Plenty of Nothing

Harpo Whistles

In this scene from A Day at the Races, Harpo Marx uses a combination of whistling and charades to get the point across to Chico. The whistling imitates the melody of spoken English, crossed with a canary, and is kind of like the whistling language silbo gomero found on the isle of La Gomera. In the Canary Islands!

Xu Bing

One of the heroes of typography is Xu Bing who in 1988 produced "A Book From the Sky" made up entirely of Chinese characters he invented himself, to the consternation of the Chinese authorities, who have a vested interest in controlling words and meanings.  He often uses letters of the Latin alphabet as radicals within characters. Here is his name:

And Little Bo Peep:

Alphabet Songs and Pangrams

Arabic. ثق تعش ظل هدف حكَمٌ ذو صبرٍ سخيٍ ضَغطَ أَنجز

Danish. Høj bly gom vandt fræk sexquiz på wc.

German. Falsches Üben von Xylophonmusik quält jeden größeren Zwerg.

Russian. Эх, чужак, общий съём цен шляп (юфть) – вдрызг!

T

Yy

O

Elemenopy

Elemenopy  n.  (ling.)   The tendency to run words together into one long compound noun.  (E.g. "We're all going to the HockeyHallOfFame!")  [Derived from the letters L M N O P as recited by children.]

[Huh. I thought I made this up, but a quick google reveals this book and this garage band.]

Douglas