dans le cellier, où l’on trouva effectivement quelques débris d’ossements. D’autre part, on remarqua que les phénomènes se produisaient surtout en présence des demoiselles Fox, et c’est de là que résulta la découverte de la médiumnité ; parmi les visiteurs qui accouraient de plus en plus nombreux, il y en eut qui crurent, à tort ou à raison, constater qu’ils étaient doués du même pouvoir. Dès lors, le modern spiritualism, comme on l’appela tout d’abord, était fondé ; sa première dénomination était en somme la plus exacte, mais, sans doute pour abréger, on en est arrivé, dans les pays anglo-saxons, à employer le plus souvent le mot spiritualism sans épithète ; quant au nom de « spiritisme », c’est en France qu’il fut inventé un peu plus tard.

Another thing to be noted about functions is that the important ones have names; and the really important ones have special symbols to denote them. The function I’ve sampled in Table 3-1 has the name “The Prime Counting Function” and the symbol π (N), which is pronounced “pi of N.” Yes, I know, this is confusing. Isn’t π the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, the ineffable 3.14159265358979323846264…? It is indeed, and this new use of the symbol π is nothing whatever to do with that. The Greek alphabet has only 24 letters and by the time mathematicians got round to giving this function a symbol (the person responsible in this case is Edmund Landau, in 1909—see Chapter 14.iv), all 24 had been pretty much used up and they had to start recycling them. I am sorry about this; it’s not my fault; the notation is now perfectly standard; you’ll just have to put up with it.

softly sang as I drifted into dreams:   F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P,   Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X,    Y and Z A,

C’est là une des raisons pour lesquelles l’idée, émise par certains sous prétexte de « commodité », d’écrire l’arabe avec les caractères latins, est tout à fait inacceptable et même absurde (ceci sans préjudice d’autres considérations plus contingentes, comme celle de l’impossibilité d’établir une transcription vraiment exacte, par là même que les lettres arabes n’ont pas toutes leur équivalent dans l’alphabet latin). Les véritables motifs pour lesquels certains orientalistes se font les propagateurs de cette idée sont d’ailleurs tout autres que ceux qu’ils font valoir, et doivent être cherchés dans une intention « antitraditionnelle » en rapport avec des préoccupations d’ordre politique ; mais ceci est une autre histoire…

ALPHA  (A'LPHA)   n.s.The first letter in the Greek alphabet, answering to our A; therefore used to signify the first. I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.BibleRevelat.

And what was the registration of the other vehicle?”I asked. Why, oh why, do people try and use the phonetic alphabet when they haven’t got a clue? “Ooh, let’s see. It was N for … mmmm, oh, I can’t think. What starts with an N? N for… oh yes! N for….oh dear, it’s gone …N for …” “N. I’ve got the idea. It starts with an N,” I interrupted tersely. “N for pneumatic, dear, then it was an F for phlegm…” “NF, what else?” I said tapping my pen on the table. “Then four for …for …” “Four, four, four?” I queried. “No, dear. I’m just running through the twelve days of Christmas in my head. Four for four calling birds, that’s it! And then Five for Hawaii Five O.” She looked pleased with herself. As for me, I had just snapped my pen.

- Tu dis dans tes tracts, me fit remarquer Aherdane, que notre langue s’écrivait bien avant Jésus Christ, mais tu ne montres pas cette écriture et ne songes pas à l’enseigner. J’imagine donc que tu es prisonnier des caractères latins. Les Tifinagh, mon cher, ne sont pas seulement pour nous une écriture comme les autres, mais les témoins d’une grande partie de notre histoire. Ils attestent en tout cas de l'existence d’une civilisation, ils expriment l'identité que tu entends défendre. Je vais même plus loin au cas où tu n’es pas convaincu. Tu n’es pas sans savoir que les Juifs ont repris leur vieille graphie que certains donnaient comme un modèle de difficultés pour écrire leur langue. Et pourtant ils ne manquent ni de savants-linguistes ni de moyens financiers s’ils avaient voulu adapter l'alphabet latin. Or ils ont repris leur ancienne graphie et tu devines pourquoi, j’imagine". Aherdane n’a bien entendu pas eu besoin d’aller plus loin dans sa démonstration, ayant reconnu que j’avais eu mon compte. Aussi me suis-je mis à mon tour à simplifier les Tifinagh pour en faire un instrument plus facile à manier que celui imaginé par Smaïl Bellache. Il fut d’ailleurs associé à son adoption définitive. Plus tard il me dira qu’il eût fallu changer le qu’il trouvait peu pratique.

A 1 (also a)   n. (pl.As or A's) 1 the first letter of the alphabet.    denoting the first in a set of items, categories, sizes, etc.  denoting the first of two or more hypothetical people or things: suppose A had killed B.  the highest class of academic mark.  (a) [CHESS] denoting the first file from the left, as viewed from white's side of the board.  (usu. a) the first fixed quantity in an algebraic expression.  (A) the human blood type (in the ABO system) containing the A agglutinogen and lacking the B.

The filament of D N A is information, a message written in a code of chemicals, one chemical for each letter. It is almost too good to be true, but the code turns out to be written in a way that we can understand. Just like written English, the genetic code is a linear language, written in a straight line. Just like written English, it is digital, in that every letter bears the same importance. Moreover, the language of DNA is considerably simpler than English, since it has an alphabet of only four letters, conventionally known as A, C, G and T.