One letter to drop is Q, even though I don’t really hate the Kueen.
don’t you mean kween?
I tried to post this awhile ago, between Mr. A. Nemo’s post and Diceman’s, but there were technical difficulties. Since I really don’t feel like editing it to take into account the new comments, I’ll just post it in its entirety.
We need k. How else would you spell “make”? mace? macce? We need s. How else would you spell “sake”? zake? cake? Maybe we could get rid of c, replacing soft c with s and hard c with k. This is similar to what Zagadka suggested (dropping s and making c always soft), but easier, since we’re used to soft s but we’re not used to c always being soft. “ck” would become “k” when possible, and “kk” when necessary (e.g. “pik me!”, “They pikked someone else”, “are you chikken?” Also, we kould probably drop “x” in favor of “z” or “ks” (e.g. boks, miksing, maksimum, zylofone, Zeroks, Zerkses.) And we kould drop “q”, replasing “qu” with “kw” as in “kome kwickly”, “I kwit”, “I work at the Kwik-E-Mart”, “Bomb Irak!”, and “Don’t be so inkwisitive”.
These changes might work for the language, but mathematisians & physisists wouldn’t like 'em. They’d have to find a new variable to use all the time (you sertainly don’t want to label something the eks aksis) and a new speed of light (E=Ms[sup]2[/sup] ?). There would also be komplaints from advertisers & Major League Baseball, bekause whenever “x” replases “cks” it makes the word fun! No one would want to root for a team kalled the “White Socks” or eat a sereal kalled “Kicks”.
After re-reading what I’ve written (and updating all the relevant language), the main problem that I see is replacing “ch”. “sh” is already taken (e.g. chip -> ship), and “kh”, while rare, is okkasionally used. There are 403 entries with “kh” in this diktionary (e.g. lakh, khaki), and it would be weird to say “kh” like we now say “ch” if k was always hard. If we did drop “s” and we made “c” coft, then we’d have the came problem with replacing “sh”.
Maybe “jh” could replase “ch”, as in “just jhill”, “Jheers!”, “Taks the rijh!”, “jhange is good”, “slised jheddar jheese,” and “pass the natjhos”. The only eksisting words I found with “jh” are the obskure geographik “Jhelum”, “Jharkhand”, and “Jhansi” and the abbreviation “JHVH” (a variant of YHWH).
When “ch” has another pronunciation, we could either use jh or find other replacements (e.g. likhen, Shateaux (or Jhateaux), and Mishigan (or Mijhigan)). Also tricky is “cc”. When it doesn’t have a “k” sound, that kould be replased by ks or jh or some other appropriate letter kombination, e.g. I’ve had great suksess in Bojhe Ball.
What do you think? Kould we drop c, q, and x to get down to a nise 23? I’m already getting used to writing like this. I think that if people used the new & improved language here, it wouldn’t take long for it to katjh on with the general publik. Hek, it’s a lot better than 1337.
And now for my eksiting eksit.
Maybe I’m not getting so used to typing this way. Those three paragraphs should read:
After re-reading what I’ve written (and updating all the relevant language), the main problem that I see is replasing “ch”. “sh” is already taken (e.g. chip -> ship), and “kh”, while rare, is okkasionally used. There are 403 entries with “kh” in this diktionary (e.g. lakh, khaki), and it would be weird to say “kh” like we now say “ch” if k was always hard. If we did drop “s” and we made “c” coft, then we’d have the came problem with replacing “sh”.
Maybe “jh” could replase “ch”, as in “just jhill”, “Jheers!”, “Taks the rijh!”, “jhange is good”, “slised jheddar jheese,” and “pass the natjhos”. The only eksisting words I found with “jh” are the obskure geographik “Jhelum”, “Jharkhand”, and “Jhansi” and the abbreviation “JHVH” (a variant of YHWH).
When “ch” has another pronunsiation, we kould either use jh or find other replasements (e.g. likhen, Shateaux (or Jhateaux), and Mishigan (or Mijhigan)). Also trikky is “cc”. When it doesn’t have a “k” sound, that kould be replased by ks or jh or some other appropriate letter kombination, e.g. I’ve had great suksess in Bojhe Ball.
This whole idea of eliminating letters from the alphabet is old news…very old news. It was one of the predictions made by the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1900 for the year 2000.
So far it seems like the alphabet is becoming more stable – maybe because communication is so widespread. Then again, maybe by 2100 we’ll all be using l33t5p33k.
Most languages that have the “ch” problem have a character for “ch” instead of a letter combination. Take a look at Russian.
http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/language/russian-alphabet.html
Well, whaddayaknow? The Ladies’ Home Journal sekonds my motion. And don’t go into tekhnicalities about whether a sekonding kan happen a sentury before the proposal.
We kould follow Zagadka’s suggestion about the single letter and reinstate “c” to replase “ch”, but we’d have to watc out, bekause it kould get trikky using the same letter for new purposes.
I don’t think anyone here is predikting that the language aktually will make these canges (I know I’m not), just looking to see what canges kould be made.
No, I think I like it better as “jhanges.” The lone c is just too konfusing - its other sound is too familiar, and there is a lot of similarity between the “ch” sound and the “j” sound (although adding an “h” after the “j” doesn’t really kapture the differense between the two). Any linguists here kould be more presise about the phonemes, ets.
Also, I was thinking that if we took q, x, and c off the keyboard, then everyone would have to relearn how to type, so we kould use the opportunity to replase werty keyboards with a slightly adjusted version of dvorak.
A suksesful reform of Englic speling wood:
- turn the c into the sh
- bring back the eth and thorn
- turn the x into ks and give the x the value of zh
- get rid of awl doubled leters
- get rid of horors like sure and sugar
(I’m sure I could thing of a few more things) and - render the whole store of Englic litratyoor obsolete
The real problem is that to regularize English spelling, you would have to pick a dialect as standard and that is impossible for so many reasons that I can’t begin to cite them. But words that are homonyms in some dialects are not in others and these vary so much that the idea is not coherent. For example, I have an aynt Ann, while my daughter has a friend from central Mass who has an ahnt Aynn.
Which Americans have trouble telling them apart? Suit has an almost “ew” sound in it and soot rhymes with foot 
You mean the ones who say Mary, Marry and Merry the same, I bet. (I don’t get that, none of them sound the same. OTOH conquered and Concord sound more alike to me than Concord and Concorde. Regional difference, eh?)