Making My Own Alphabet pt. 1: Removing useless letters
To start making my fixed alphabet, I started by removing letters that I thought to be replaced easily.
The thing about languages is that they evolve over time, so sometimes letters that used to make one sound replaced by another sound or they’ll implement letters from other languages. English specifically is uses the Latin alphabet, which is also used by other languages so some letters that may work in other languages are obsolete in English.
C
“C” is perhaps the most famous example of this. “C” once represented other sounds, during certain period of it’s evolution it made sounds more similar to a “G” sound or a “ts” sound but as our language evolved we began pronouncing words with “C” differently. Today it makes 2 distinct sounds that can be replaced by other letters.
The hard “C” like in “Cat” can be replaced by a “K” (as the two sounds are indistinguishable in modern english).
The soft “C” can be replaced by a “S” as again, these sounds are indistinguishable. C doesn’t usually even make this soft sound unless it is followed by “I” or “E”.
Words like Icicle would be spelt “Isikle”.
Q
Another letter that has always bothered me is the letter “Q”. In English it doesn’t appear on it’s own and is always followed by the letter “U”. In my mind this letter has to go for my alternate alphabet. A letter that cannot appear by itself is inefficient.
The “Qu” can be replaced by “Kw” and still serve the same purpose. The extra letter is unnecessary.
X
This letter I was less sure about as some of the words do get bulky. However I came to the conclusion that X can also be replaced.
In the first place, “X” is a very uncommon letter in english. There aren’t very many words that start with “X” and the only one I can think of off the top of my head is “Xylophone” Which makes a “Z” sound.
It also can make a “k” or “ks” sound which would make words potentially longer, but since I was trying to simplify the alphabet as much as possible I decided that “X” could be replaced phonetically.
There were a few more letters or digraphs that I thought could be fixed up to remove phoenetic ambiguity but these are the three letters I thought could be replace entirely.
Here’s a list of some of rewritten words;