Consonants are speech sounds made by closing the vocal tract in some way, ... The International Phonetic Alphabet was crucial before it was easy to make and share recordings of language.

More than one Ford rep said MK-Consonant when he meant the other MK-Consonant. More than once we have tried to figure out why Lincoln came up with -- and continues -- this type of nomenclature.

The reason for that is simple: classical Latin (for which the Roman alphabet was designed) had about 20 consonant sounds and five vowel sounds. Writing systems tend to be conservative, ...