Tuesday 23 April 2013

Finally - something that can definately be cut!


Our language was designed a long time ago, in a different era. It is no longer fit for the 21st century.
Over the years a number of immigrant language words have joined our native English. Latin. Greek. French. German. Hindi.Arabic. They've all come over here and taken over the jobs of hardworking English words.

That has left a number of letters virtually redundant. These letters have the same status as other, more hardworking letters. They consume space on a keyboard. yet some of them do little or no work at all.

Q is an example. Q does virtually nothing. In the picture above Q is for Queen. And Q is always for Queen because we struggle to think of even a single other word that starts with Q.
A hardworking letter, like S or T, goes to work and sees Q, still in bed, and likely to stay there all day. And Q can't even function on its own. In needs U to help. That's two letters in use.

Let us abolish Q.

If we need a word like queue, quick or Quaker, we can use C.
Cueue, Cwick and Cwaeker.
And X. X is worse than Q - X-ray and X-men, which aren't a real words anyway, and Xylophone, that just seems to be a word made up to give X something to do. Z is on the abolition list too, but a Z-X merger could save Z.
Zylophone. Z-ray. Z-men. Job done - goodbye X .

K is another letter on thin ice. Hardworking C is a ready made replacement.
Kitchen - Citchen
Greek - Greec
Smack - Smac.
Knowledge - duh! Nolledge.

 Special K is the real loser here. And Potassium. They can rebrand. Scrabble users will have to adjust but within 1 generation those missing letters will be forgotten.

Think of the space saved on keyboards that could be put to much better use such as incorporating a ½ or a  € or the common @ on its own key.
Thinner dictionary. Less school time learning wasteful letters. Easier for foreigners. 
This is a cut worth making.

And apostrophes. Goes without saying they are out. Waste of time possessives.
The Kings arms
The King's arms.
Oh, how will we know what this means without apostrophes?
Well, Lynne Truss, just look at the context. 

"We shall meet at the Kings arms." 

Does that mean a reunion at an  inn or a public house or by the upper limbs of two or more male monarchs? Not hard to figure out.


So, that's enough cuts for starters. But Capital letters, semi colon and inverted commas, plus the letter J are on notice.
J has a worse record in English use than X or Z. But kind of hard to write just jerk the juice jug without it.




13 comments:

Blue Eyes said...

Brilliant!

Did you see that Euro-harmonisation-English one that went around a few years ago?

andrew said...

something tells me you don't play scrabble

Nick Drew said...

exactly who wants to say just jerk the juice jug in the first place ?

hmmm

Budgie said...

Oooh err, ND, I was about to ask exactly the same question (sorry kwestion, sorry cwesschun). After all if the juice (guse?) in the jug is jerked surely you will spill it? So this means we have thought in the same way way about a post. Aaarghh, quick (or kwik, or cwic) where's me smellin soltz?

Anonymous said...

Best done in 1946, under the pseudonym "Dolton Edwards".

Meihem in ce Klasrum

Enjoy.

(Sorry, can't log in - bloody stupid captcha thing won't play. Again. Formertory.)

Timbo614 said...

Sorry Chaps, just can't do stuff without the semi-colon. Almost no computer programming language would work. :(

Instruction (code) lines are terminated with semi-colons and quotation marks are used to start and stop literal text in many cases. All databases would stop dead in their tracks (which in some cases would be a good thing!).

The cleanest keys on a programmers keyboard are likely to be + - = / \ * ()[]<> {} ; : ' "

Q could probably be cut except for linux boxes where it is often used for Quit:)

This is a Timbo614 Information Technology bulletin :)

Sackerson said...

God save the ...

Electro-Kevin said...

Jenius !

Demetrius said...

Yer wot?

Jan said...

Well you'll have to get a new name then as so will I if your cuts were to go ahead!

Bill Quango MP said...

J/Yan: I shall use the spelling I use in the far east.

Billal Kwang-Ho MP.

If K does get the chop then its Billal Chang-Ho MP.

EK - I was actually writing in the comments on your piece, before i realised how much I'd spouted. Decided to blog it instead.

For anyone wishing to see the spark piece, on EK's , which makes a great point about past present tense and the idiocy of modern history empathy teaching, -see here

Electro-Kevin said...

I am onoured, B Cue.

assurance info said...

""""" Our language was designed a long time ago, in a different era. It is no longer fit for the 21st century.
Over the years a number of immigrant language words have joined our native English. Latin. Greek. French. German. Hindi.Arabic. They've all come over here and taken over the jobs of hardworking English words."""""""