Instead of outright removing C, re-purpose it for the "ch" sound. Edit: It seems that people are misunderstanding my suggestion. What I mean is that every C that can be replaced with a K, S, or Sh will be replaced, but the C's in words with /t͡ʃ/ (the "ch" sound) will remain. Hence, "Pacific Ocean" becomes "Pësifik Oshën" (ë represents a schwa), but "church" becomes "curc". BTW, this is what Malay/Indonesian already does, except that they mostly use ⟨sy⟩ instead of ⟨sh⟩ for /ʃ/.
@@gargamellf59 dude wdym, none of these things applies to Portuguese _at all_ Edit: mainly because the letters k, w and y basicaly don't exist in our language and like half of the consonants take more than one syllable to pronounce, so hating on w because it is said with 2 (instead of the 3 used in English) syllables doesn't make any sense when f, h, j, l, m, n, r, s and y also take 2 syllables each to pronounce.
@@fulana_de_tal quando eu falo que se aplica ao português eu tô me referindo ao fato de que letras como o "w" ou o "y" são basicamente inúteis no nosso alfabeto😁(eu ia falar q o "c" eh basicamente inútil tbm mas aí eu me lembrei do "ch", mas como outro comentário já disse, o "c" podia ser modificado pra só fazer som de "ch")
@@gargamellf59 mas é q o w e o y ñ existem de fato no nosso alfabeto, eles só servem pra escrever palavras estrangeiras e nomes próprios, ent esse problema já foi "resolvido", e como o k tmb é assim, o c é a única letra q realmente faz som de k
Did you actually-er, actuall-ee forget about X? The letter that is literally just the K and S sounds slapped together? Heck, even when-er, qhen it doesn’t make the (kss) sound, like in xylophone, it steals Z’s shindig, as in (ziy-loh-fohn)! If an-ee-thing, I’d say it’s worse-er, qorse than Q! Also, just so you knoq, the reason W is called (duh-bhl-yoo) is because the (wuh) sound it makes used to just be represented qith, qell, a double-U. Two U’s. Eventuall-ee, those tqo U’s got turned into their oqn character, W. Even though, yes, it does look more like a double-V than a double-U.
I made a version of the alphabet where every letter only makes one sound, and creating a letter for a lot of sounds that consist of two letters in our alphabet like ch, th, ee, etc. I also got rid of X (as many other comments mentioned) and ended up spliting vowels into 11 different letters, intentionally leaving one sound out so the characters in the world that use this alphabet pronounce things differently. I didn't think about W at all though and just got rid of Q. Very interesting take, I like it. In the end if I remember right I ended up with a 34 letter alphabet.
I've made a veri thimple 19 letter alfabet a long time ago uish hath realli thimilar rules to iourth. De onli ting I did uath remove utheleth stuff and replathe dem uit a thound dat konthithtth of tu letterth in de alfabet. De letterth I've removed are C, J, Q, S, W, X, and Y. I've replathed dem uith THH/K/TH, DTHH, K, TH, U, KTH/Z, and I. I've altho removed de uthe of PH as F and TH as T/D.
I made an alphabet once I kept C and removed K and S (why use two letters if you can use one) Removed D (can't remember why), changed uppercase F since it looks like uppercase E, removed J (every J is now G) removed Q, and made it so if a word has a silent letter before x, it has to start with x. I added new letters too: apple, which represents dot, banana, (!) orange (?) dragon (D), chess pawn which you add at the end of every sentence, and among us (Q) The 🧑🚀uicc brown fox gumpc over the lazy 🐲og🍎 ♟️
English used to have a letter called "wynn" (1 syllable) which made a "w" sound. Why not just call "w" "wynn" instead of "q". I personally think that'd make more sense, as the name of a letter should include it's sound. Also, in some English accents "w" is sometimes a vowel too.
@@frank_calvert a vowel is a sound made with neither the mouth nor throat closing at any point. This is true of the "w" in words like "how" or "wow", in such cases, the "w" at the end is a vowel.
@@HughvanZyl well then w would be vowel in all dialects by that logic because it readily appears in universal words like "cow" as part of the diphthong /aʊ/. i personally don't think being a semivowel in a diphthong is a good enough reason to be considered a vowel
C can be used to only make the "ch-" sound like in "chance", which would be written as "canse". That's what they do in Malay, which makes it more simple and gives "C" a purpose.
@@thelordz33 I find it easier to use just 1 letter to make a sound then 2. Also there's a bunch of words that use "kh-" as a sound like "Khaki" or "Sheikh". So I'd rather not do that.
It's creepy how I've wanted to build a 4D game for a while now, and after finding your channel, I've found that you've already made a very similar video to one I previously made about the alphabet. It's like... we've been on the same wavelength for years.
I am from Ukraine, and in Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian alphabet there is a rule of one letter - one sound. The exception is "Е, Ё, Ю, Я" because these sounds can be obtained by a combination of the letters "ЙЭ, ЙО, ЙУ, ЙА", also the exception is "ъ, ь" these characters are needed to harden and soften the letters, respectively. We don't have problems like with the letter "C", and we don't combine letters for new sounds, because the alphabet of 33 letters is enough
However, that could not be used for English, since English is a far more complex language in terms of sounds. To give every sound in English an own letter would strongly increase the number (especially with the vowels).
@@beady5831 Correct. It would remove ambiguity, but at the cost of having too many damn letters for an alphabet (around 43 or so) Not to mention taking into account the many different dialects with their own pronunciations
A change I would like to see in the alphabet would be the integration of certain letters to replace sounds made with other letters that make English more confusing, such as th & e parts of the . You could replace th with þ and the ugh sound in the with ʊ . This would make the alphabet longer but would remove rules dealing with letter combos. If these changes were made , words would also be much shorter and easier to read .
1:25 well, if we remove C then that makes it more harder to make certain words like Cell and Sell for an example ( BTW I get this is just an April fools joke, but I’m just trying to be logical over here)
Just a couple very minor things I wanted to point out. The letter "C", from my understanding, isn't actually a duplicate of "S" or "K". When you look at words using "S" vs "C", you'll often find that "C" is pronounced more sharply whereas "S" is more soft. It's the reverse situation with "C" and "K" (with the addition that "C" is more commonly used as a starting character, whereas "K" is more often mid-word (that's also where the "CK" spelling comes from, I believe)). I think that, instead of removing "C" altogether, it should be kept to make the "SH" and "CH" sounds (Perhaps written as "C" and "JC" respectively.). To keep on the trend of removing letters reliance on "H" to modify sound, it might do well to remap "TH" to be written as "TT". Along these lines, I think we should replace the soft "J" sound in words such as "Rouge" with "CJ". And, while we're at it, let's replace the function of "E" modifying vowel sounds when placed at the end of words, and instead just double that vowel. The reason why "W" is so weird is because it literally is a double "U". Its sound was originally transcribed as "UU". Since it appeared so commonly, people eventually started writing it as its own character which were just two "U" merged together. It later got further simplified through time as many characters do to make writing it easier, leading us to the "W" we know today. A lot of fonts today actually still hold onto the more traditional rounded variant if you look for it. I agree with ditching it for "Q", however. I think that X could easily be thrown out as well, though, I'm a bit on the fence about it. While it can be spelled with other letters, its sound-combination appears enough that having one symbol to represent it does a good job simplifying written language. When going back to the archaic pronunciation point, X at the beginning of words isn't actually intended to be pronounced as "Z"; it just became that way because the "KS" sounded kind of similar and was hard to pronounce for some. I think that, for words starting with "X", we should just further simplify it into starting with "S" or "Z". The most important purpose of "Y" in the alphabet is to represent the "EU" sound. While, again, not a change to the alphabet itself, a bit of spelling reform to eliminate "EU" entirely would go a long way to make "Y" more worthwhile. "Europe" becomes "Yrope", "Eugene" becomes "Yugene", etc. More on the topic of spelling reform again: I think cases of "ER" and "UR" could easily just be shortened to "R" and work just fine. Where we can, of course, it would do well to just heavily simplify whichever sounds we can. I doon't nooq, just soom uf mii probublee rong oopinyins. In praktiss, qe r liiklee ovrluuking soom pritee important stuf. At tte end uf tte daaee, it's just fun tteeooree krafting. Noo qun is evr gunu ugree tuu jcaancj evreetting on aa diim, Wee'll haf tuu see hoq ttings najcrlee eevolv ovr ttu yeers, if it eeven duz ttat drastikly qittin oqr liiftiims (qijc, let's bee onist, it proboblee woon't). Summ uf ttu weerd oditees maak a lot uf wrds eeseer tuu undrstand or reed at a glanss. Ttaar is a valid rgumint foor kumpleksitee ovr simplifikacin (aalowing manee wrds tu hav moor uneek spelings, and al ttat).
1. how are s and c pronounced differently? do you mean examples like spice vs spies? 2. that is not the history of ck at all, i dont have time to explain but i encourage you to explore this on your own 3. i don't think tt is a good choice for the th sounds 4. the way you're suggesting we write sh, ch, etc, is very similar to hungarian, was this on purpose? 5. the fact you went for wanting simplification and then write the vowels the way you do seems counterproductive. you should think more about how to write vowels
W used to be called “wow” before wow was turned into w and y, also c could be used for “ch” and q can also be used like “queue” and almost always has a u next to it no matter what sound it is making. Maybe instead of removing letters you reuse them for sounds that don’t have a letter such as “sh”, “ch”, “th” and possibly a rolled r. Oh and x is used as a “z”and as an “ks”
Sounds that don’t have letters in English are ʃ (sh) ʒ (si as in “vision”) θ (th as in “thing”) ð (th as in “this”) ŋ (ng as in “sing” or n as in “think”) t͡ʃ (ch) Most of these used to have their own letters in English, like c̍ and þ (t͡ʃ and θ respectively), but for one reason or another fell away through time
I don’t know why we’d need a rolled r considering it’s not in English. Other languages that do have it would have a letter or marker for it already. The ipa for an alveolar trill (rolled r) is r, the American English r would be ɹ
@@steakfilly5199 yeah I understand the rolled r thing, but the other letters are almost entirely used in phonetics and words that are borrowed from other languages. The letters used in phonetics are considered its own language and pulls from other Latin based alphabets such as the Greek θ and η.
Without the letter c, cello becomes tshello and church becomes tshurtsh. C alone should replace the digraph "ch" and x should replace "sh". The sound in the middle of "vision" and "fusion" should be spelled "zh", and "quartz" and "question" should start with "kw." Bear in mind that this wouldn't be a change to the Latin alphabet, just an English spelling reform; plenty of other languages use the Latin alphabet too you know
What I would personally do to improve the alphabet to be more consistent and understandable: - C is replaced with K or S, depending on pronounciation. - C represents ‘ch’, and is renamed to ‘cha’. - J in ‘John’ and G in ‘gelatin’ are now a fricative version of G, G-circumflex (Ĝ), pronounced ‘jay’. - Adding Eng (Ŋ) as a velar nasal, for cases where N is followed by either K or G (velar plosives), and also replace the ‘ng’ at the end of words. - Sh in ‘shame’ becomes a fricative of S, S-caron or ‘she’ (Š) - Either renaming W to ‘wynn’, to honor the older, lost ‘wynn’ (Ƿ) - Ch in ‘loch’ becomes a rare fricative of X, X-caron or ‘xha’ (X̌) - Y in ‘yellow’ is replaced by J, as that is the symbol used in the IPA for the sound that y makes. J is renamed to ‘ye’ or ‘ya’ - Y in ‘probably’ or ‘Ypres’ becomes a full vowel representative, and is renamed to either ‘Greek I’ (as it is in most Romance languages), or ‘yp’ - S in ‘measure’ becomes a fricative of Z, Z-caron or ‘zhe’ (Ž) - Adding Thorn (Þ) as the dental fricative for both voiced (e.g. ‘the’) and voiceless (e.g. ‘think’) to replace the ‘th’ in words. P.S. I tried to be as conservative to English as I could to maintain readability, which is why I just kept with orthography instead of changing phonology or grammar.
I think the channel jan Misali has some excellent points in their videos about linguistics but especially in their video about the letter C for why lots of seemingly uncescessary letters are actually really useful in a given language
C could definitely be removed if some changes were made to other letters as well, it just looks really ugly. But the spelling reforms presented in this video are really ugly too so that has brought these completely impractical ideas to the table.
basically, just use hirigana, but then add a distinct l vs r sound. Then, you've got a 1:1 spelling of letters and sounds, and just be good about every word being written as its spelled, and you've got the best alphabet
New rules: Change C to sound like CH and rename it "chee". Add back þ (thorn) for TH. Rename W "wah" or back to "wynn". Replace all instances of PH with F and stop using FF. Make G always a hard G, and replace the soft G in words like garage with J. Make Q always sound like KW, so replace it with just K as needed, like "unique" would be respelled with a K. Many more vowels would get added with the goal of having one vowel per vowel sound. Y would always sound like the y in "yak", and just remove it when it follows a vowel unnecessarily. The whole point of all these changes is to make the alphabet phonetically consistent and expanded to cover more sounds so we need fewer diphthongs. Also we could add a letter for ZH which sounds like a soft J, and a letter for the throaty Q found in arabic languages. Alternatively, Q would be that sound and the "KW" sound would be spelled KW. Replacing all the diphthongs though might be excessive. And we'd really have to decide on lazy vowel sounds. "The" has an E that makes the UH sound, and there's countless words where we do this. So given these rules... mi nu alfŭbeht wuud spehl werdz lik þis. After ŭwil we wuud geht yust tu iht. Stihl ned nu lehterz for þŭ sohft vowlz I ahm ihmprovizeng. Spelling like that is painful now, but as our brains assimilated the new word spellings, it would become second nature to both read and spell them without thinking.
I feel like this is an oversimplification of what the alphabet could truly be. If you believe that these are the only letters with issues, I believe you are completely forgetting all of the sounds each one makes without anyone knowing. I've used a few here, but it's simple enough to see that every rule in english does not have a specific sound designed to work well. Instead of fixing the alphabet, I say we ditch it. The oversimplification of sounds bothers me and everyone else in the world and I believe we can do something greater. The alphabet is only getting shorter and shorter when it should be expanding on sounds that many of us should know. If it doesn't, it will end up just like hebrew. I believe we can solve this by simply adding more characters for every sound. Maybe even mix it up with characters from other languages like Cherokee. Adding more will solve quite a lot of issues seen in english already, a major one being word size. Funnily enough, even if hebrew has less characters than english, it is significantly smaller in word size. The downgrade to this is that the words are way more ambiguous than those seen in english. Adding more characters will fix both problems all while only adding one new problem. The problem more characters will fix is smaller reading and processing time. as seen before, cherokee is spelled with 8 characters in english while in cherokee it is only spelled in 3: tsa-la-gi(ᏣᎳᎩ). Now, I want to address that cherokee suffers from another problem not found in both english and hebrew and that is the lack of sounds. It's not all too many, however one of those sounds not used is an 'R' sound. Luckily, we can fix this by adding in another table for the 'R' sound. The entire alphabet is a mysteriously long rabbit hole the more you look into it. The logic behind every word is sub-par and can only be described as monotonous and dangerously stupid. Though the alphabet has its flaws, anything made with it brings entirely new flaws. There are some words in the english, latin and greek which have the same exact spelling and sound and many which have the same spelling, different meaning and drastically different meaning. This is another problem with hebrew, because there are so little letters, words have to be given context in order to understand them. To fix this, in the new language every one of those words with the same spelling will be erased due to the different pronunciation and others with the same will be given new pronunciation.
@@eddie-roo I have outlined what was wrong with it in my comment, but if you want a tldr: the latin alphabet is so small that it needs to combine letters to make more sounds. Because of the limitation, and because of the ambiguity of what letters combine to make which sounds, any word could mean anything. Although english homophones are an awful design, they only exist because of the ambiguity of the combinations. English is not the first to have this problem, hebrew has every problem english does but with less letters. The aleph-bet(hebrew alphabet) has only 24 letters and literally any word could mean anything from sock drawer to booklet. The only way it can be read is through context. Without context the sentence could mean something different entirely. Same goes for english, without context the phrase "removes polish using chemicals" could mean either A: I remove nail polish or B: I remove polish using chemicals.
There are a couple of problems The letter x in general is just a confusing shishow Removing c adds quite a few complications, especially about what to do with the ch sound
One thing I want to say about the Y and W letters, the y sound in yes is phonetically made by the E sound, what I mean is that saying something like, ee or the long e vowel next to another vowel exept u, using i to represent the long e vowel saying io fast enough will cause the brain to create a bridge between vowels, the y sound like in yes, eventually the e is dropped altogether for speed of pronunciation and it becomes yo. Same with W except this time it's with U, take the word quick for example, the ui is said fast enough so the u morphs into the w sound just like the y, in fact if you pay attention you can hear it being said koowick.
My changes to the alphabet: 1. Instead of eliminating c, it is repurposed for the "ch" sound 2. W is removed, its function is taken over by u when it comes before a vowel (or vouel) 3. The same thing happens with y and i (yes becomes ies) 4. Q is eliminated and the kw sound becomes ku, since in all qu instances a vowel immediately succeeds it 5. X is now always used for the ks sound, it no longer steals z's from words like zilofone 6. Ph is replaced with f 7. The letter thorn (Þþ) is added for þe "th" sound 8. Þe letter eng (Ŋŋ) is added for the "ng" sound 9. Can somebody *please* fix the "ough" problem? 10. J now makes the "zh" sound instead of the "dzh" sound, to get the og j sound you need to stick a d in front of it
No such thing as zilofone. It's xylophone. No we not gonna change X to Z, you must be crazy. You want english to look like a mess? Imagine spelling xylophone with an Z, it doesn't look good. Imagine spelling exit as egzit, it looks awful so X has its purpose while Z doesn't
I really like drinking qater (water). That is very qeird (weird). Qhat (what) is going on? Removing W makes loads of words different and is a terrible decision whereas removing Q would be a lot better because the kwuh noise can be made with KW and the K sound can be made with K.
The main consequence of changing any letters will be the need to reprogram computers. Eliminating the letter C for example would remove the Binary number 1000011 and that would cause huge problems.
My favorite part is how he uses short-handing to improve our alphabet but then gets rid of Y; a shorthanded way to wright two Es, and replaces it with two Es. It’s essentially the same thing but one takes longer to write, and imagine all the time we’d save if we didn’t
Fun fact: when we first made the dou-ble-U it actually looked like a double "U" but then it started to look like a "V" because uhhhhh people started to write it faster so it looked like a "V" and the reason why we still call it a dou-ble-"U" is traditional Also that people write it faster idk if it's correct or not sorry :P
To properly fix the alphabet, just look up this little thing called the international phonetic alphabet. It leaves absolutely no room for interpretation of how something should sound. It literally spells it out for you.
Dialects exist, people with speech disorders as well. Just those two things would make reading and writing harder. IPA is also quite big, and even if you're just learning symbols for one language, that's still way more symbols than just using an alphabet.
@@gamefoun The IPA has symbols for every dialect of pretty much all common languages. Just about every sound the mouth can make, there is exactly one specific symbol for it. That is why it's called the "International" Phonetic Alphabet. They even have characters for clicks. The only thing I'm not sure that it defines is tonation. Seeing as that is a key aspect in the language for about half of the population of the planet, I'll bet it does, or is at least planned. Also, it probably doesn't have anything for that one weird whistling language either, but it probably will eventually. I never said it was a simple alphabet. They video didn't even try to simply the alphabet, just make it more sensible. Which on turn, does end up simplifying things. And you can not get more sensible then the IPA. Further, I would argue that the IPA would be easier to understand for people with speech defects or the mentally impaired. Spelling would not really be an issue, because you don't have to guess. How many vowels does English have? Most would say 5 or sometimes 6. I mean, we only have 5 or sometimes 6 characters to represent vowels. Yet in reality, English has around 20 vowels. The IPA, they have one symbol for each of these distinct sounds. That seems much easier to understand to me, opposed to guessing which one of the six in the alphabet I'm supposed to use.
@@TheTonyMcD if you're used to saying words in one way, you'd probably write them down like that. While it can be written down, you would have like 15 ways to write down one word, possibly with characters you may not recognize. Having a unified (or at least mostly unified) dictionary is way easier. You could write down all the words in one way with IPA as well, but that would defeat the purpose, since a lot of people say these words differently. A better solution, at least for English, would be to have more consistent rules.
@@gamefoun you literally can not have a more consistent rule set than the IPA. People say things differently all the time, and with the IPA, they can write them down exactly how they say them. There is no room for interpretation.
@@gamefoun you can have the exact same dictionary we have today, using the most common pronunciations in IPA, and it wouldn't change absolutely nothing. Well, except people unfamiliar with a certain word would instantly know how to pronounce it. And about characters you may not recognize, that is just a different way of teaching language to solve that. Instead of teaching thousands and thousands of weird rule sets that only apply to some words and not to others, and all kinds of weird spelling quirks, just reach about sixty or so IPA symbols. That would cover essentially all every day words.
6:36 The reason why the letter Y is sometimes a vowel is because it can sometimes sound like the letter E, like in rub(Y). Buy sometimes, it can sound like it's self, like in (Y)ell.
Liked the video! I kouple things I qould add... 1. X kan be adekwatelee represented by "ks" or okasionallee "zz" as in "zilophone" 2. Instead of using "th" and "sh" to kreate neq sounds, qe kan use the leftover letters: Bring bak C to make the "ch" as in "cokolate cips" or "cange the cannel" X kan make xe "th" sound as in "xeokrasee" or "exanol" W (now pronounsed something normal like "wee") kan make xe "sh" sound as in "wadoq" or "wennanigans" Actuallee W qould go bak to being "w" and Q qould fill xis role as in "qadow" or "qennanigans" Xat looks a little niser 3. J is used for all soft "g" as in "revenje" or "jender". G still used for hard "G" Now every letter is used for eksactlee one sound
We can remove X and just replace it with “KS” to make the same sound. We could also either remove J entirely (because G already makes its sound), or to ease up confusion, take away G’s J sounds in words like “Giraffe”
@@RiotBode in Italian we have this rule where if the G is followed by an I or an E than the sound is soft, (Giovanni is pronounced "Joe-Vanni" for example). So doing that would instantly fix the problem
Pronouncing q as /w/ would be strange, since all the letters similar to q (p, b, d) represent plosives/stops. [q] is a plosive/stop in the IPA as well, though it‘s not used in English.
If I were to repair the alphabet, I would approach it differently. The English language used to have a few more letters. For example, that backward f did the th sound. For me, the C would survive the purge, because it is similarly used in other languages. In German, it is used for the sch sound, a richer sh sound, and used in a ch sound, the more delicate sh sound, which depending on the word can work as a delicate k sound. In combination with an actual k, it transforms the k sound into a harder-sounding k sound. (probably the origin of the German language sounding so strong to anyone else even when it is not) Also, the Y isn't a dunce, in German, the Y sound can be interpreted as an ee sound, but also a J or an Ü. The only letters that could potentially not survive are the Ä, Ö, and Ü, since they can be written without the dots as well, like Ae, Oe, and Ue. (btw, the English A sounds like the German Ae) Currently, there's a purge happening with the ß letter, at first it was given size, so it can be differentiated of whether it is written in capital, but now it is simply going away and replaced by ss. So in the future Fußball (soccer) could appear as Fussball, and Schnellstraße (highway) could appear as Schnellstrasse. I believe this change was thrown in motion by Minecraft, it used to not be able to display the ß letter, and any resource pack available that changes the font would display ß as ♂. All in all, I would give the A, E, I, O, and U letters their actual pronunciation, because I don't see the use of making the U sound like a much clearer A in certain situations that would reach the German A sound, I should be renamed to the ee sound, and U becomes a much deeper oo sound, so it doesn't sound like I'm addressing someone when I speak it. For me, the V wouldn't survive the purge, as it is merely a copy of the F sound, and in many situations a W sound for no good reason. In German, you would be a dunce if you were to write bird with an F. (Vogel -> Fogel)
If I remember correctly, the reason why it's called "double-u" was because the printing press, before it had the W, they used two u's together (uu) in whatever they were making that required a "wuh" sound.
The 'double-u' thing is probably only for English speakers, we just call the letter 'wee' like how you say the letter W inside a word like 'wee-ird' (weird)
In portuguese we call it dabliu, and it's even more worthless since all it does is make the "Vee" sound, and I don't think any original portuguese word uses it. I'd think it's similar in spanish but I don't know
I strongly disagree about the letters c and w. There are sounds in English that could use letters of their own. I think c should be repurposed for the ch sound. W should still have the w sound. There is this guy who has the idea for repurposing Q as a vowel. What do you think?
Ch is mostly pronounched like g or tj. So definitifly replacable. W however is not as it has its own sound and q always confused me so i would kill q. This Guy Just has a unjustified grudge against w for no reason. Also w is only pronounched double u in english, in my language it's Just w and that's a mistake on english' part not w.
My friend and I pretty much came up with this exact system in high school, only we called it the "Enhansed Letter Konfyguratyon", or ELK. With ours we managed to reduce the Alphabet to 20 letters, with basic substitution as follows: -i/I was removed as it could essentially be replaced with a Y, as it sometimes was in older English. In your video you suggest removing Y and replacing with a double-E, though this could lead to problems where words start with a Y, such as Yes (eees?), or words that use a Y in place of vowels. -Just like you've suggested we also proposed that C is pointless as K or S can always work in its place. Except for a CH sound, which we thought could use a Kh instead. -Same again with Q, it can just be replaced with K at any point. At the end of a word, just Ke. Unike (unique), Kualify (Qualify). The word Queue has always infuriated me, as it's just Q. I suppose with this system, Kue would work fine. -Also W yeah, can just use a single U most of the time and pronunciation isn't ruined. Uork, Ueekend, Uaiter -X is such a niche letter that it can either be replaced with 'EKS', or when at the beginning of a word, maybe a Ts (eg Tsylophone). -We then suggested Z be removed, again as it's relatively uncommon. I think we also suggested that a Ts be used like Tsunami, though an odd letter combo like Sj could work too. Our main goal of reducing the alphabet to 20 letters was so that it would fit in a grid much nicer. Granted just down to 25 would be fine working in a square grid but 20 has more factors so it seemed like a good idea. Thys uas a great vydeo anyuay, Y'm very glad to see other people realysyng hou yneffysyent the Alphabet can be. Here's some pangrams to prove yt: A Kwyk broun foks jumps over the lajsy dog. Sphynks of blak kuartsj, judge my vou. The fyve boksyng uysjards jump kuykly. (After that last one I realise it may not be as clever as I thought)
>We then suggested Z be removed You lost me right there 0/10 This version of the alphabet sucks. Also, if you think that z and ts are pronounced the same, you must've never actually heard either one used.
@@thelordz33 the T is sort of silent. I simply thought that Z is rare enough a letter that it might as well be substituted with a simple paired combo. Again I don't think this would ever be practical, it was just something fun i came up with over a decade ago.
@@Shep-1701lmao X is rare as well so your point is weak. Just cuz a letter is uncommon doesn't mean it's useless. If english were to remove redundant letters it will be C,X and Q. Even tho C and X is more common than Z it is easier to remove them than Z. Also, I see that you use british english which is why you said what you said but in American English some of those words you spell with a S will turn into a Z.
This is suc a kool video! I’ve alqaees qanted to make a revised alphabet and improve the English language so evereebodee kan have an easier time learning the English language. Thank you for making this video! Qill definitelee subskribe after this.
Truth is that languages and alphabets are always in motion, always changing. Every nation absorbs useful sounds and words from neighbours. Just watch "the 100" and look how can simplified english/common tongue sound or be written. e.g from the beginings, Tree Crew - Trikru; some nations originally used different alphabets, more designed for sounds they make, but later they changed alphabets for more common and needed to add some symbols etc
I would assign “C” to the “ch” sound exclusively and take a note from China by assigning “X” to the “sh” sounds. I would also add “the” and “thet” to represent the soft and hard “th” sounds respectfully. “Wynn” can reclaim the “w” sound. “Y” should only ever be used as a consonant and “G” can never sound like a “J.” I can’t type my fonts for “the” and “thet” but I would also begin spelling “the” with just that one character. Basically, it’s an “H” with a dash mark thru (yep, I’m killing “ough”) the upper left line. “Thet’s” dash is at the top while “the’s” dash is halfway between the top and the center line. Same placement for lower case, assuming the lower case survives at all. Lastly, we should standardize the use of accents to clarify which version of a vowel is being used. I’m either way on “Ń.” It’s interesting but not necessary when you can add a “Y” after it to achieve the same effect. Some consonants an use accents that I’ve never seen used before to give it that little extra zsoozs, including the Eastern European “K,” or that “Zsa Zsa Gabor” “Z” accent. And something for that rolling “R.”
I've had this idea for a couple years about fricatives. We use "th" for thorn, "ch" for chi, "ph" for f, and "sh" for esh. If you get rid of c, like any sane person would, then you use "kh" instead and then we can see that to spell a fricative you just need the respective consonant and add an "h" to it. We can take this further and apply it across the board for ALL fricatives, bh for v, dh for eth, zh for ezh, and gh for j, which gets rid of two more letters and standardizes every fricative and plosive at once. The only down side is this removes the need for thorn, my favorite letter, but... it's clearly the easier and more likely solution.
1) that's just confusing 2) ch is not a fricative, it is an affricate, and would thus break the pattern 3) it'd probably a better idea to reform english spelling than the alphabet since it's fine as it is
What does "the respective consonant" even mean here? F is labiodental, not bilabial like P Sh is post-alveolar, not alveolar like s V is labiodental, not bilabial like B Zh is post-alveolar, not alveolar like z Eth is dental while d is alveolar for most people, same problem with thorn and t J is also an affricate, not a fricative (under this system, gh would imply /ɣ/, a sound that does not exist in English) Also, S and Z are fricatives. This system does not standardize them, it makes it seem like they are plosives when they are not. Overall, this is really inconsistent, it doesn't tell you what the respective consonant for a fricative is, and has other glaring issues.
I don't think we need to remove W- just give it a different name, like "wuh". Then we can remove Q and instead use k or kw in its place. I also think that extra letters should be added for the two versions of 'th', as well as 'sh' and 'ch'. Also, each vowel should stick to one sound, and since there are only 5 vowels and a lot of sounds they make, we probably need to add extra letters for those as well. Maybe we should just write using the phonetic alphabet
If we're abandoning trying to keep things simple, well, then you realize that the name of the letter Y does not contain its sound, but it does contain the W sound. Therefore, we could call the letter W "why" and call Y "yee" or something similar.
4:10 in german the letter w is said same as something like "we" but to avoid Confusion with v v is Pronounced as "fau" So w does not have this long name in this language at all pretty gud.
The reason W is named like that is because in the Latin alphabet, V was actually U, but if you wanted it to make the "wuh" sound, you had to put two of them next to eachother, like this. (VV). Doing that was a little tiresome though, so people started to draw them joined together, literally being a double u.(Remember, V was U.)
I think a lot of people, myself included, have though of various optimizations to the alphabet, bit its kind of just a symptom really. Fixing anything is necessarily going to lead to new spellings for words. Under your system, crow would be kro, etc. Fixing words to remove silent letters, making everything properly phonetic (looking at you, bologna), is the next logical step. English is such a patchwork Frankenstein language, which is a major problem, to be sure. But fixing the alphabet and the spelling quirks, while probably good to learn, removes the language's one strength: You can look at a word you've never seen and infer it's meaning. Because it pulls from so many older languages and uses such eclectic rules, it has some leagacy features, if you will, baked in. What makes it tough to learn is necessarily tied to it's strength. If you wanted an easier language to read, write, and spell, we could invent one from the ground up (If I'm not mistaken isn't this the point of Korean? Solresol is also fascinating in this regard), and I'm sure we could land on something much better that a "fixed" English. In my opinion, while ease of use is a factor in a language, it's primary job is to convey meaning, and that you can infer meaning of words you've yet to learn based on context and similarity is something a messy patchwork language is going to do better than a streamlined, bespoke language. I may be wrong on that, and i guess I'd like to be. I imagine if a truly better language from all aspects were possible, the global efficiency increase would be phenomenal. But implementing it would be herculean. I'm with you on W being three syllables. Why don't we just call it "Wah" or "Woo" though?
for qu together, in french there's a rule where q always has to be followed with u (except in cinq for some reason) and both "unique" and "critique" are taken from french so of course it creates inconsistencies.. actually I'd be willing to bet that like 90% of inconsistencies in english are caused by taking words straight out of other languages
True, all the problems in English have to do with history, that's how languages work. No one sat down one day and said "You know what would be cool? If the letter A made 6 different sounds!"
WAIT! C HAS A PURPOSE!!! It does have a unique sound, “CH,” which is too common to get rid of. I suggest making “CH” require only “C,” and potentially renaming it “CHEE” As a reply to the _public,_ X could be repurposed in one of two ways, I think. Option 1 is to use it as a replacement for thorn. While this would shorten a few words, I believe this to be the less acceptable solution, as it would make “SH” look awkward. The second option is to use it as an indication of silent _consonants_ (not vowels because, while “E” is silent way too much, it has a valid reason) My personal suggestion, though, is to delegate it to a “Silent GH” replacement (sorry X), and replace the other GH sounds with whatever they sound like (except for “GHost,” ghost makes sense and can stay spelt like that.) This would absolutely destroy the infamous “T•••GH” words, all because of a brave sacrifice from X Example of the “C” cange: The idea that anyone kan katc a ball, I find to be redikulous. Egzample of “X”s sakrifise: althoux it was touf, “X” finally solved our problem thourouxly albeit throux violence.
6:47 I think there's some sort of a compromise with "Y": when the word starts with Y, it's pronounced like J (except with the pokemon Yveltal, where it's like "Evil-tal") and is therefore treated like a consonant. But when it's literally anywhere else in the word, it's pronounced like I or E, making it a vowel.🤔
You no there's a slight difference between, the letters K and C. Now they might sound the same, but depending on your accent it can make a whole lot of different sounds. But trust me when I say if we got rid of the letter C, would confuse me.
I would say: -C makes the “Ch” sound -Q doesn’t exist -Z makes the “Sh” sound because Z and S sound the same let’s be honest -New letter makes the “Th” sound -All Ph’s are replaced with F’s -Make words like Tough more normal (Tuff, tho, etc.) -All of the above will have their necessary changes in words (K’s replace previous C’s and Q’s in some places and with a W in others, etc.) And there is your new alphabet.
I would take g's one pronunciation that is already handled by j (would finally make the pronunciation of gif clear) and also smite X cause we have ks. Maybe just give it the sh sound. The Ch sound could then be tx
4:49 The reason why that is because of the Romans. They used V for both itself AND U. At around 1000 AD, they decided to add a new letter. That's right, W. It sounds like a "Double U" but looks like a "Double V" because at that time, U is the same as V.
As a both musical and multilingual person familiar with many languages, several properly and many just on the surface level (also cultures), this problem becomes all the more apparent when your realize just how restricted the average individual is in the sounds that they can make and how many words and ideas, as well as communication methods they're missing out on. Many letters and things either don't make sense because things changed, or didn't make much sense to begin with, while many actually useful things are missing entirely. Like say the clusterfuck that is Japanese that has TWO letter systems (hiragana and katakana), each with about 50 letters for a total of 100~ and one 'symbol system' that works on an entirely different basis (associative) and has 5000-100000 different symbols the meaning of which most don't even know, with all three systems used on a daily basis, often together, and still unable to pronounce foreign words properly lacking many even common sounds. Before it made sense because we where limited by paper and physical restrictions, tradition, lack of research and knowledge, but i think today we need a new international language with more letters and two letter combinations to cover the vast array of sounds made in all languages which will make all writing and reading in it unicode, always knowing exactly how to pronounce and read what you're reading and how to write it, and will also stretch the musical capacity of people around the globe that are currently locked only to their region's sounds and pronunciations.
There is an alphabet for displaying every single sound in every language, it's called the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a conlanger, it is my best friend and I think you should meet him someday.
@@Mrs._Fenc its a half baked, bad looking Euro centered language that still lacks way too many sounds, has too many combinations and stupid writing nuances. It's also non unicode and funky to write, being all over the place. Whistling, clicking, breathe-in, whispering, purring, singing nuances, nieche sounds and things some languages do, sounds that are possible but no one actually uses... It just leaves too much out and too many limits.
@@mkzhero The IPA only has letters for sounds that exist in languages. Also, the IPA isn't a language, it's an alphabet. There's a big difference between those two.
@@Mrs._Fenc yes yes, sorry for not paying attention. Still, again, it lacks way too many things, sounds, and is way too raw and messy (for example it's a pain to read and write despite being eurocentric, half of it looking like some hyrogliphs rather than letters). And we'll, it's not surprising either considering it was made by the Brits even before 1900, they loved messy systems (old monetary system, imperial measurement system, etc).
W is called “double u” because it used to be and sometimes still is written as 2 fused U’s. Also, the W makes the “oo” sound associated with U and the “uh” sound also associated with U. Double, U, W. The sound is also usually pronounced fast, so the “uh” sound is not very noticeable.
X sounding like Z needs to be addressed
EGGS
Xylophone, Xenoblade, Xerneas.
Exactly
Yep
Like if i say xigmud
It is pronounced zigmud
“X” is alot cooler than “Z”, so we should remove “Z” and make “X” have both the “Ks” sound AND “Z” sound.
Instead of outright removing C, re-purpose it for the "ch" sound.
Edit: It seems that people are misunderstanding my suggestion. What I mean is that every C that can be replaced with a K, S, or Sh will be replaced, but the C's in words with /t͡ʃ/ (the "ch" sound) will remain. Hence, "Pacific Ocean" becomes "Pësifik Oshën" (ë represents a schwa), but "church" becomes "curc". BTW, this is what Malay/Indonesian already does, except that they mostly use ⟨sy⟩ instead of ⟨sh⟩ for /ʃ/.
That is how I fixed the alphabet, and i used /Ç/ instead of /C/.
Here is my alphabet; /A, B, Ç, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, KW, R, S, T, U, V, W, KS, Y, Z/ Silent letters are banned and W is "DOUBLE U".
@@alphabetfanaticgeo KW and KS aren't letters
@@killianobrien2007 they represent Q and X
@@dogeball2628 yes, but they wouldn't be part of an alphabet
The letter animations are so freaking good. Especially X's in the ending.
At 7:07 I love how X is shaking, because things happened to the two letters around him loves the attention to detail
AND they say "ks" which makes no sense, however i'd go with it being more similar to chi and making a ch sound
This is totally something I'd have come up with if I were a monolingual English speaking child who just learned the alphabet.
i mean, the things he said do apply to other languages, like portuguese, but yeah youre right.
@@gargamellf59 dude wdym, none of these things applies to Portuguese _at all_
Edit: mainly because the letters k, w and y basicaly don't exist in our language and like half of the consonants take more than one syllable to pronounce, so hating on w because it is said with 2 (instead of the 3 used in English) syllables doesn't make any sense when f, h, j, l, m, n, r, s and y also take 2 syllables each to pronounce.
@@fulana_de_tal quando eu falo que se aplica ao português eu tô me referindo ao fato de que letras como o "w" ou o "y" são basicamente inúteis no nosso alfabeto😁(eu ia falar q o "c" eh basicamente inútil tbm mas aí eu me lembrei do "ch", mas como outro comentário já disse, o "c" podia ser modificado pra só fazer som de "ch")
@@gargamellf59 mas é q o w e o y ñ existem de fato no nosso alfabeto, eles só servem pra escrever palavras estrangeiras e nomes próprios, ent esse problema já foi "resolvido", e como o k tmb é assim, o c é a única letra q realmente faz som de k
@@fulana_de_tal puts verdade né, mas eu ainda acho que umas partes desse vídeo são aplicáveis ao português 😀
Did you actually-er, actuall-ee forget about X? The letter that is literally just the K and S sounds slapped together? Heck, even when-er, qhen it doesn’t make the (kss) sound, like in xylophone, it steals Z’s shindig, as in (ziy-loh-fohn)! If an-ee-thing, I’d say it’s worse-er, qorse than Q!
Also, just so you knoq, the reason W is called (duh-bhl-yoo) is because the (wuh) sound it makes used to just be represented qith, qell, a double-U. Two U’s. Eventuall-ee, those tqo U’s got turned into their oqn character, W. Even though, yes, it does look more like a double-V than a double-U.
You just said "Actuallee" instead of "Aktuallee".
how to write w in idek english:
uu
example:
lauuiere
idek
isn't the first syllable of xylophone gzy?
@@tokenslol no, it's pronounced z/uy/la/foan
@@GaamerGuyys i have been lied to my whole life
I made a version of the alphabet where every letter only makes one sound, and creating a letter for a lot of sounds that consist of two letters in our alphabet like ch, th, ee, etc.
I also got rid of X (as many other comments mentioned) and ended up spliting vowels into 11 different letters, intentionally leaving one sound out so the characters in the world that use this alphabet pronounce things differently.
I didn't think about W at all though and just got rid of Q. Very interesting take, I like it. In the end if I remember right I ended up with a 34 letter alphabet.
I've made a veri thimple 19 letter alfabet a long time ago uish hath realli thimilar rules to iourth. De onli ting I did uath remove utheleth stuff and replathe dem uit a thound dat konthithtth of tu letterth in de alfabet. De letterth I've removed are C, J, Q, S, W, X, and Y. I've replathed dem uith THH/K/TH, DTHH, K, TH, U, KTH/Z, and I. I've altho removed de uthe of PH as F and TH as T/D.
I made an alphabet once
I kept C and removed K and S (why use two letters if you can use one) Removed D (can't remember why), changed uppercase F since it looks like uppercase E, removed J (every J is now G) removed Q, and made it so if a word has a silent letter before x, it has to start with x. I added new letters too: apple, which represents dot, banana, (!) orange (?) dragon (D), chess pawn which you add at the end of every sentence, and among us (Q)
The 🧑🚀uicc brown fox gumpc over the lazy 🐲og🍎 ♟️
The video fails to mention that this is only a problem with the english language. Turkish works exactly like that. And so do many other languages.
But what were those letters?
I repurposed X for the SH sound, CH is TX
6:28 the DRIPPPPP club be like:
also i subbed to this guy I LOVE THESE ALPHABET VIDEOS
English used to have a letter called "wynn" (1 syllable) which made a "w" sound. Why not just call "w" "wynn" instead of "q". I personally think that'd make more sense, as the name of a letter should include it's sound. Also, in some English accents "w" is sometimes a vowel too.
Hmm. that's really interesting!
And assuming that it's also true, that would be an amazing and clean solution!
Petition to change 'W's name to wynn
w-here
how can w be a vowel in some accents? do you mean like in welsh? because that isnt english
@@frank_calvert a vowel is a sound made with neither the mouth nor throat closing at any point. This is true of the "w" in words like "how" or "wow", in such cases, the "w" at the end is a vowel.
@@HughvanZyl well then w would be vowel in all dialects by that logic because it readily appears in universal words like "cow" as part of the diphthong /aʊ/. i personally don't think being a semivowel in a diphthong is a good enough reason to be considered a vowel
C can be used to only make the "ch-" sound like in "chance", which would be written as "canse". That's what they do in Malay, which makes it more simple and gives "C" a purpose.
Just replace "ch-" with "kh-"
@@thelordz33 I find it easier to use just 1 letter to make a sound then 2. Also there's a bunch of words that use "kh-" as a sound like "Khaki" or "Sheikh". So I'd rather not do that.
In my language we use č as the ch sound
Canse
Just use letter "Č" and your problem is solved.
My guy turned alphabet lore into literal alphabet lore
Lol
It's creepy how I've wanted to build a 4D game for a while now, and after finding your channel, I've found that you've already made a very similar video to one I previously made about the alphabet. It's like... we've been on the same wavelength for years.
What if author of this channel is your evil doppelgänger
I mean the evil one never thinks they're evil. It could be either of us.
He's secretly your long lost twin
@@TraeKryzer It could be you, it could be me, it could even be- (dies)
@a_potatoboi78 Ü mën säm wävlenx
I am from Ukraine, and in Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian alphabet there is a rule of one letter - one sound. The exception is "Е, Ё, Ю, Я" because these sounds can be obtained by a combination of the letters "ЙЭ, ЙО, ЙУ, ЙА", also the exception is "ъ, ь" these characters are needed to harden and soften the letters, respectively. We don't have problems like with the letter "C", and we don't combine letters for new sounds, because the alphabet of 33 letters is enough
However, that could not be used for English, since English is a far more complex language in terms of sounds. To give every sound in English an own letter would strongly increase the number (especially with the vowels).
@@beady5831 Correct. It would remove ambiguity, but at the cost of having too many damn letters for an alphabet (around 43 or so) Not to mention taking into account the many different dialects with their own pronunciations
bro how dare you do us bulgarians dirty like that
Also we have "ц" what doing only "ts" part of letter "c"
@@AndreiZard no no no "ц" is like the the older asian brother of "с"
"ц" = ts
"с" = hard s
A change I would like to see in the alphabet would be the integration of certain letters to replace sounds made with other letters that make English more confusing, such as th & e parts of the . You could replace th with þ and the ugh sound in the with ʊ . This would make the alphabet longer but would remove rules dealing with letter combos. If these changes were made , words would also be much shorter and easier to read .
1:25 well, if we remove C then that makes it more harder to make certain words like Cell and Sell for an example ( BTW I get this is just an April fools joke, but I’m just trying to be logical over here)
Just a couple very minor things I wanted to point out.
The letter "C", from my understanding, isn't actually a duplicate of "S" or "K". When you look at words using "S" vs "C", you'll often find that "C" is pronounced more sharply whereas "S" is more soft. It's the reverse situation with "C" and "K" (with the addition that "C" is more commonly used as a starting character, whereas "K" is more often mid-word (that's also where the "CK" spelling comes from, I believe)).
I think that, instead of removing "C" altogether, it should be kept to make the "SH" and "CH" sounds (Perhaps written as "C" and "JC" respectively.). To keep on the trend of removing letters reliance on "H" to modify sound, it might do well to remap "TH" to be written as "TT".
Along these lines, I think we should replace the soft "J" sound in words such as "Rouge" with "CJ". And, while we're at it, let's replace the function of "E" modifying vowel sounds when placed at the end of words, and instead just double that vowel.
The reason why "W" is so weird is because it literally is a double "U". Its sound was originally transcribed as "UU". Since it appeared so commonly, people eventually started writing it as its own character which were just two "U" merged together. It later got further simplified through time as many characters do to make writing it easier, leading us to the "W" we know today. A lot of fonts today actually still hold onto the more traditional rounded variant if you look for it. I agree with ditching it for "Q", however.
I think that X could easily be thrown out as well, though, I'm a bit on the fence about it. While it can be spelled with other letters, its sound-combination appears enough that having one symbol to represent it does a good job simplifying written language. When going back to the archaic pronunciation point, X at the beginning of words isn't actually intended to be pronounced as "Z"; it just became that way because the "KS" sounded kind of similar and was hard to pronounce for some. I think that, for words starting with "X", we should just further simplify it into starting with "S" or "Z".
The most important purpose of "Y" in the alphabet is to represent the "EU" sound. While, again, not a change to the alphabet itself, a bit of spelling reform to eliminate "EU" entirely would go a long way to make "Y" more worthwhile. "Europe" becomes "Yrope", "Eugene" becomes "Yugene", etc.
More on the topic of spelling reform again: I think cases of "ER" and "UR" could easily just be shortened to "R" and work just fine.
Where we can, of course, it would do well to just heavily simplify whichever sounds we can.
I doon't nooq, just soom uf mii probublee rong oopinyins. In praktiss, qe r liiklee ovrluuking soom pritee important stuf. At tte end uf tte daaee, it's just fun tteeooree krafting. Noo qun is evr gunu ugree tuu jcaancj evreetting on aa diim, Wee'll haf tuu see hoq ttings najcrlee eevolv ovr ttu yeers, if it eeven duz ttat drastikly qittin oqr liiftiims (qijc, let's bee onist, it proboblee woon't).
Summ uf ttu weerd oditees maak a lot uf wrds eeseer tuu undrstand or reed at a glanss. Ttaar is a valid rgumint foor kumpleksitee ovr simplifikacin (aalowing manee wrds tu hav moor uneek spelings, and al ttat).
i think we should kick out any w sound whatsoever and ust write it as uu
City and sitting have the exact same "s" sound
@@alextheumbreon1363 It really depends on the region you live in. We pronounce them distinctly different where I live.
@@KidPrarchord95 Then we're both right.
1. how are s and c pronounced differently? do you mean examples like spice vs spies?
2. that is not the history of ck at all, i dont have time to explain but i encourage you to explore this on your own
3. i don't think tt is a good choice for the th sounds
4. the way you're suggesting we write sh, ch, etc, is very similar to hungarian, was this on purpose?
5. the fact you went for wanting simplification and then write the vowels the way you do seems counterproductive. you should think more about how to write vowels
W used to be called “wow” before wow was turned into w and y, also c could be used for “ch” and q can also be used like “queue” and almost always has a u next to it no matter what sound it is making. Maybe instead of removing letters you reuse them for sounds that don’t have a letter such as “sh”, “ch”, “th” and possibly a rolled r. Oh and x is used as a “z”and as an “ks”
Don't forget about "zh", or rather, the fabled ezh (ʒ).
@@SmashPortal yes
Sounds that don’t have letters in English are
ʃ (sh)
ʒ (si as in “vision”)
θ (th as in “thing”)
ð (th as in “this”)
ŋ (ng as in “sing” or n as in “think”)
t͡ʃ (ch)
Most of these used to have their own letters in English, like c̍ and þ (t͡ʃ and θ respectively), but for one reason or another fell away through time
I don’t know why we’d need a rolled r considering it’s not in English. Other languages that do have it would have a letter or marker for it already. The ipa for an alveolar trill (rolled r) is r, the American English r would be ɹ
@@steakfilly5199 yeah I understand the rolled r thing, but the other letters are almost entirely used in phonetics and words that are borrowed from other languages. The letters used in phonetics are considered its own language and pulls from other Latin based alphabets such as the Greek θ and η.
I like the way that C is still dead at 2:31
The ancient version of alphabet lore
In a few European languages, "W" is actually said as "Double-V"
Spanish is one of them
French as well
Czech as well
@@Ankibank2000 this is from its origin of being called the greek "i" (i-greek) iirc
@@Rockpablosky wdym, i speak Spanish and never have i heard someone say "doble v"
0:01 I like that every letter is doing a funny pose or dance but X is just like:🧍♂️
And C too
But now he's dead
And in 7:04 you can see X is scared
S also
And R too
and p and e
man i love this channel and video, speaks pure facts that seriously need to be addressed
Without the letter c, cello becomes tshello and church becomes tshurtsh. C alone should replace the digraph "ch" and x should replace "sh". The sound in the middle of "vision" and "fusion" should be spelled "zh", and "quartz" and "question" should start with "kw." Bear in mind that this wouldn't be a change to the Latin alphabet, just an English spelling reform; plenty of other languages use the Latin alphabet too you know
Sigma should replace SH not X
@@the_mariocrafter You want us to use a greek letter alongside latin script? Does your keyboard happen to have Σ on it?
What I would personally do to improve the alphabet to be more consistent and understandable:
- C is replaced with K or S, depending on pronounciation.
- C represents ‘ch’, and is renamed to ‘cha’.
- J in ‘John’ and G in ‘gelatin’ are now a fricative version of G, G-circumflex (Ĝ), pronounced ‘jay’.
- Adding Eng (Ŋ) as a velar nasal, for cases where N is followed by either K or G (velar plosives), and also replace the ‘ng’ at the end of words.
- Sh in ‘shame’ becomes a fricative of S, S-caron or ‘she’ (Š)
- Either renaming W to ‘wynn’, to honor the older, lost ‘wynn’ (Ƿ)
- Ch in ‘loch’ becomes a rare fricative of X, X-caron or ‘xha’ (X̌)
- Y in ‘yellow’ is replaced by J, as that is the symbol used in the IPA for the sound that y makes. J is renamed to ‘ye’ or ‘ya’
- Y in ‘probably’ or ‘Ypres’ becomes a full vowel representative, and is renamed to either ‘Greek I’ (as it is in most Romance languages), or ‘yp’
- S in ‘measure’ becomes a fricative of Z, Z-caron or ‘zhe’ (Ž)
- Adding Thorn (Þ) as the dental fricative for both voiced (e.g. ‘the’) and voiceless (e.g. ‘think’) to replace the ‘th’ in words.
P.S. I tried to be as conservative to English as I could to maintain readability, which is why I just kept with orthography instead of changing phonology or grammar.
No, theta is better for “th” and Eth might be a nice bring back
Agree with some but your list all over the place
I think the channel jan Misali has some excellent points in their videos about linguistics but especially in their video about the letter C for why lots of seemingly uncescessary letters are actually really useful in a given language
C could definitely be removed if some changes were made to other letters as well, it just looks really ugly.
But the spelling reforms presented in this video are really ugly too so that has brought these completely impractical ideas to the table.
Are we not gonna talk about how A is pronounced "EY" E is pronouced "II" and I is pronounced "AY"
The voqels are konnekted
When u said I is pronounced like "AY" makes me feel like ur british
basically, just use hirigana, but then add a distinct l vs r sound. Then, you've got a 1:1 spelling of letters and sounds, and just be good about every word being written as its spelled, and you've got the best alphabet
New rules: Change C to sound like CH and rename it "chee". Add back þ (thorn) for TH. Rename W "wah" or back to "wynn". Replace all instances of PH with F and stop using FF. Make G always a hard G, and replace the soft G in words like garage with J. Make Q always sound like KW, so replace it with just K as needed, like "unique" would be respelled with a K. Many more vowels would get added with the goal of having one vowel per vowel sound. Y would always sound like the y in "yak", and just remove it when it follows a vowel unnecessarily. The whole point of all these changes is to make the alphabet phonetically consistent and expanded to cover more sounds so we need fewer diphthongs. Also we could add a letter for ZH which sounds like a soft J, and a letter for the throaty Q found in arabic languages. Alternatively, Q would be that sound and the "KW" sound would be spelled KW. Replacing all the diphthongs though might be excessive. And we'd really have to decide on lazy vowel sounds. "The" has an E that makes the UH sound, and there's countless words where we do this. So given these rules... mi nu alfŭbeht wuud spehl werdz lik þis. After ŭwil we wuud geht yust tu iht. Stihl ned nu lehterz for þŭ sohft vowlz I ahm ihmprovizeng. Spelling like that is painful now, but as our brains assimilated the new word spellings, it would become second nature to both read and spell them without thinking.
Finally, someone who actually made a good fixed alphabet
There's only two problems here, it's missing a SH letter. Also I use A E I O U Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū
Thorn is hard to read, Theta is more easier to read
@@the_mariocrafter theta looks like a vowel, thorn is also easy to read you just gotta get used to it
I feel like this is an oversimplification of what the alphabet could truly be. If you believe that these are the only letters with issues, I believe you are completely forgetting all of the sounds each one makes without anyone knowing. I've used a few here, but it's simple enough to see that every rule in english does not have a specific sound designed to work well. Instead of fixing the alphabet, I say we ditch it. The oversimplification of sounds bothers me and everyone else in the world and I believe we can do something greater. The alphabet is only getting shorter and shorter when it should be expanding on sounds that many of us should know. If it doesn't, it will end up just like hebrew.
I believe we can solve this by simply adding more characters for every sound. Maybe even mix it up with characters from other languages like Cherokee. Adding more will solve quite a lot of issues seen in english already, a major one being word size. Funnily enough, even if hebrew has less characters than english, it is significantly smaller in word size. The downgrade to this is that the words are way more ambiguous than those seen in english. Adding more characters will fix both problems all while only adding one new problem. The problem more characters will fix is smaller reading and processing time. as seen before, cherokee is spelled with 8 characters in english while in cherokee it is only spelled in 3: tsa-la-gi(ᏣᎳᎩ). Now, I want to address that cherokee suffers from another problem not found in both english and hebrew and that is the lack of sounds. It's not all too many, however one of those sounds not used is an 'R' sound. Luckily, we can fix this by adding in another table for the 'R' sound.
The entire alphabet is a mysteriously long rabbit hole the more you look into it. The logic behind every word is sub-par and can only be described as monotonous and dangerously stupid. Though the alphabet has its flaws, anything made with it brings entirely new flaws. There are some words in the english, latin and greek which have the same exact spelling and sound and many which have the same spelling, different meaning and drastically different meaning. This is another problem with hebrew, because there are so little letters, words have to be given context in order to understand them. To fix this, in the new language every one of those words with the same spelling will be erased due to the different pronunciation and others with the same will be given new pronunciation.
yay
second like
nice essay btw
This is very underrated :)
Nifty
The Latin alphabet doesn’t have that many issues. English’s phonology and orthography are truly the real culprits here.
@@eddie-roo I have outlined what was wrong with it in my comment, but if you want a tldr: the latin alphabet is so small that it needs to combine letters to make more sounds. Because of the limitation, and because of the ambiguity of what letters combine to make which sounds, any word could mean anything. Although english homophones are an awful design, they only exist because of the ambiguity of the combinations.
English is not the first to have this problem, hebrew has every problem english does but with less letters. The aleph-bet(hebrew alphabet) has only 24 letters and literally any word could mean anything from sock drawer to booklet. The only way it can be read is through context. Without context the sentence could mean something different entirely. Same goes for english, without context the phrase "removes polish using chemicals" could mean either A: I remove nail polish or B: I remove polish using chemicals.
There are a couple of problems
The letter x in general is just a confusing shishow
Removing c adds quite a few complications, especially about what to do with the ch sound
kill two birds with one stone and have x make the ch sound
@@justjack2131 that’s a good idea, or if qe like the digraph look it kould be kh.
@@justjack2131 i would have X make the SH sound, and make TX have the CH sound
@@locomotivetrainstation6053 ooh i like that
Without c, the words rice and rise are spelled the same way. This can be fixed by using z for rize, or anywhere with an s that names a z sound.
Good idea!
Why do you use silent e
One thing I want to say about the Y and W letters, the y sound in yes is phonetically made by the E sound, what I mean is that saying something like, ee or the long e vowel next to another vowel exept u, using i to represent the long e vowel saying io fast enough will cause the brain to create a bridge between vowels, the y sound like in yes, eventually the e is dropped altogether for speed of pronunciation and it becomes yo. Same with W except this time it's with U, take the word quick for example, the ui is said fast enough so the u morphs into the w sound just like the y, in fact if you pay attention you can hear it being said koowick.
4:54 in French w is called double v
And in spanish w is "doble ve"
@@shin-mmxxiv-hna-official It's Doble Uve
@@carlaconnolly6038 doble v
@@shin-mmxxiv-hna-official You both are wrong since its uve doble in spanish
My changes to the alphabet:
1. Instead of eliminating c, it is repurposed for the "ch" sound
2. W is removed, its function is taken over by u when it comes before a vowel (or vouel)
3. The same thing happens with y and i (yes becomes ies)
4. Q is eliminated and the kw sound becomes ku, since in all qu instances a vowel immediately succeeds it
5. X is now always used for the ks sound, it no longer steals z's from words like zilofone
6. Ph is replaced with f
7. The letter thorn (Þþ) is added for þe "th" sound
8. Þe letter eng (Ŋŋ) is added for the "ng" sound
9. Can somebody *please* fix the "ough" problem?
10. J now makes the "zh" sound instead of the "dzh" sound, to get the og j sound you need to stick a d in front of it
Keep y cus of words like "toy" where "toee" looks too weird
@@locomotivetrainstation6053 toi
No such thing as zilofone. It's xylophone. No we not gonna change X to Z, you must be crazy. You want english to look like a mess? Imagine spelling xylophone with an Z, it doesn't look good. Imagine spelling exit as egzit, it looks awful so X has its purpose while Z doesn't
Also zh isn't the same as J so that's random ask
I really like drinking qater (water).
That is very qeird (weird).
Qhat (what) is going on?
Removing W makes loads of words different and is a terrible decision whereas removing Q would be a lot better because the kwuh noise can be made with KW and the K sound can be made with K.
Why is it a terrible decision?
C makes it's own sound in Czech (and I think in majority of European languages.) Its like a short C, or S and T mixed.
I love how you still address C in the alphabet even though it’s just laying lifeless and unmentioned on the floor
In Spanish, the “q” *only* works when there’s a “u” in front of it. For example:
que (what): ke
queso(cheese): keso
quien(who): kien
The main consequence of changing any letters will be the need to reprogram computers.
Eliminating the letter C for example would remove the Binary number 1000011 and that would cause huge problems.
I love how Q is just stomping on W’s corpse the whole time
My favorite part is how he uses short-handing to improve our alphabet but then gets rid of Y; a shorthanded way to wright two Es, and replaces it with two Es. It’s essentially the same thing but one takes longer to write, and imagine all the time we’d save if we didn’t
I've never seen someone deside to animate the alphabet but I reallee think you did a great job at it. Qell done!
I laughed so hard when he said how much we would've saved if we didn't have to say DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U
I like the idea that Y is a mimicry letter of sorts, sounding like vowles
6:21 Mah man E has drip
1:42 that took a dark turn
Fun fact: when we first made the dou-ble-U it actually looked like a double "U" but then it started to look like a "V" because uhhhhh people started to write it faster so it looked like a "V" and the reason why we still call it a dou-ble-"U" is traditional
Also that people write it faster idk if it's correct or not sorry :P
I thought you would've attacked J and G. lol good vid!
4:22
on Brazil we say "dábliu, dábliu, dábliu"
Dah-bluu
To properly fix the alphabet, just look up this little thing called the international phonetic alphabet.
It leaves absolutely no room for interpretation of how something should sound. It literally spells it out for you.
Dialects exist, people with speech disorders as well. Just those two things would make reading and writing harder. IPA is also quite big, and even if you're just learning symbols for one language, that's still way more symbols than just using an alphabet.
@@gamefoun The IPA has symbols for every dialect of pretty much all common languages. Just about every sound the mouth can make, there is exactly one specific symbol for it. That is why it's called the "International" Phonetic Alphabet.
They even have characters for clicks. The only thing I'm not sure that it defines is tonation. Seeing as that is a key aspect in the language for about half of the population of the planet, I'll bet it does, or is at least planned. Also, it probably doesn't have anything for that one weird whistling language either, but it probably will eventually.
I never said it was a simple alphabet. They video didn't even try to simply the alphabet, just make it more sensible. Which on turn, does end up simplifying things. And you can not get more sensible then the IPA.
Further, I would argue that the IPA would be easier to understand for people with speech defects or the mentally impaired. Spelling would not really be an issue, because you don't have to guess. How many vowels does English have? Most would say 5 or sometimes 6. I mean, we only have 5 or sometimes 6 characters to represent vowels. Yet in reality, English has around 20 vowels. The IPA, they have one symbol for each of these distinct sounds. That seems much easier to understand to me, opposed to guessing which one of the six in the alphabet I'm supposed to use.
@@TheTonyMcD if you're used to saying words in one way, you'd probably write them down like that. While it can be written down, you would have like 15 ways to write down one word, possibly with characters you may not recognize. Having a unified (or at least mostly unified) dictionary is way easier. You could write down all the words in one way with IPA as well, but that would defeat the purpose, since a lot of people say these words differently. A better solution, at least for English, would be to have more consistent rules.
@@gamefoun you literally can not have a more consistent rule set than the IPA. People say things differently all the time, and with the IPA, they can write them down exactly how they say them. There is no room for interpretation.
@@gamefoun you can have the exact same dictionary we have today, using the most common pronunciations in IPA, and it wouldn't change absolutely nothing. Well, except people unfamiliar with a certain word would instantly know how to pronounce it.
And about characters you may not recognize, that is just a different way of teaching language to solve that. Instead of teaching thousands and thousands of weird rule sets that only apply to some words and not to others, and all kinds of weird spelling quirks, just reach about sixty or so IPA symbols. That would cover essentially all every day words.
6:36 The reason why the letter Y is sometimes a vowel is because it can sometimes sound like the letter E, like in rub(Y). Buy sometimes, it can sound like it's self, like in (Y)ell.
Liked the video! I kouple things I qould add...
1. X kan be adekwatelee represented by "ks" or okasionallee "zz" as in "zilophone"
2. Instead of using "th" and "sh" to kreate neq sounds, qe kan use the leftover letters:
Bring bak C to make the "ch" as in "cokolate cips" or "cange the cannel"
X kan make xe "th" sound as in "xeokrasee" or "exanol"
W (now pronounsed something normal like "wee") kan make xe "sh" sound as in "wadoq" or "wennanigans"
Actuallee W qould go bak to being "w" and Q qould fill xis role as in "qadow" or "qennanigans"
Xat looks a little niser
3. J is used for all soft "g" as in "revenje" or "jender". G still used for hard "G"
Now every letter is used for eksactlee one sound
J = ZH
DJ = DZH (J)
We can remove X and just replace it with “KS” to make the same sound.
We could also either remove J entirely (because G already makes its sound), or to ease up confusion, take away G’s J sounds in words like “Giraffe”
Yes. Then people will stop thinking that gif is pronounced with a j.
"Hey, Gonathan, do you want some guice?"
"No, I'm going out to gog for a while"
"Oh, I thought we were watching Gudge Gudy tonight"
@@RiotBode in Italian we have this rule where if the G is followed by an I or an E than the sound is soft, (Giovanni is pronounced "Joe-Vanni" for example). So doing that would instantly fix the problem
@@compa6251 Yeah, portuguese is also like that, I was just messing around
No what about the word "just" makes a different sound "gust"
finally! The Alphabet finally has some bug fixes and a some new features. glad to see more updates
I love how you draw it
Double-u is mainly just in english issue, in dutch its just pronounces as {wee} and in german and french it is Double-V, polish being Wo/Vwo
Pronouncing q as /w/ would be strange, since all the letters similar to q (p, b, d) represent plosives/stops. [q] is a plosive/stop in the IPA as well, though it‘s not used in English.
/q/ is Voiceless Uvular Plosive/Stop
@@massblabla I‘ve just been to to lazy to look that up myself xD
If I were to repair the alphabet, I would approach it differently.
The English language used to have a few more letters. For example, that backward f did the th sound.
For me, the C would survive the purge, because it is similarly used in other languages. In German, it is used for the sch sound, a richer sh sound, and used in a ch sound, the more delicate sh sound, which depending on the word can work as a delicate k sound. In combination with an actual k, it transforms the k sound into a harder-sounding k sound. (probably the origin of the German language sounding so strong to anyone else even when it is not)
Also, the Y isn't a dunce, in German, the Y sound can be interpreted as an ee sound, but also a J or an Ü.
The only letters that could potentially not survive are the Ä, Ö, and Ü, since they can be written without the dots as well, like Ae, Oe, and Ue. (btw, the English A sounds like the German Ae)
Currently, there's a purge happening with the ß letter, at first it was given size, so it can be differentiated of whether it is written in capital, but now it is simply going away and replaced by ss.
So in the future Fußball (soccer) could appear as Fussball, and Schnellstraße (highway) could appear as Schnellstrasse.
I believe this change was thrown in motion by Minecraft, it used to not be able to display the ß letter, and any resource pack available that changes the font would display ß as ♂.
All in all, I would give the A, E, I, O, and U letters their actual pronunciation, because I don't see the use of making the U sound like a much clearer A in certain situations that would reach the German A sound, I should be renamed to the ee sound, and U becomes a much deeper oo sound, so it doesn't sound like I'm addressing someone when I speak it.
For me, the V wouldn't survive the purge, as it is merely a copy of the F sound, and in many situations a W sound for no good reason.
In German, you would be a dunce if you were to write bird with an F. (Vogel -> Fogel)
F and V are different sounds
@@locomotivetrainstation6053 I get it, one is spoken in the back of the mouth, the other at the front, however, what comes out is the same sound.
@@KittenKatja no different sounds come out
If I remember correctly, the reason why it's called "double-u" was because the printing press, before it had the W, they used two u's together (uu) in whatever they were making that required a "wuh" sound.
I love how E in the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet is just a stickman.
In some languages "y" makes an entirely different vowel sound so it's useful there.
The 'double-u' thing is probably only for English speakers, we just call the letter 'wee' like how you say the letter W inside a word like 'wee-ird' (weird)
In portuguese we call it dabliu, and it's even more worthless since all it does is make the "Vee" sound, and I don't think any original portuguese word uses it. I'd think it's similar in spanish but I don't know
@@spowden oh oof
I think the alphabets in alphabet lore passed that good alphabets
In German, W is only one syllable, but Y is three (Ypsilon)
I strongly disagree about the letters c and w. There are sounds in English that could use letters of their own. I think c should be repurposed for the ch sound. W should still have the w sound. There is this guy who has the idea for repurposing Q as a vowel. What do you think?
C making Ch is exactly what I was thinking
Ch is mostly pronounched like g or tj. So definitifly replacable.
W however is not as it has its own sound and q always confused me so i would kill q. This Guy Just has a unjustified grudge against w for no reason. Also w is only pronounched double u in english, in my language it's Just w and that's a mistake on english' part not w.
I think down with the monarchy!
Logical, but ugly. Exactly like the other suggestions here.
X = SH
Fun fact: in french the letter W is named "double-v" wich is litterally "double-v", so even french got this better!
The same in german
Also In Spanish
even in hungarian
Without the original alphabet, the alphabet lore will be just goneee.
So Kool this is so awesome i like the stile
2:56 games that require wasd to move: ah frick we have to use arrow keys again
My friend and I pretty much came up with this exact system in high school, only we called it the "Enhansed Letter Konfyguratyon", or ELK. With ours we managed to reduce the Alphabet to 20 letters, with basic substitution as follows:
-i/I was removed as it could essentially be replaced with a Y, as it sometimes was in older English. In your video you suggest removing Y and replacing with a double-E, though this could lead to problems where words start with a Y, such as Yes (eees?), or words that use a Y in place of vowels.
-Just like you've suggested we also proposed that C is pointless as K or S can always work in its place. Except for a CH sound, which we thought could use a Kh instead.
-Same again with Q, it can just be replaced with K at any point. At the end of a word, just Ke. Unike (unique), Kualify (Qualify).
The word Queue has always infuriated me, as it's just Q. I suppose with this system, Kue would work fine.
-Also W yeah, can just use a single U most of the time and pronunciation isn't ruined. Uork, Ueekend, Uaiter
-X is such a niche letter that it can either be replaced with 'EKS', or when at the beginning of a word, maybe a Ts (eg Tsylophone).
-We then suggested Z be removed, again as it's relatively uncommon. I think we also suggested that a Ts be used like Tsunami, though an odd letter combo like Sj could work too.
Our main goal of reducing the alphabet to 20 letters was so that it would fit in a grid much nicer. Granted just down to 25 would be fine working in a square grid but 20 has more factors so it seemed like a good idea.
Thys uas a great vydeo anyuay, Y'm very glad to see other people realysyng hou yneffysyent the Alphabet can be.
Here's some pangrams to prove yt:
A Kwyk broun foks jumps over the lajsy dog.
Sphynks of blak kuartsj, judge my vou.
The fyve boksyng uysjards jump kuykly.
(After that last one I realise it may not be as clever as I thought)
>We then suggested Z be removed
You lost me right there
0/10
This version of the alphabet sucks.
Also, if you think that z and ts are pronounced the same, you must've never actually heard either one used.
@@thelordz33 the T is sort of silent. I simply thought that Z is rare enough a letter that it might as well be substituted with a simple paired combo.
Again I don't think this would ever be practical, it was just something fun i came up with over a decade ago.
@@Shep-1701lmao X is rare as well so your point is weak. Just cuz a letter is uncommon doesn't mean it's useless. If english were to remove redundant letters it will be C,X and Q. Even tho C and X is more common than Z it is easier to remove them than Z. Also, I see that you use british english which is why you said what you said but in American English some of those words you spell with a S will turn into a Z.
This is suc a kool video! I’ve alqaees qanted to make a revised alphabet and improve the English language so evereebodee kan have an easier time learning the English language. Thank you for making this video! Qill definitelee subskribe after this.
Removing c from the alphabet would make the two words cell and sell even more complicated
Such an underrated channel. Subbed.
Truth is that languages and alphabets are always in motion, always changing. Every nation absorbs useful sounds and words from neighbours. Just watch "the 100" and look how can simplified english/common tongue sound or be written. e.g from the beginings, Tree Crew - Trikru; some nations originally used different alphabets, more designed for sounds they make, but later they changed alphabets for more common and needed to add some symbols etc
I would assign “C” to the “ch” sound exclusively and take a note from China by assigning “X” to the “sh” sounds. I would also add “the” and “thet” to represent the soft and hard “th” sounds respectfully. “Wynn” can reclaim the “w” sound. “Y” should only ever be used as a consonant and “G” can never sound like a “J.”
I can’t type my fonts for “the” and “thet” but I would also begin spelling “the” with just that one character. Basically, it’s an “H” with a dash mark thru (yep, I’m killing “ough”) the upper left line. “Thet’s” dash is at the top while “the’s” dash is halfway between the top and the center line. Same placement for lower case, assuming the lower case survives at all.
Lastly, we should standardize the use of accents to clarify which version of a vowel is being used. I’m either way on “Ń.” It’s interesting but not necessary when you can add a “Y” after it to achieve the same effect. Some consonants an use accents that I’ve never seen used before to give it that little extra zsoozs, including the Eastern European “K,” or that “Zsa Zsa Gabor” “Z” accent. And something for that rolling “R.”
Pov: u just watched Alphabet lore and this was in the recommended
I've had this idea for a couple years about fricatives. We use "th" for thorn, "ch" for chi, "ph" for f, and "sh" for esh. If you get rid of c, like any sane person would, then you use "kh" instead and then we can see that to spell a fricative you just need the respective consonant and add an "h" to it. We can take this further and apply it across the board for ALL fricatives, bh for v, dh for eth, zh for ezh, and gh for j, which gets rid of two more letters and standardizes every fricative and plosive at once.
The only down side is this removes the need for thorn, my favorite letter, but... it's clearly the easier and more likely solution.
I think we should be adding letters not removing letters.
Finally, someone else whom-er ƿhom loves thorn-er, þorn
1) that's just confusing
2) ch is not a fricative, it is an affricate, and would thus break the pattern
3) it'd probably a better idea to reform english spelling than the alphabet since it's fine as it is
What does "the respective consonant" even mean here?
F is labiodental, not bilabial like P
Sh is post-alveolar, not alveolar like s
V is labiodental, not bilabial like B
Zh is post-alveolar, not alveolar like z
Eth is dental while d is alveolar for most people, same problem with thorn and t
J is also an affricate, not a fricative (under this system, gh would imply /ɣ/, a sound that does not exist in English)
Also, S and Z are fricatives. This system does not standardize them, it makes it seem like they are plosives when they are not.
Overall, this is really inconsistent, it doesn't tell you what the respective consonant for a fricative is, and has other glaring issues.
@@lemon-limeproduction1964 Also, ƿ is too close to p to be used today.
Good luck trying to distinguish them in messy handwriting!
I don't think we need to remove W- just give it a different name, like "wuh". Then we can remove Q and instead use k or kw in its place. I also think that extra letters should be added for the two versions of 'th', as well as 'sh' and 'ch'. Also, each vowel should stick to one sound, and since there are only 5 vowels and a lot of sounds they make, we probably need to add extra letters for those as well. Maybe we should just write using the phonetic alphabet
I like the name "wee"
I would give it the name Wes.
If we're abandoning trying to keep things simple, well, then you realize that the name of the letter Y does not contain its sound, but it does contain the W sound. Therefore, we could call the letter W "why" and call Y "yee" or something similar.
I will give the name dbv
Queue.
4:10 in german the letter w is said same as something like "we" but to avoid Confusion with v v is Pronounced as "fau"
So w does not have this long name in this language at all pretty gud.
Wait hold on did this man predict the future
0:35 A says: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The reason W is named like that is because in the Latin alphabet, V was actually U, but if you wanted it to make the "wuh" sound, you had to put two of them next to eachother, like this. (VV). Doing that was a little tiresome though, so people started to draw them joined together, literally being a double u.(Remember, V was U.)
WЖ
5:30 nice animations of walk and reloading gun and hand and shooting
Checkout Serbian Cyrillic. One letter - one sound. Great in practice, made in 19th century:)
3:12 yeah the IR- wait a second
I think a lot of people, myself included, have though of various optimizations to the alphabet, bit its kind of just a symptom really.
Fixing anything is necessarily going to lead to new spellings for words. Under your system, crow would be kro, etc.
Fixing words to remove silent letters, making everything properly phonetic (looking at you, bologna), is the next logical step.
English is such a patchwork Frankenstein language, which is a major problem, to be sure. But fixing the alphabet and the spelling quirks, while probably good to learn, removes the language's one strength: You can look at a word you've never seen and infer it's meaning. Because it pulls from so many older languages and uses such eclectic rules, it has some leagacy features, if you will, baked in. What makes it tough to learn is necessarily tied to it's strength.
If you wanted an easier language to read, write, and spell, we could invent one from the ground up (If I'm not mistaken isn't this the point of Korean? Solresol is also fascinating in this regard), and I'm sure we could land on something much better that a "fixed" English.
In my opinion, while ease of use is a factor in a language, it's primary job is to convey meaning, and that you can infer meaning of words you've yet to learn based on context and similarity is something a messy patchwork language is going to do better than a streamlined, bespoke language.
I may be wrong on that, and i guess I'd like to be. I imagine if a truly better language from all aspects were possible, the global efficiency increase would be phenomenal. But implementing it would be herculean.
I'm with you on W being three syllables. Why don't we just call it "Wah" or "Woo" though?
Kroq*
*optimisations
Add some slavic letters like Š, Č, and Þ, We could also use Ł instead of W
0:22 respect to t for remaining similar after all these years
for qu together, in french there's a rule where q always has to be followed with u (except in cinq for some reason) and both "unique" and "critique" are taken from french so of course it creates inconsistencies.. actually I'd be willing to bet that like 90% of inconsistencies in english are caused by taking words straight out of other languages
True, all the problems in English have to do with history, that's how languages work.
No one sat down one day and said "You know what would be cool? If the letter A made 6 different sounds!"
WAIT! C HAS A PURPOSE!!!
It does have a unique sound, “CH,” which is too common to get rid of.
I suggest making “CH” require only “C,” and potentially renaming it “CHEE”
As a reply to the _public,_ X could be repurposed in one of two ways, I think.
Option 1 is to use it as a replacement for thorn. While this would shorten a few words, I believe this to be the less acceptable solution, as it would make “SH” look awkward.
The second option is to use it as an indication of silent _consonants_ (not vowels because, while “E” is silent way too much, it has a valid reason)
My personal suggestion, though, is to delegate it to a “Silent GH” replacement (sorry X), and replace the other GH sounds with whatever they sound like (except for “GHost,” ghost makes sense and can stay spelt like that.)
This would absolutely destroy the infamous “T•••GH” words, all because of a brave sacrifice from X
Example of the “C” cange: The idea that anyone kan katc a ball, I find to be redikulous.
Egzample of “X”s sakrifise: althoux it was touf, “X” finally solved our problem thourouxly albeit throux violence.
I HAD A FUCKING STROKE READING THAT HELP
@@SabiKatz Rest in Piese
best thing I can think of is Tyeese, which... no.
i think you can do "theese"
@@SabiKatz Rip in Peperonees
6:47 I think there's some sort of a compromise with "Y": when the word starts with Y, it's pronounced like J (except with the pokemon Yveltal, where it's like "Evil-tal") and is therefore treated like a consonant. But when it's literally anywhere else in the word, it's pronounced like I or E, making it a vowel.🤔
You no there's a slight difference between, the letters K and C. Now they might sound the same, but depending on your accent it can make a whole lot of different sounds. But trust me when I say if we got rid of the letter C, would confuse me.
I would say:
-C makes the “Ch” sound
-Q doesn’t exist
-Z makes the “Sh” sound because Z and S sound the same let’s be honest
-New letter makes the “Th” sound
-All Ph’s are replaced with F’s
-Make words like Tough more normal (Tuff, tho, etc.)
-All of the above will have their necessary changes in words (K’s replace previous C’s and Q’s in some places and with a W in others, etc.)
And there is your new alphabet.
"z and s sound the same" local man hasnt heard of voicedness
z and s are very different, whenever you say "he had zeal" people dont think you mean seal.
Z it pronounced slightly behind the teeth, while s is pronounced using the teeth. They definitely make different sounds
@@sirk603 that isn't there main difference though; voicing is
@@frank_calvert yeah that’s the word I was looking for. I couldn’t remember what it was
I would take g's one pronunciation that is already handled by j (would finally make the pronunciation of gif clear) and also smite X cause we have ks. Maybe just give it the sh sound. The Ch sound could then be tx
i think that, genuinely, the alphabet is mostly fine the way it is. the only problems are Q and X. and W just needed to be renamed.
4:49 The reason why that is because of the Romans. They used V for both itself AND U. At around 1000 AD, they decided to add a new letter. That's right, W. It sounds like a "Double U" but looks like a "Double V" because at that time, U is the same as V.
2:19 ayo why does that sound like my name
As a both musical and multilingual person familiar with many languages, several properly and many just on the surface level (also cultures), this problem becomes all the more apparent when your realize just how restricted the average individual is in the sounds that they can make and how many words and ideas, as well as communication methods they're missing out on. Many letters and things either don't make sense because things changed, or didn't make much sense to begin with, while many actually useful things are missing entirely. Like say the clusterfuck that is Japanese that has TWO letter systems (hiragana and katakana), each with about 50 letters for a total of 100~ and one 'symbol system' that works on an entirely different basis (associative) and has 5000-100000 different symbols the meaning of which most don't even know, with all three systems used on a daily basis, often together, and still unable to pronounce foreign words properly lacking many even common sounds. Before it made sense because we where limited by paper and physical restrictions, tradition, lack of research and knowledge, but i think today we need a new international language with more letters and two letter combinations to cover the vast array of sounds made in all languages which will make all writing and reading in it unicode, always knowing exactly how to pronounce and read what you're reading and how to write it, and will also stretch the musical capacity of people around the globe that are currently locked only to their region's sounds and pronunciations.
There is an alphabet for displaying every single sound in every language, it's called the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a conlanger, it is my best friend and I think you should meet him someday.
@@Mrs._Fenc its a half baked, bad looking Euro centered language that still lacks way too many sounds, has too many combinations and stupid writing nuances. It's also non unicode and funky to write, being all over the place. Whistling, clicking, breathe-in, whispering, purring, singing nuances, nieche sounds and things some languages do, sounds that are possible but no one actually uses... It just leaves too much out and too many limits.
@@mkzhero The IPA only has letters for sounds that exist in languages. Also, the IPA isn't a language, it's an alphabet. There's a big difference between those two.
@@Mrs._Fenc yes yes, sorry for not paying attention. Still, again, it lacks way too many things, sounds, and is way too raw and messy (for example it's a pain to read and write despite being eurocentric, half of it looking like some hyrogliphs rather than letters). And we'll, it's not surprising either considering it was made by the Brits even before 1900, they loved messy systems (old monetary system, imperial measurement system, etc).
While the idea of a universal language sounds good on paper the actual practice of it would be high impossible to pull off and implement.
W is called “double u” because it used to be and sometimes still is written as 2 fused U’s. Also, the W makes the “oo” sound associated with U and the “uh” sound also associated with U. Double, U, W. The sound is also usually pronounced fast, so the “uh” sound is not very noticeable.
The W abreviation thingy can be made by abreviating W that can do "dub"