CHENNAI: Last year (or perhaps earlier; the fact that I only saw it last year may mean nothing) there was an article travelling the internet that declared that the letter Z was soon to be erased from the English language, since it served no purpose that could not be filled by an X or S. Of course, this was merely a hoax. In any case, if there’s any one letter the English language could do without, it’s the X.
The thought of the language suddenly being reduced by one or more letters is bizarre. But then, a few years ago we would have thought it bizarre to have to have the number of planets in the solar system reduced and that certainly happened. Besides, it has happened before; while the modern English alphabet is based on the basic modern Latin alphabet, the English language has had more diverse influences. It was first written in the Runic alphabet of the Anglo-Saxons, the Futhorc.
Even when the Latin alphabet began to take over, it retained some of the Anglo-Saxon letters. These included “Ð/ ð” (known as the ‘eth’, it sounds a little like ‘th’) and ‘box symbol’ (called the ‘wynn’, this represents a ‘w’ sound). My favourite of all of these is the ‘ash’, represented as ‘Æ/ æ’. This is probably the most easily recognised of these letters. Many of us will have seen it used in words like ‘mediæval’ or ‘encyclopædia’. Modern (American) spelling usually omits this letter and uses a simple ‘e’ instead. In most cases this is adequate, but less satisfying. Surely it is obvious that the ‘æ’ version is far more beautiful?
In some cases the use of the plain ‘e’ actually makes things less clear. For example, a doctor who specialises in children’s health care has traditionally been known as a pædiatrician. This is derived from the Greek paidos, meaning ‘child’. American English generally writes this as ‘pediatrician’. This is all well and good, except that a number of other ‘ped’ words in English come from the Latin pedis, or ‘foot’. Among them are ‘pedestrian’, ‘pedestal’, ‘pedal’. So why should a ‘pediatrician’ not be a doctor of feet? A lot of English sources solve this problem by using a separate ‘a e’ (encyclopaedia, paediatrician), but it still feels wrong.
If you look at the alphabets of various scripts (like Indian languages) the general trend is that the older languages have fewer letters. Compare Tamil to Malayalam, for example. This needn’t mean that Tamil contains fewer sounds, just that each letter is forced to do a lot more work and stand in for a greater number of sounds. English, which is not that old, also does this — a ‘c’ can sound like a ‘s’ or a ‘k’, and the ‘a’ in ‘cat’ is very different from the ‘a’ in ‘ape’. A phœnetic language like Hindi (that ‘œ’ in phœnetic is another import from the futhorc) has a distinct sound for each letter. Once you’ve learnt the (many) letters, it’s all quite easy.
— bluelullaby@gmail.com
