To me, it seems extraneous. In that other letters can be substitued readily.
How did “y” find itself into the english alphabet and why?
I fail to understand. Do you suggest spelling ‘yellow’ as ‘jellow’, Or perhaps spell ‘yon’ as ‘ion’ or ‘Jon’? Isn’t that going to get a little confusing?
If you were going to pick on letters, I would have thought that ‘Z’ and ‘K’ would have been the obvious ones to pick on, since in most cases they really can be replaced with no confusion. On the other hand we have need in English for a ‘Y’ sound.
There? shrugs I always thought it represented a short “i”. It is generally looked at like that in other languages (that, or an accented “i”)
“Yon”? O_o Interesting choice. “Your” makes more sense. “Your” isn’t nearly the same as “ur” (really, “you” isn’t like “u” either)… they have a soft “i” sound, as you point out in the difference between “ellow” and “yellow”… it could be expressed “i`ellow”, I suppose, but English doens’t use accents.
Hell, look at poor Russian. They have a half dozen i/e sounds (i, i`, [y]eh, [y]oh, ya, and ee) that frequenly get strung together.
Really? How do you spell “zoo” without “z”? I would follow other languages and drop the useless S, replacing it with a soft C, hard K, and slurred Z.
“Yon”? O_o Interesting choice. “Your” makes more sense. “Your” isn’t nearly the same as “ur” (really, “you” isn’t like “u” either)… they have a soft “i” sound, as you point out in the difference between “ellow” and “yellow”… it could be expressed “i`ellow”, I suppose, but English doens’t use accents.
Hell, look at poor Russian. They have a half dozen i/e sounds (i, i`, [y]eh, [y]oh, ya, and ee) that frequenly get strung together.
Really? How do you spell “zoo” without “z”? I would follow other languages and drop the useless S, replacing it with a soft C, hard K, and slurred Z.
Y apparently found its way into the alphabet after the Roman conquest of Greece in 1 AD. The greek letter Upsilon was adopted into the Latin alphaber as the letter Y to transliterate borrowed Greek words into Latin. Upsilon had a ue sound that Latin didn’t have, so it took on the sound of its nearest Latin equivalent, i.
Well, I did say it could mostly be replaced. It’s mostly the AMerican inability to distinguish between suit (syoot) and soot that causes the problem. 
And I picked ‘Yon’ simply because we alraedy have the words ‘Jon’ and ‘ion’. There’s no such word as ‘iour’, or even ‘jour’ doesn’t really exist in english so eitehr would be suitable alternatives.
Y?
Y not?
Ugh… seems I didn’t think it through for many many words. I was mostly thinking that a final letter, where “y” sounds like “ee” is unnecessary and better replaced with “i” or “ee”.
But if anyone would like to tackle “c” versus “k” while we’re here… feel free.
I’d drop C. It’s redundant with S and K.
Perhaps we should convert to the Decibet, the ten character alphabet as described by Dan Aykroyd on SNL, transcribed http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75rdecabet.phtml . Life would be soooo much simpler.
If you really have to get rid of a character, than why not choose the real latecomer in the bunch J.
Cecil on I / J in Why is there an I Street and a K Street but no J Street in Washington, D.C.?
How would my middle-aged relatives then do the YMCA dance at weddings?
If you did eliminate Y, what advantage would it be? Why is having a “redundant” letter a bad thing?
In Spanish the letters I and Y are called, respectively, Latin I and Greek I.
This might help also. 
Fine, but how would you spell chat, patches or Charlie’s Cheese Chateaux?
Dropping C would wreak havoc on cuss words:
Fuk you!
Dik sukker!
Wrap your lips around my big kok!
Kunt!
shat, patshes, and sharlies sheese shato
of corse
Whie not drop the letter wie? Ies, interesting question. I can’t possiblee think of anee use it has. Except, since it currentlee has several different uses, I personallee feel that to replace its functionalitee, we’d have to devise several different vowel combinations, thus increasing the amount of ink used, and therefore not being as environmentalee friendlee.