Sunday is fun-day. One of my favorite pastimes is the study of language. Today, I was thinking about wordshapes and wordstructures. Specifically, strings of consonants. I was wondering what the longest string of consonants I could come up with was. I started with four. RDSH can be found in the word “wordshapes”. Then I thought four in a row was rather common. Earthworm, fights, construct. OK, five in a row: Fightclub, wordstructure, hearthstone. Of course, these have some flaws. For example, the gh in Fight isn’t really pronounced; wordstructure and fightclub don’t show up in the dictionary, and the th in hearthstone really represents one sound.

Well, if we are going to have restrictions on what we can accept as a word or consonant in this game, we need a definitions of “word” and “consonant". A word (according to the American Heritage Dictionary) is a sound or combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes. What the hell is a morpheme? It is a sound, but it is not important, we can ignore that part for our purposes. A word is a sound or combination of sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning. Well, that is broad. Under this definition, a sentence is a word, but I think we have enough to go with so long as we use common sense. So wordstructure and fightclub are words because they have concrete meanings. German used to be famous for combining individual words into überwords. My favorite was Donauschiffsfahrtsgesellschaftskapitan, or Danube Ferry Company captain. They have since changed the rules of spelling and taken all the fun out of trying to figure out what the hell they had written.

Then what is a consonant? A speech sound produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream by any of various constrictions of the speech organs. That is rather clinical, but the main point is that it is a sound. The other definition is that it is a letter or character representing such a speech sound interrupting a flow of vowels. So a consonant in writing is not a group of letters, but an individual letter. So th is not a consonant, but the sound it makes is. Also, the h in th or gh is not a consonant in spoken English, because it does not individually make a sound. But in written english, it is considered a consonant. Can we make other combinations of five following these rules?

First-class. Can we put two words together and call it a word? Depends on your spelling rules, I suppose, look at the German conglomeration above. (Con = with, Glomerare = to wind in a ball). Most of the words in the English language are two words put together at some point and called a word. So long as it is a discreet set of sounds that conveys a discreet meaning, it is a word, right? So first-floor (as in first-floor apartment), first-string. Holy cow, that’s six! OK, maybe this hyphenated thing is cheating.

Hearthstrap, earthstrength, worldstrife, wurststroganoff. There may be a reason this type of word is rarely used. Just try and pronounce them! I challenge anyone to come up with seven in a row. It is so much easier in German: vorwärtsschweben.

News and Opinion
There is an in-depth and comprehensive article in the New York Times Magazine on the law of war this week. For anyone with an interest in the legal and moral aspects of waging war in Iraq, it is a must-read. I don’t agree with everything it says, especially its conclusions; it is thought-provoking nonetheless.

April 13 – Sunday
casualties as of 3 p.m. Eastern time Saturday:
KILLED CAPTURED
OR MISSING
U.S. 110* 16*
BRITAIN 31† 0†
IRAQ N.A. 13,800†
Iraq reports only civilian dead, and said on Sunday that they total 1,252.
Sources: *U.S. Department of Defense; †British Defense Ministry

North of Baghdad
US Marines rapidly advanced towards the town from Samarra by mid-morning.
Seven US POW’s are rescued near Samarra by US forces travelling from Baghdad to Tikrit. Two of those rescued have gunshot wounds. Two of the Americans were captured after their Apache helicopter came down. Others were survivors of the 507th Maintenance Company.
Task Force Tripoli, made up of members of the First Marine Expeditionary Force enter Tikrit with 250 US armoured vehicles, made a rapid advance from Samarra. They are reported to be fighting Iraqi forces, including tanks, on the southern outskirts of Tikrit
Armed men purporting to represent tribal groups in Tikrit say Iraqi troops have left and they are now negotiating a truce with the US military
US soldiers are now patrolling the streets of Mosul in some numbers. Shops are starting to reopen.
Kirkuk's Arabs are being threatened with eviction. Returning Kurdish families are demanding their old homes back.

South of Baghdad and Basra
100 members of the former Iraqi police are helping British forces restore law and order in Basra
An armed mob reportedly surrounds the Najaf house of a pro-Western Shia cleric, Ayatollah Mirza Ali Sistani, and is giving him 48 hours to leave the country. This suggests there is an effort in Najaf - the heart of the Shiite world - to remove any pro-western voices at all.
Four US paratroopers have been shot and wounded while clearing an Iraqi arms dump in Mahmudiya.
Kuwaiti fire-fighters extinguish the last oil-well fire in Iraq's al-Rumeila field.

In Baghdad
100 Iraqi engineers and other civil servants respond to a US military appeal in Baghdad for volunteers to restore both law and order and public services. 20 former army and police officers have also registered to go back to their jobs. US troops plan to mount joint patrols of Baghdad with Iraqi security forces
Thousands of Iraqis are returning to Baghdad from the countryside. A tailback of traffic stretching several kilometres is reported to the east of the city. [Tailback must be a British term for a traffic jam. – Ed.]

Elsewhere in Iraq
US marines have discovered 278 artillery shells carrying a substance which tested positive as a chemical agent. [So far, we have no confirmation that any previous finds test positive in laboratory tests. – Ed.]

Outside Iraq
US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld says he has no doubt that some Iraqis from the ousted regime have fled to Syria.
Pope John Paul II urges solidarity with those suffering in conflicts in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere in the world at a mass for Palm Sunday.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is in Saudi Arabia for talks on Iraq's future.
Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, advises Iraqis to organise post-war reconstruction through mosques.