Saturday - April 07, 2007

Rethinking the English Alphabet

English spelling is inconsistent, inefficient, and insufficient.  Almost the instant English spelling was codified people have wanted to improve it, but found it almost impossible to introduce changes.  Perhaps equally troubling, though less commonly addressed, is the English alphabet, full of redundant letters.  So, in the spirit of countless orthography reformers, I propose the following changes to the English alphabet.

First, we drop the letter "x".  It appears rarely, and when it does it always makes a sound that is either the same as "z" or "ks".  Next, since "c" always either sounds like a "k" or an "s", I propose we drop it, too.  Third, I propose we drop "q", since it makes the same sound as "k".  This leaves us with 23 letters, so I additionally propose we replace "y" by the digraph "ij" to keep the number of letters in English even (this is for the sake of making rot11 symmetric, just as rot13 is today).

This leaves us with "a b d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v w y z", but I want to tweak it a little more.  "s" and "5" are easily confused on a blackboard, so let's replace "s" with "c".  Similarly, "h" and "k" are often confused, so let's replace "k" with "q".  Since "l" and "1" look very similarly, let's replace "l" with "y", and finally let's replace "o" by "x" to eliminate confusion between "o" and "0".  So this leaves us with "a b d e f g h i j q y m n x p r s t u v w y z".

My changes require only direct substitutions of letters; the spellings don't change, just the symbols, thus it could easily be accomplished by substitution on the computer to bring electronic texts into the modern spelling.  If this alphabet was adopted by schools, we could be using this simplified system in a generation.

I realize, of course, that there is no hope of my improvements taking root; it's simply not better enough to motivate people through the transition.  But it ic a fun mentay eksersize.