I come here today to endorse the Q and X Union, an organization dedicated to the well being and advancing the opportunities for the underused letters of the alphabet. The oppressed letters do not want superiority, but equality and the chance to make it ahead in the world by being used in more words. For instance Q wants to get away from the clutches of the U and become an independently used letter, possibly achieving the ultimate goal of being a word all it’s own. X has similar goals. It wants to have one correct pronunciation (Is it “ecks” or “zzz”? It’s up to itself to decide.) and begin being used ever increasingly.
Why not create new words like Kween instead of Queen so Q can live on it’s own? How about spelling Xylophone with a Z so it’s spelled like it’s pronounced? Add another X to ax (axx) extra (exxtra) and extreme (exxtreme).
Please, open your heart today and care about the underused letters and post in this thread as many posts as possible using words that could do with an underused letter-or make up words of your own-not just X or Q, but all of them.
But you don’t even use a Q or an X in your screen name. How can we take your interest seriously? If you were The Quintessentially Excellent Zamboni, that’d be another story.
As for the letters Q and X, if they were given equal status, would they agree to concessions? Both would have to surrender at least part of their point value in Scrabble. X would have to abdicate its pre-eminence as far as being the letter mathematicians use the most to describe unknowns in equations.
allow me to introduce words to you which support your cause
qat, a plant native to Africa.
qoph, a hebrew letter, it’s a word like alpha is a word
also let me say that part of the problem that Q and X might be having is that A, E, I, O, U and Y insist of appearing in every word, the so called “Vowel Monopoly” something that can be battled by using words like nth, which means to a large degree.
Ah, yes? You think you have a point, hmm? Iraq is watched over by our worthy agent “a”; Qantas’ first letter stands for Queensland; FAQ is backed up by Questions (“u” is a busy agent this month), and as for QED – the Fascists laughed so hard, we nearly had a vowel movement.
You may ask, how can Q and X possibly hope to form a union when they are never seen close together? (What a Scrabble word that would make, huh?) Exquisite question. The shortest Q-X word (proper noun, I’m afraid) that I know of is Qix, a Gameboy game released in 1990. That link leads to the XFAQs. (Who says that questions can’t be eXtremely frequently asked?)
No, no, no my friend. If we are ever to liberate the X, it must be allowed to stand on its own two feet. By creating excuses such as this, it will never learn to be truly independant of the Vowel Facists - this co-dependancy does it a disservice.
Imagine, if you will, a legion of Xs. They have legs, look, and arms to wave. Throw off your scrabble chains, you have no need of such back-handed compliments! Fight my little Xs! Fight! Join hands and become a row of kisses my friends! Fight with your love!
My Dear Chappies, I’ll draw your attention to the fact that your Middle East regiments are now so depleted (duties in Israel I should imagine) as to require agents “I” and “A” to perform duty in both Iraq and Iran, whilst the Consonant Good Guys have an extra “N” at our disposal, should agent “Q” decide to seek a new identity under the Consonant Protection Scheme (CPS).
Wisely, the honest citizens of Queensland have seen fit to abolish vowels altogether by abbreviating that state’s name to QLD, with FAQ and QED being yet another win for commonsense (we have your agents surrounded there, I’m afraid!). Feeling consonantipated? Ready to “throw in the vowel”?
I would say that with the extremely high demand for vowels that there will be no end to vowel monopolization in the forseeable future and that consonant opression, especially for Q and X will be likely to continue well into the 22nd century.
Here at the Institute for Alphabet Reduction, we say the letters “Q” and “X” (along with “Z”, “V”, and “K”) should be eliminated entirely for the following reasons:
Better compression ratios of alphanumeric documents.
Fewer letters to learn and/or type.
Reduction of unneeded sounds.
In the interim from a 26 letter alphabet to a 21 letter alphabet, the use of dipthongs will replace these 5 letters:
QU = CW
X = EGGS
Z = SSS
V = FTH
K = CC
Therefore the sentence:
The xenophobic duck quacked violently at Zeno the Venusian.
Becomes:
The eggsenophobic duccc cwaccced fthiolently at Ssseno the Fthenusian.
Of course, the ultimate goal of the Institute is to reduce all communication to the binary “A” and “E”, thus allowing humans and computers to understand each other and facilitate the merger of man and machine into cybernetic organisms. If you are interested in helping us toward that end, please write to us at:
I stand ready for orders. My own dedication to the cause of Q can be seen in my RL name, which includes this unique letter, be it still accompanied by the vowel “u.” Rather than let Q feel subject to u, I have made it my practice to capitalize the Q, even in the middle of my name. My Q stands proud.
I’m willing to consider rallying for X, as well. However, in my own experience, this letter is less worthy of praise and can often be found hanging out in the wrong parts of town, leaving its mark in blinking neon: XXXXXXXXXXXX, it calls out. Also, X gets its fair share of publicity in mathematics, garment sizes and the summer blockbuster.
As you can see from the above political pamphlets stuck to the wall of liguistic futility – the war is as good as over. There is no stopping the march of the Vowel Fascists, and any day now we expect the capitulation of the rebels.
As to the (excuse us, we stil laugh incontinently at this) suggestion that the large Australian state goes around calling itself QLD – well. Try pronouncing it, friends and neighbours. Try saying Q’s pitiful attempt at independence – and listen to the sound of the vowels …
We are one of the first language rules taught to little children. Years later, programmed adults wake up in the midst of a sweat-beaded night, and mutter, “And sometimes Y? WTF?”
We are united. We are forever. We are … The Vowel Fascists.
