Behold: The New Alphabet

In 221 B.C., the Chinese emperor Chin Shi Huang came to power and declared that the set of Chinese characters had become too large and complex. From there, he got his Prime Minister to simplify the set of characters to an official set, and then he had all the existing documents destroyed to make way for the new characters.

I like this way of thinking. So along that vein, I am declaring that our alphabet is too complex. Who has time to remember all 20-something letters of the alphabet? I believe it's time to simplify the alphabet.

Our current alphabet looks like this:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Clearly, we don't need the letter "C"; we could just use "k" or "s" instead. For example, "school" becomes "skool" (many people spell it this way already, facilitating the transition). "Church" would have to be spelled "tshurtsh". Similarly, we could remove the following letters and replace them with their counterparts:

c = k or s (or "tsh" for "ch")
f = ph
j = g
q = k or ku
w = uu
x = z or ks
y = i

Thus the new alphabet compares to the existing alphabet like this:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
a b   d e   g h i   k l m n o p   r s t u v       z

And in its entirety looks like this:

a b d e g h i k l m n o p r s t u v z

And since we're redefining things, we can move all the vowels to the front of the alphabet (where they rightly belong). Also, we can move the commonly-used letters to the front of the alphabet (r, s, t, l, n). I can also put p, b and d together, because they look somewhat alike, and to round it out I can put g there too, since it is like a backwards p with a longer tail. The new alphabet will finally look like this:

a e i o u r s t l m n p b d g k h v z

This new alphabet is simpler, easier for kids to learn, and if people don't remember the whole thing they will at least get the more often used letters first. It even sounds good in song; just try to sing the Alphabet Song to this new alphabet. Sure, the song cuts off mid-way through, but it is still just as catchy.

Oh, and of course all previous records recorded using the existing alphabet must be destroyed. Now. Including this document --no, wait...