It’s the last Thursday of the year—somehow—and as usual, I’m doing
something slightly different. This year I’m sharing the phonetic alphabet
Benjamin Franklin came up with (which you should have realized by looking at
the title of this post).
Apparently I’m the only one who finds it much easier to read and
pronounce. I was able to get the hang of it in a few seconds. It isn’t perfect,
since the letters he uses for both “th” sounds and the “sh” sound look like
other variations of h, making things kind of confusing to tell apart. I also think
it needs the “juh” sound as its own letter, while he uses the combination of Z
and the sh letter, because seriously, I’m not spelling my name with a Z. Although that might make it cooler...
Still, I like the elimination of the letter C, which is
completely useless when we have K and S. Overall, I think it’s much easier to
understand. Unfortunately, no one else agreed, though it did inspire Noah
Webster, the guy who shaped American English, to eliminate
extraneous letters from several words, and I have a hard enough time figuring
out the spelling of words like paleontology without an extra A being in there.
I am content with the English language the way it is. The proper way- with colour, for instance, instead of color as the Yanks insist on. :)
ReplyDeleteThe problem with "c" is "ch." If you get rid of "c," you just have to put something else in to cover that, so... may as well be "c"?
ReplyDeleteIt's cool to have a Z in your name. Just sayin'.
ReplyDelete