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English Has 26 Letters. Why Does Filipino Have 28?

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About this piece

Filipino has 28 letters: the 26 of English plus Ñ and NG. A viewer asked, so here is where they came from.

NG is one letter, not two, and it comes after Ñ. Pour a real Filipino text into 28 bins and NG beats N, while 8 bins stay empty.

The old alphabet had only 20 letters, A BA KA DA. Spanish months and English words go through it like a sieve: February comes out Pebrero, jeep comes out dyip. Names did not bend, so letters came back. In the text, A is about 1 letter in 3 and NG is second.

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