The

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/news/aussie-restaurateur-paul-mathis-invents-new-letter-of-the-alphabet/story-fni0bzoc-1226675974506

Just say no.

There are no other "letters" in the english language that are syllabic compounds or letter combinations.

This is a backwards step, towards pictogram and syllabic written languages like Chinese or Japanese.

[charby]

Did you know that there were different characters in our alphabet in the past?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Latin_alphabet

Then before than was Saxon runes.

Why are you trying to stop progress?

[Hawkmoon]

Our alphabet does not use symbols to signify words, it uses symbols (letters, characters) to spell words.

The man in an idiot.

[charby]

Our alphabet does not use symbols to signify words, it uses symbols (letters, characters) to spell words.

The man in an idiot.

A, a, O, & I are words.

[AZRedhawk44]

A, a, O, & I are words.

They happen to be phonetic concepts represented by a single letter.

Shall we also re-spell the following words with his new letter?

They
Theocracy
Thermopylae
Catheter
Theory
Lathe
Lithe
Brothel
and so on?

[Ron]

What's Ћ big deal?

 

[charby]

They happen to be phonetic concepts represented by a single letter.

Shall we also re-spell the following words with his new letter?

They
Theocracy
Thermopylae
Catheter
Theory
Lathe
Lithe
Brothel
and so on?

With that analysis then we should use @ for in that, so th@, c@, f@, etc.

[AZRedhawk44]

@ is no part of the alphabet.

Neither is !,'";:?/<>()*^%$#`or~.

[MillCreek]

How do we therefore explain Prince, and the glyph he used to represent his name, if not linguistic progress?

[AmbulanceDriver]

How do we therefore explain Prince, and the glyph he used to represent his name, if not linguistic progress?

He's an egotistical idiot?

[charby]

@ is no part of the alphabet.

Neither is !,'";:?/<>()*^%$#`or~.

but people use them all the time to convey words.

[AZRedhawk44]

How do we therefore explain Prince, and the glyph he used to represent his name, if not linguistic progress?

Not progress, because I can't just look at it and have a roadmap for how to pronounce it, any more than you can pronounce this:



However, if I wrote:

gatsu

Or, if I wrote:



Then the scribble is decipherable.

The first symbol being Kanji, the second set of symbols being hiragana... hiragana being at least phonetically decipherable whereas the kanji above has two radically different pronunciations depending upon context.

[Gewehr98]

What, no umlauts?

[AZRedhawk44]

but people use them all the time to convey words.

I can convey a word with this, too:



Doesn't mean that jpeg needs to be included in the alphabet.

That jpeg's embodied idea is represented by our 26 base letters of our alphabet by s-h-a-r-k.

"The" is represented by our 26 base letters of our alphabet by t-h-e.

If we ever come across a need to represent a sound that cannot be created by our subphonetic romanized script, then we can create a new letter or set of letters.

But we certainly don't need it just because someone wants to write like a stenographer.

[BryanP]

Language changes over time. If enough people agree with him in the long term then his symbol will become part of the alphabet simply through widespread usage.  If not, then it won't.

Heck, if we couldn't convince people to do something that makes sense (dumping imperial units for metric) I don't see this taking off.

[Scout26]

What, no umlauts?

Germanic discrimination !!!!


Bring on the Umlauts and ß !!!!

[Scout26]

IIRC back when COL McCormick owned the Chicago Tribune he was a big advocate of simplified spelling.

In fact if you go to the Tribune Tower today, you see sign by some of the larger elevators marked "Frate"

He was a great man.

McCormick carried on crusades against gangsters and racketeers, prohibition and prohibitionists, local, state, and national politicians, Wall Street, the East and Easterners, Democrats, the New Deal and the Fair Deal, liberal Republicans, the League of Nations, the World Court, the United Nations, British imperialism, socialism, and communism. Besides Roosevelt, his chief targets included Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson and Illinois Governor Len Small.

What's not to like?

[HankB]

This reminds me of the classic Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Ackroyd introduced the new metric alphabet - the Decibet - which had only 10 letters.

And then there's this classic:

The European Union Commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan to what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

    In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also the hard "c" will be replaced with "k." This will make English konform to German, a more proper language. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

    There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f." This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

    In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

    By the fourth year, people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v." Vuns again mor in konformans wiz German.

    During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be droped from vords kontaining "ou," and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

    After ze fifz yer, we wil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

[cambeul41]

I would like to  re-adopt the old letters ash (æ), yogh (ȝ), edh (ð), and thorn (Þ).

[Devonai]

The thorn was the first thing I thought of, too.

[charby]

I would like to  re-adopt the old letters ash (æ), yogh (ȝ), edh (ð), and thorn (Þ).

In case you are wonder what the hell are those:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm

[vaskidmark]

English has been, in the kindest possible terms, been described as a bastard child guilty of both raping and pillaging other languages.

T-h-e alternative is to copy the French, who have a purity committee to ensure the virginity of their beloved language.  They are much more rigorous about the language than they are about their daughters.  For proof, go look at their reaction to McDonalds "le Big Mac".  Far better to have the Maginot Line breached - again - than to have to accept that.  (They lost the fight.  Did anybody think they might win?)

T-h-e answer to this modest proposal will be to see if it survives.

stay safe.

[AZRedhawk44]

English has been, in the kindest possible terms, been described as a bastard child guilty of both raping and pillaging other languages.

English has nothing on Japanese.

The Japanese have a whole separate phonetic alphabet for writing foreign words that have been Japanified.  Same phonetic structure as hiragana, but different strokes on paper.

And they have no scruples, basically since 1868, of taking words from English, German, Portuguese, Spanish or other sources and using them as Japanese.  Laptop being rapputappu, for example.  Or bread being pan.  When they have perfectly good words for "lap" and "on top."  Bread, I can understand.  It just makes sense to use the correct words for foreign foods.  We call sushi by its source name.  Indian "nan" is not the same as a pita is not the same as a tortilla is not the same as bread, so each having a unique name is sensible.

But the Japanese don't introduce new phonetic characters to katakana (their foreign alphabet) for specific words.

[lee n. field]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/news/aussie-restaurateur-paul-mathis-invents-new-letter-of-the-alphabet/story-fni0bzoc-1226675974506

Just say no.

There are no other "letters" in the english language that are syllabic compounds or letter combinations.

This is a backwards step, towards pictogram and syllabic written languages like Chinese or Japanese.

Nominative, genitive, dative or accusative?  Singular or plural.  Smooth or rough breathing?  Masculine, feminine or neuter?  All affect the definite article.

Oh, yeah.  This is English, isn't it?  Where the definite article is a blunt instrument.

[geronimotwo]

while we are at it, can we remove w?  uu does the job just fine.