With only moderate knowledge of English language and Vietnamese language I was able to find the law inside the alphabet of symbols, for writing, and the alphabet of sounds, for talking. Since ancient time, it has always been the central intention of the alphabet people for symbols to represent the speech sounds. Since ancient time people has been looking into the human speech sounds to discover the vowels and consonants, similarly, think of the elements in chenistry.
English Writing uses mostly Spelling, abracadabra, for it's orthography, because it has only 26 symbols for alphabet letters.
While, Vietnamese Writing uses mostly phonetic (=each alphabet letter represents only one speech sound, a vowel or a consonant). Because Vietnamese Writing has three levels of sounds for each of the five vowels: a â ă, e ê iê, u ư ưa, o ô ơ, i y ... adorning them with diacritics, and plus, it has five diacritics for the six tones, so, there is less of a need for Spelling.
Vietnamese Alphabet Writing has it's foundation laid down by Francisco De Pina, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary who arrived to Vietnam in 1617.
So, in the year of 2018, I found H to be the central consonant of other consonants, forming the body of the human figure; and "I" to be the central vowel of other vowels, forming the head of the human figure.
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I'm not sure how you work out that 'H' is the centre of the alphabet, given your comparison language is Vietnamese and given,
malheuresement, the French rarely enunciate that letter, and with Vietnam being a former French colony. In addition, Vietnamese is a part of the Austroasiastic languages.
Regarding word structure, Austroasiatic languages are well known for having an iambic
"sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of an initial, unstressed, reduced
minor syllable followed by a stressed, full syllable.<a href="
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroasiatic_languages#cite_note-FOOTNOTEAlves2014524-9"><span>[</span>8<span>]</span></a>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroasiatic_languages
AIUI languages such as Mandarin or Cantonese are written according to tones, rather than individual letters..?
In any case, in Northern Europe, at least, the alphabet didn't become written due to 'human speech sounds', it was mostly purely ecclesiastical - priests teaching people how to read the catechism. without knowing which, you could not get confirmed, and
ipso facto could not marry, your children were
base children, and in any case it was compulsory to attend church on occasion.
In Finland, the first so-called alphabet - in which people had been speaking for many thousands of years, long before they could read or write - was by a priest called Michael Agricola, the
Aapinen. This was to teach kids the catechism. Not dissimilar to the early 'grammar' schools set up in England to teach the sons of the yeomanry, who were expected to earn a living, and was the foundation stone for the private 'public' schools {not for the unwashed
hoi polloi).
In the Finnish language, the most common letter of all is '
K', although 'H' is also in use a lot. The early alphabet with '
w' was pronounced as '
v' and has now come to be written as '
v', with the '
w' considered archaic. The letter '
d' is interesting and is not dissimilar to the thorn. It is not really a Finnish letter but is used to soften a 't' word ending, and is almost always followed by '
e'. The words for '
eight' and '
nine' are modern words, as old Finnish only counts up to seven. The word for '
ten' (
kymmenen) is a borrowed loan word. '
Eight' is simply '
two [before ten]' and nine, '
one [before ten]' derivations. '
Two' is '
kaksi' or in its partitive form,
'kahta', or, 's
econd' = '
kahdes'; thus, the word for
eight, '
kahdeksan' and '
yhdeksän' = '
nine' (from
'yksi' = '
one' [or,
'yxi' in the original C16
Aapinen], (partitive: '
yhtä' [='one of']). The '
d' consonant in each of these words is not enunciated in speech. This is due to the reminiscent 'thorn' Þ effect, but is spoken as 'kah'eksan' or 'yh'eksän', with a slight '
r' sound in some dialects. (For example, '
kah'reksan').
This is most unusual because Finnish is otherwise a VERY phonetic language, spoken as it is written.
In addition, the practice of marking property comes from the ancient art of carpentry; marks carved in wood - runes - precedes and post-dates the so-called first alphabet, with the rich and well-educated continuing to use runes for their legal signature and property marking (although many were barely literate beyond church recitation). So, the only alphabet law is that there is no law. It is only convention.
Finnish heavily relies on dipthongs and these are probably more important in spoken speech than individual letters.