#eh semantics pedantics

[livingfictionsystem]

Xhaxhollari Ithuriel Icarus: ZACKS-Oh-Lah-Ree Eh-Thee-Ree-Uhl Ick-ah-Rus. He/It/They. Demi-Romantic, Asexual. PTSD, Autism, Avoidant Personality Disorder. Aquarius Sun, Capricorn Moon, Virgo Rising. January 20th.

Theme Song(s): Living in the Shadows by Matthew Perryman Jones, No One Can Save You Now by the Aviators, Feathery Wings by Aurelio Voltaire.

Fronting Frequency: Gatekeeper, weekly frequency at least.

Xhaxhollari split from Nebula sometime in 2006, at first seeming to only be a ‘watcher’ of all of the alters and the world in which they lived. When Kirra began to manipulate the inworld and the alters, Xhaxhollari took it upon himself to ‘pull strings’ or subtly force suggestions into the subconscious of his fellow alters in an effort to keep the peace. As time went on, he also took on a more active role in fronting, particularly as the hosts would need him to cover gaps within their consciousness. Knowing more about the system, its inner workings, and its origins than most, Xhaxhollari has taken it upon himself to try to keep Living Fiction sane and functional(ish.) He’s notable for being one of the only members of the system who is sexually-repulsed and averse to intoxicants. His aesthetic is dark academia, though he prefers comfort over style. He has a marked fondness for Sherlock, Pokémon, the Portal series, documentaries about psychology or fraud, and he considers awful reality TV a guilty pleasure. Though he frequently watches, he rarely reveals himself, as he prefers not to be perceived after years of silent admin work. However, he can be given away by his ‘robotic’ nature, his tendency to be pedantic, his proximity to semantic debates, and an occasional stutter.

[soft-tomato]

just introduced my mom to vaporwave

[davrial]

You're over thinking it. A silent letter is just any letter that itself does not make a sound. Modifying a previous letter's sound is not it making a sound. Making a combination sound is different than modifying the previous letter's sound. Ch doesnt have a silent H because the sound itself is solely made by the combination of the two. A T that makes a Sh sound isnt silent just because it's not making a normal T sound, because it's still making a sound. A Y like in hey is itself contributing to the sound. The T in ballet is not making a sound, full stop. It is exclusively modifying the pronunciation of the prior letter, in a way that is replicatable via the use of accents (French even has a dedicated accent mark for creating an eh/ey sound, it does not need T to do it as well), or a letter that actually contributes the the sound itself (such as the aforementioned Y), instead of modifying the prior letter to said sound. Therefor it is a silent letter. To try and say the T isnt silent simply because it is technically doing something is beating around the bush and/or pedantic depending on the reasons for doing so, and in either case is arguing semantics anyway. It's a silent letter by all common usages of the phrase, and since it's not making its own sound it's also a silent letter even by technical definitions.

A letter doesnt need to be non-silent to do something, and im not saying it's doing nothing, but that doesnt make it not silent.

The French get assigned a lot of blame for English having inconsistent orthography, mainly through asserting that since French is one major source of English vocabulary of course it would introduce a new set of words with variant pronunciations to complicate things.

None of this sits right with me because:

French actually has remarkably consistent orthography. You will pretty much always know what sound the letter pair "ou" is supposed to represent, whereas in English it's anyone's guess.

A lot of the "silent letters" in English were already absent in their Norman French and Old English forms and were reintroduced through spelling reform. You can't blame the French for the s in island nor the l in salmon.

In a number of specific cases the inconsistencies of English pronunciation are due to English speakers hypercorrecting the pronunciation of French words. The reason why "coup de grâce" has a silent s in English isn't something you can blame the French for because in French it actually does have a final s.

In the few cases where you could arguably blame the French you're much better off blaming the Romans, whose misappropriation of the Etruscan alphabet (which was adapted from a variant of the Greek alphabet) has caused considerable damage to the orthography of untold European languages.