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    Or should I title this post as "Hooked on Phonics"?

    Tyler will be starting school soon. The context of "soon" should be read as "in about 4 and a half years". It amazes me, the things that go through a parent's mind, sometimes. I would like to propose and submit, to the educational body of our country, a "modified" alphabet. The English language and alphabet is too complicated in its current state. Here are the details of my proposal.

    The letter known as "C" shall be eliminated. The letters "K" and "S" shall fulfill its phonetic variants. For example, "cat" will become ""kat", "face" will become "fase", and "accent" will become (bekome) "aksent". The variant "ch" will be replaced with either "kh" or "jh". I suggest "jh" since it's close to the same sound, so "chalk" would become "jhalk".

    "G" will no longer hold the soft-g sound. "J" will be used instead. So, "giant" would become "jiant". "G" will retain the hard-g sound, so words like "get" or "gain" would not change.

    "Q" will be eliminated. Words like "quick" would become "kwik".

    "X" will be eliminated. Words like "exit" would become "eksit", and "xylophone" would become "zylophone" or "zylofone".

    The "PH" sound will be used by the letter "F", as in "phone becoming "fone".

    "GH" will no longer be used. "Laugh" will become "laf", and "high" would become "hie".

    Silent letters shall be eliminated. "Pneumonia" will become "neumonia", "ballet" would be "ballay", and "know" would be "noe".

    So, alltho there would be a learning kurve to the hole proposal from those uv us that grew up on the kurrent, arkiac system, give it a jhanse, and you'll kome to embrase it. If we make these jhanjes kwikly and effishently, we'll be mujh better off as a nayshun. I'm sure you will agree with my lojik, if you were to look at it objekshunably and fairly. This is an urjent matter, and I jenuinely appreshiate your time.

    Also, Brett Favre is an idiot. His last name should be pronounced either "Fahv-reh" or "Fahv-er". Pronouncing it as "Farv" makes no sense. Also, and this REALLY gets me, we need to come to a consensus on the proper way to pronounce "comfortable" (and "comfortably"). "Comfort" is sounded out as "kum-fort", yet "comfortable" is said as "kum-fter-bul" the "r" is before the "t" but we pronounce it the other way. That would be like "fort" being said as "fter". "Comfortable" should be "kum-fort-abl", or we should modify its spelling to "comfterble". I obsess about that every time I listen to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".

    We need to work on some numbers as well. 11 through 19 break the consistency of our system. 21 is "twenty-one". 45 is "forty-five". 11 should be "ten-one". 18 should be "ten-eight".

    Feel free to take most of this post with a grain of salt. Say to yourself, "That Joe, he's so craaaaazy", but I honestly do believe there are inconsistencies in our language that make no sense to me. Take the words "scene" and "scone". Why is the "c" silent in the first word, and a "kuh" sound in the second word? "High" and "laugh" come to mind as well. Silent and "f", respectively. Sure, we all learned it, our kids will learn all that, and our kids' kids will learn all that, but it's still confusing.

    And I do stand by my thoughts on numbering, "Favre", and "comfortable".

    5 comments:

    Sarah said...

    Although I don't concur on all of your above proposed changes... I do TOTALLY agree on the pronunciation situation! Comfortable... I think the problem is, we're just lazy.

    holly* said...

    ok, i'm going to laugh at you because thoughts on the english language more than likely wont matter for a good chunk of time. our tyler is "talking" and he pays absolutely no heed to the rules of the english language. thus peeba (pizza) and cheeese boog cheese (cheeseburger).

    Mike said...

    Dude, I don't want to change the language because I would then have RE-LEARN the language.

    Also, the whole deal about school starting in 4 1/2 years is more real than you know. In LA people register their babies for pre-school within the first six months. Insane!

    Joanna said...

    There's a nice Montessori school in Avilla that you could send Tyler to at 3 months of age! (See oakfarm.org)

    Anonymous said...

    Because I am a spelling nazi (State Spelling Bee finals in 1987 AND 1988), I'm going to hope that your post is tongue in cheek.

    That's tung in jheek.

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