I've written:
A variant tries to make a word or phrase containing at least all letters with diacritical marks:
A self-enumerating pangram, or a pangrammic autogram, is one which describes exactly the number of letters it itself contains. Because changing the description changes the numbers of letters used in the description, the task of finding such a pangram is exceedingly complex.
This particularly interesting kind of pangram arose from some verbal horseplay between Douglas Hofstadter, an AI researcher and writer for Scientific American, Rudy Kousbroek, a Dutch linguist and essayist, and Lee Sallows, a British electronics engineer. Hofstadter posed the problem of sentences that describe themselves, prompting Sallows to devise the following:
This, while interesting, is not a complete pangram as it lacks a j, q, and z. Kousbroek published a Dutch equivalent, which spurred Sallows, who lives in the Netherlands and reads the paper where Kousbroek writes his essays, to think harder about this problem in order to solve it more generally. Initial attempts to write a program for this came to naught, but, in 1984, he decided to construct a dedicated piece of hardware for this task, the Pangram Machine. This accepts a description of the initial sentence fragment, and tries to fill in the blanks. The result was later published in Scientific American in October of 1984, as follows:
There are exhaustive lists of some self-enumerating sentences here and thus also of certain pangrams, in English, Italian and Latin. These were computed using BDD's ( binary decision diagrams).
Language | Phrase | Translation | Uses all letters? |
---|---|---|---|
Bulgarian | Под южно дърво, цъфтящо в синьо, бягаше малко пухкаво зайче. | А little fluffy young rabbit ran under a southern tree blooming in blue | Yes |
Czech | Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy. | A too yellow horse moaned devil odes. | no (but it uses all characters with diacritics) |
Chinese | 視野無限廣,窗外有藍天 | The view is infinitely wide. There is blue sky outside the window. [5] | no (such a sentence would be for all intents and purposes impossible; there are literally tens of thousands of Chinese characters.) |
Danish | Quizdeltagerne spiste jordbær med fløde, mens cirkusklovnen Walther spillede på xylofon. | The quiz contestants ate strawberries with cream while Walther the clown was playing the xylophone. | Yes |
Dutch | Pa's wijze lynx bezag vroom het fikse aquaduct. | Dad's wise lynx piously regarded the substantial aqueduct. | yes (and not including accents) |
Esperanto | Eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde. | Change of echo every Thursday. | no (but contains all characters specific to esperanto) |
Estonian | See väike mölder jõuab rongile hüpata | This small miller is able to jump to train | no (only alphabet containing non-foreign words) |
Finnish | Viekas kettu punaturkki laiskan koiran takaa kurkki. | The cunning red-coated fox peeped from behind the lazy dog. | no |
French | Voix ambiguë d'un cœur qui au zéphyr préfère les jattes de kiwis. | Ambiguous voice of a heart which prefers dishes of kiwis in the breeze [used in Windows XP] | yes, including diacritics except circumflex and cedilla |
Portez ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume. | Bring this old whisky to the blond smoking judge. | yes, but no diacritics | |
German | Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich | Twelve boxing fighters drive Viktor over the great Sylt Dike | yes (including umlauts and ß) |
Greek | Θέλει αρετή και τόλμη η ελευθερία. (Ανδρέας Κάλβος) | Liberty requires virtue and mettle. (Andreas Kalvos) | no |
Hebrew | דג סקרן שט לו בים זך אך לפתע פגש חבורה נחמדה שצצה כך. | A curious fish sailed a clear sea, and suddenly found nice company that just popped up. | yes, but with no distinction between regular and final forms. |
Hungarian | Egy hűtlen vejét fülöncsípő, dühös mexikói úr Wesselényinél mázol Quitóban. | An angry Mexican man, who caught his faithless son-in-law, is painting Wesselényi's house in Quito. | no |
Italian | Ma la volpe, col suo balzo, ha raggiunto il quieto Fido. | But the fox, with its jump, reached the calm dog | no |
Japanese | いろはにほへと ちりぬるを わかよたれそ つねならむ うゐのおくやま けふこえて あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす | Even colours and sweet perfume / Will eventually fade / Even our world / Is not eternal / The deep mountains of vanity / Cross them today / And superficial dreams / Shall no longer delude you. (from Iroha-uta) | all non-voiced Hiragana except ん |
Korean | 다람쥐 헌 쳇바퀴에 타고파 | (I) Wanna ride on the chipmunk's old hamster wheel. | uses all consonants but not all vowels |
Latvian | Sarkanās jūrascūciņas peld pa jūru. | Red seapigs swim in the sea. | no |
Norwegian (bokmål) | En god stil må først og fremst være klar. Den må være passende. Aristoteles. | A good essay must first and foremost be clear. It must be appropriate. Aristotle. | no |
Portuguese | A rápida raposa castanha salta por cima do cão lento. | The quick brown fox jumps over the slow dog. | no |
Brazilian Portuguese | A ligeira raposa marrom ataca o cão preguiçoso. | The quick brown fox attacks the lazy dog. | no |
Brazilian Portuguese | Zebras caolhas de Java querem passar fax para moças gigantes de New York | Strabic zebras from Java want to pass a fax to giant girls from New York. | yes |
Polish | Pchnąć w tę łódź jeża lub ośm skrzyń fig | Push into this boat a hedgehog or eight boxes of figs. | yes |
Romanian | Agera vulpe maronie sare peste câinele cel leneş. | The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. | yes |
Russian | Съешь ещё этих мягких французских булок да выпей же чаю | Eat some more of these soft French buns and drink some tea [used in Windows XP] | yes |
Serbian (Cyrillic alphabet) | Чешће цeђење мрeжастим џаком побољшава фертилизацију генских хибрида. | More frequent filtering through the reticular bag improves fertilization of genetic hybrids. | yes |
Serbian (Latin alphabet) | Češće ceđenje mrežastim džakom poboljšava fertilizaciju genskih hibrida. | More frequent filtering through the reticular bag improves fertilization of genetic hybrids. | yes |
Slovak | Kŕdeľ šťastných ďatľov učí pri ústí Váhu mĺkveho koňa obhrýzať kôru a žrať čerstvé mäso. | A flock of happy woodpeckers by the mouth of the river Vah is teaching a silent horse to nibble on bark and feed on fresh meat. (Modified sentence which contains all accents and diacritics.) | yes |
Spanish | El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi. La cigüeña tocaba el saxofón detrás del palenque de paja. | The quick Hindu bat was happily eating thistle and kiwi. The stork played the sax behind the straw palisade. | yes |
Swedish | Flygande bäckasiner söka strax hwila på mjuka tuvor | Flying snipes soon look to rest on soft grass beds (with obsolete Swedish spelling and grammar) | except Q and Z |
Thai | เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่า กว่าบรรดาฝูงสัตว์เดรัจฉาน จงฝ่าฟันพัฒนาวิชาการ อย่าล้างผลาญฤๅเข่นฆ่าบีฑาใคร ไม่ถือโทษโกรธแช่งซัดฮึดฮัดด่า หัดอภัยเหมือนกีฬาอัชฌาสัย ปฏิบัติประพฤติกฎกำหนดใจ พูดจาให้จ๊ะ ๆ จ๋า ๆ น่าฟังเอยฯ |
Being a man is worthy |
except ฦ |
Turkish | Pijamalı hasta, yağız şoföre çabucak güvendi | Patient with pajamas, trusted swarthy driver quickly | no |
Four perfect pangrams using the postal abbreviations of the US states and territories and the Canadian provinces and territories are:
It is not possible to make a perfect pangram out of current chemical element symbols, but it is possible using two disused ones. UNQ, for unnilquadium, now known as Rutherfordium, is in every pangram, as it is only one of two chemical symbols with a Q. The two Us in UUQ ( ununquadium) prevent its use. The other letter necessitating disused symbols is J; the available symbols are J (for iodine), Jg (for Jargonium/ Hafnium), or Jo (for Joliotium/ Dubnium).
Here is one of many possibilities using Jo:
It is not possible to create a perfect pangram from the current US Representatives' initials as none contain "Q"; however, only one former Representative is necessary. Xavier Becerra contributes an X to every pangram. Bill Young can also be used in place of Don Young if a perfect pangram is unnecessary. In the example below Jack Quinn, the most recent Representative with a Q, is used; for a full list of possibilities, see the list of former Representatives with Q as an initial.
Airports have two abbreviations each: ICAO codes and IATA codes. ICAO codes are 4 letters each, IATA codes are 3 letters each. As 26 is neither divisible by 3 nor 4, any perfect pangram must contain a combination of them. The only possible 26-letter combinations contain either six IATA codes and two ICAO codes or 2 IATA codes and 5 ICAO codes; the latter is impossible because all ICAO codes in the United States begin with a "K" or a "P", so only two can be used. Therefore, all airport code pangrams consist of 6 IATA codes and 2 ICAO codes. Here is one of many examples, in which only airports deemed "primary" by the FAA are used and where no two are in the same state:
All countries have a two letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. Here is an example of a pangram using these:
I've written:
A variant tries to make a word or phrase containing at least all letters with diacritical marks:
A self-enumerating pangram, or a pangrammic autogram, is one which describes exactly the number of letters it itself contains. Because changing the description changes the numbers of letters used in the description, the task of finding such a pangram is exceedingly complex.
This particularly interesting kind of pangram arose from some verbal horseplay between Douglas Hofstadter, an AI researcher and writer for Scientific American, Rudy Kousbroek, a Dutch linguist and essayist, and Lee Sallows, a British electronics engineer. Hofstadter posed the problem of sentences that describe themselves, prompting Sallows to devise the following:
This, while interesting, is not a complete pangram as it lacks a j, q, and z. Kousbroek published a Dutch equivalent, which spurred Sallows, who lives in the Netherlands and reads the paper where Kousbroek writes his essays, to think harder about this problem in order to solve it more generally. Initial attempts to write a program for this came to naught, but, in 1984, he decided to construct a dedicated piece of hardware for this task, the Pangram Machine. This accepts a description of the initial sentence fragment, and tries to fill in the blanks. The result was later published in Scientific American in October of 1984, as follows:
There are exhaustive lists of some self-enumerating sentences here and thus also of certain pangrams, in English, Italian and Latin. These were computed using BDD's ( binary decision diagrams).
Language | Phrase | Translation | Uses all letters? |
---|---|---|---|
Bulgarian | Под южно дърво, цъфтящо в синьо, бягаше малко пухкаво зайче. | А little fluffy young rabbit ran under a southern tree blooming in blue | Yes |
Czech | Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy. | A too yellow horse moaned devil odes. | no (but it uses all characters with diacritics) |
Chinese | 視野無限廣,窗外有藍天 | The view is infinitely wide. There is blue sky outside the window. [5] | no (such a sentence would be for all intents and purposes impossible; there are literally tens of thousands of Chinese characters.) |
Danish | Quizdeltagerne spiste jordbær med fløde, mens cirkusklovnen Walther spillede på xylofon. | The quiz contestants ate strawberries with cream while Walther the clown was playing the xylophone. | Yes |
Dutch | Pa's wijze lynx bezag vroom het fikse aquaduct. | Dad's wise lynx piously regarded the substantial aqueduct. | yes (and not including accents) |
Esperanto | Eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde. | Change of echo every Thursday. | no (but contains all characters specific to esperanto) |
Estonian | See väike mölder jõuab rongile hüpata | This small miller is able to jump to train | no (only alphabet containing non-foreign words) |
Finnish | Viekas kettu punaturkki laiskan koiran takaa kurkki. | The cunning red-coated fox peeped from behind the lazy dog. | no |
French | Voix ambiguë d'un cœur qui au zéphyr préfère les jattes de kiwis. | Ambiguous voice of a heart which prefers dishes of kiwis in the breeze [used in Windows XP] | yes, including diacritics except circumflex and cedilla |
Portez ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume. | Bring this old whisky to the blond smoking judge. | yes, but no diacritics | |
German | Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich | Twelve boxing fighters drive Viktor over the great Sylt Dike | yes (including umlauts and ß) |
Greek | Θέλει αρετή και τόλμη η ελευθερία. (Ανδρέας Κάλβος) | Liberty requires virtue and mettle. (Andreas Kalvos) | no |
Hebrew | דג סקרן שט לו בים זך אך לפתע פגש חבורה נחמדה שצצה כך. | A curious fish sailed a clear sea, and suddenly found nice company that just popped up. | yes, but with no distinction between regular and final forms. |
Hungarian | Egy hűtlen vejét fülöncsípő, dühös mexikói úr Wesselényinél mázol Quitóban. | An angry Mexican man, who caught his faithless son-in-law, is painting Wesselényi's house in Quito. | no |
Italian | Ma la volpe, col suo balzo, ha raggiunto il quieto Fido. | But the fox, with its jump, reached the calm dog | no |
Japanese | いろはにほへと ちりぬるを わかよたれそ つねならむ うゐのおくやま けふこえて あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす | Even colours and sweet perfume / Will eventually fade / Even our world / Is not eternal / The deep mountains of vanity / Cross them today / And superficial dreams / Shall no longer delude you. (from Iroha-uta) | all non-voiced Hiragana except ん |
Korean | 다람쥐 헌 쳇바퀴에 타고파 | (I) Wanna ride on the chipmunk's old hamster wheel. | uses all consonants but not all vowels |
Latvian | Sarkanās jūrascūciņas peld pa jūru. | Red seapigs swim in the sea. | no |
Norwegian (bokmål) | En god stil må først og fremst være klar. Den må være passende. Aristoteles. | A good essay must first and foremost be clear. It must be appropriate. Aristotle. | no |
Portuguese | A rápida raposa castanha salta por cima do cão lento. | The quick brown fox jumps over the slow dog. | no |
Brazilian Portuguese | A ligeira raposa marrom ataca o cão preguiçoso. | The quick brown fox attacks the lazy dog. | no |
Brazilian Portuguese | Zebras caolhas de Java querem passar fax para moças gigantes de New York | Strabic zebras from Java want to pass a fax to giant girls from New York. | yes |
Polish | Pchnąć w tę łódź jeża lub ośm skrzyń fig | Push into this boat a hedgehog or eight boxes of figs. | yes |
Romanian | Agera vulpe maronie sare peste câinele cel leneş. | The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. | yes |
Russian | Съешь ещё этих мягких французских булок да выпей же чаю | Eat some more of these soft French buns and drink some tea [used in Windows XP] | yes |
Serbian (Cyrillic alphabet) | Чешће цeђење мрeжастим џаком побољшава фертилизацију генских хибрида. | More frequent filtering through the reticular bag improves fertilization of genetic hybrids. | yes |
Serbian (Latin alphabet) | Češće ceđenje mrežastim džakom poboljšava fertilizaciju genskih hibrida. | More frequent filtering through the reticular bag improves fertilization of genetic hybrids. | yes |
Slovak | Kŕdeľ šťastných ďatľov učí pri ústí Váhu mĺkveho koňa obhrýzať kôru a žrať čerstvé mäso. | A flock of happy woodpeckers by the mouth of the river Vah is teaching a silent horse to nibble on bark and feed on fresh meat. (Modified sentence which contains all accents and diacritics.) | yes |
Spanish | El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi. La cigüeña tocaba el saxofón detrás del palenque de paja. | The quick Hindu bat was happily eating thistle and kiwi. The stork played the sax behind the straw palisade. | yes |
Swedish | Flygande bäckasiner söka strax hwila på mjuka tuvor | Flying snipes soon look to rest on soft grass beds (with obsolete Swedish spelling and grammar) | except Q and Z |
Thai | เป็นมนุษย์สุดประเสริฐเลิศคุณค่า กว่าบรรดาฝูงสัตว์เดรัจฉาน จงฝ่าฟันพัฒนาวิชาการ อย่าล้างผลาญฤๅเข่นฆ่าบีฑาใคร ไม่ถือโทษโกรธแช่งซัดฮึดฮัดด่า หัดอภัยเหมือนกีฬาอัชฌาสัย ปฏิบัติประพฤติกฎกำหนดใจ พูดจาให้จ๊ะ ๆ จ๋า ๆ น่าฟังเอยฯ |
Being a man is worthy |
except ฦ |
Turkish | Pijamalı hasta, yağız şoföre çabucak güvendi | Patient with pajamas, trusted swarthy driver quickly | no |
Four perfect pangrams using the postal abbreviations of the US states and territories and the Canadian provinces and territories are:
It is not possible to make a perfect pangram out of current chemical element symbols, but it is possible using two disused ones. UNQ, for unnilquadium, now known as Rutherfordium, is in every pangram, as it is only one of two chemical symbols with a Q. The two Us in UUQ ( ununquadium) prevent its use. The other letter necessitating disused symbols is J; the available symbols are J (for iodine), Jg (for Jargonium/ Hafnium), or Jo (for Joliotium/ Dubnium).
Here is one of many possibilities using Jo:
It is not possible to create a perfect pangram from the current US Representatives' initials as none contain "Q"; however, only one former Representative is necessary. Xavier Becerra contributes an X to every pangram. Bill Young can also be used in place of Don Young if a perfect pangram is unnecessary. In the example below Jack Quinn, the most recent Representative with a Q, is used; for a full list of possibilities, see the list of former Representatives with Q as an initial.
Airports have two abbreviations each: ICAO codes and IATA codes. ICAO codes are 4 letters each, IATA codes are 3 letters each. As 26 is neither divisible by 3 nor 4, any perfect pangram must contain a combination of them. The only possible 26-letter combinations contain either six IATA codes and two ICAO codes or 2 IATA codes and 5 ICAO codes; the latter is impossible because all ICAO codes in the United States begin with a "K" or a "P", so only two can be used. Therefore, all airport code pangrams consist of 6 IATA codes and 2 ICAO codes. Here is one of many examples, in which only airports deemed "primary" by the FAA are used and where no two are in the same state:
All countries have a two letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. Here is an example of a pangram using these: