Letter (alphabet) of sounds to make words. A letter is classed as either a consonant or a vowel, depending on how its sound is produced (vowels are "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", and sometimes "y" and "w"). The basic Roman alphabet is used by about one hundred languages, with slight variations. Some versions contain as few as twenty-one characters, some as many as thirty. Letters have specific names associated with them, which may differ with language, dialect, and history. "Z", for example, is usually called "zed" in all English-speaking countries except the US, where it is named "zee". As elements of alphabets,
Morse code mnemonics the elements of the Morse code characters onto pictures for easy memorization. For instance, "R" () might be represented as a "racecar" seen in a profile view, with the two wheels of the racecar being the dits and the body being the dah. Syllabic mnemonics are based on the principle of associating a word "or" phrase to each Morse code letter, with stressed syllables standing for a dah and unstressed ones for a dit. There is no well-known complete set of syllabic mnemonics for English, but various mnemonics do exist for individual letters. In the Czech language, the mnemonic device