It is not coincidental that two of Anu's examples, "fjord" and "cwm", are extremely important words in the English language, because they occur in the sentence



which is the only sentence I know that makes sense, lacks abbreviations, and uses all the letters of the alphabet once each. The "w" in "cwm" is particularly important, because the Roman alphabet used for English is desperately short of vowels.

Fjord bank cwms vext quiz

I can only count 21 letters and there are 26 in our alphabet...it's missing: G,H,L,P and Y.

The best one I know is

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

but that has 35 letters in it (E x3, O x4, U x2)

Well I know what Fjord is, because we have Fjordland in New Zealand and it advertised as the.....The Eighth Wonder Of The World.

But I don't know CWM!

the Roman alphabet used for English is desperately short of vowels

Technically speaking, General American has about 12 monophthongal vowels and about just as many diphthongs/triphthongs (link and link).

Learned it as:
"The quick brown fox just came over that hill to greet the
lazy poodle".

I'm posting to "sforzando" because I recognized the music: it's from the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

But I got sidetracked by the alphabet sentences. I still think the best is "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs," but here are a few others:

Wet squid's inky haze veils sex of jumping crab
Oozy mad jellyfish expectorated by quivering hawk
Exildes zouave packs barque with jolly frogmen
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz
Doxy with charming buzz quaffs vodka juleps
By jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize

I believe the sentence is CWM FJORD BANK GLYPHS VEXT QUIZ:
"Statues in the bowlshaped valley at the edge of the fjord
annoyed the old man".

I believe it's Welsh.

I believe it's Welsh.

It is.

I see that, now, too. My AWAD update arrived in my inbox @ 5am this morning.....a few hrs late of the discussion last night.


my subscription must be the last of a very long list!

Thats the first thing that came in my mind when reading AWAD this morning

/dont' read music except to sing with others, but
Beethoven did not come to mind.

I don't read music either Luke.....it was just when I read the explanation of the word.... Beethoven's 5th sprang to mind.

Did I post that? Is there any way I can blame the computer or the Internet or anything else for the missing word? LukeJanan8, thank you for the correction. You and I choose different orders of the words, but both make sense.

I see, I thought the picture was a piece of sheet music
from the symphony. (Love the 5th, but the 6th is my
favorite).

Glad to see we both have all the letters. I saved the
sentence from a previous site discussing words like this
one. That site is now defunct, however, sadly, had many
contributors: lots of discussions. I was intrigued by the
sentence so I saved it. Glad to have been a help. And I
surely would blame the computer-I do all the time.