Thursday 7 February 2013

Barnaby wonders about Q?

Barnaby is wondering why we need the letter Q? It seems to him that it's pretty much redundant, since just about every word containing the letter Q could be just as easily spelled without it by using K or KW instead. For example, kween, kue, brusk, kwarantine or rekwirement. It's such a weak letter that it always needs to be supported by an adjacent U anyway. Why do we not just reduce the number of letters in the alphabet by one and do away with it altogether?
We might also manage without X, replacing it with KS as in boks, foks, or ekstrakt, or Z as in zylophone.
Saving two letters from our current 26 is almost a 4% saving, a rate you'd be delighted to receive on your savings at the moment. Just think of the savings in keyboard manufacturing costs alone.
Then there is Y. It seems to do pretty much the same job as I. We could replace Y with I in most cases, such as iellow, or roughli. If necessary, you could always add an e, as in flie, or purifie.
For that matter, we could do away with C as well. We already have K, which would cover the hard C sound in kake or kalkulate, for example, or S, which would cover the soft C, in fense or twise. There might be a problem with the 'ch' sound as in much or cheese, though, so maybe this is a step too far.
So, Barnaby is considering a campaign to shorten the alphabet, even though he would have to change his own name to Barnabi.
In the meantime, if you'd like to make the most of the whole alphabet, why not go to www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk and download one of his ebooks that use every existing letter? Before it's too late.

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