t25?

or maybe "W" - just use "VV"

perthousand is not an alphabetic character :)

but i would like t– s”ve ¸s all from umlauts.

rrr, i guess you're right.....well, y'all know what i mean....

matthew, if you are referring to any alphabetic or nonalphabetic sign, i would certainly want to dump the euro sign first, which is such a butt ugly and lab-made-ish artificial sign (and currency name, for that matter).

also, i don't like the 'j' very much. i could very nicely live without it.

now that i think of it, it would be a funny experiment only to use the 100 a. c. n. roman alphabet, which is

A B C D E F (G) H I (K) L M N O P Q R S T V X (Y) (Z),

where letters in parentheses were known but not used in latin. and all Uc. off course.

MATTHIAS … SI TV ET ALPHABETAM ET ANALPHABETICAM REFERRARES … NOV THIS IS ACTVALLI VERY FVNNI …

CAIVS

Matthew, do I get to choose only one? :-)

Well, in terms of English spelling, I would choose either "c", "q", or "x" (the three superflous letters), but I *love* the "q", and the "x" has a certain charm too. Add to that the weak character (hence strong confusability) of the "c" (like with respect to the "o" and especially the "e"), and I think that's what I would choose. On the other hand, the "el" is by far the weakest of the weak (it has some potential at the foot, but very few people use it), so maybe it would get my ax.

Kai:

Do you mean the UC "J"? It's interesting to note that it's the only UC letters that points left - but flipping it would make it too much like the UC "L". So I myself don't mind the "J" in the end - there are much bigger problems in the UC set.

As for the lc "j", I think it's *amazing* - in fact all the descending letters are very powerful - it's the ascendings that suck - except for the "f" they're a bunch of sticks.

BTW, in his "Counterpunch" Smeijers points out that the lc "j" is the only letter that doesn't sit on the baseline, and makes a case for giving it a "mid-body" serif (on the right), or at least some kind of "discontinuity" at the baseline. Remember that Smeijers is Dutch and they use tons of "j", unlike English.

I used to think that was a good idea (and in fact I still owe Smeijers for -unwittingly- starting me down the road of Alphabet Reform), but then when I took into account that a) we generally read word shapes, so sitting on the baseline is secondary, and b) that would bring it closer to the "i", I realized that maybe Smeijers fell into the same old trap that so many others do: superficial rationalism.

hhp

hrant,

it's not that i mind the 'j' for its looks. but people lived very happily without it for ages (and without plastics, internet &c, for that matter), and the italians still do. so i think it's dispensable.

this needn't neccerssarily have to do with smeijers' superficial rationalism ñ history proved it to work

k

for aesthetic reasons, i doubt that i'd want to remove a letter ñ i'd rather add some ;)

If we got rid of umlauts, could we at least keep the word? It's just so much fun to say.

I haven't found much use for "C", as it seems to be doing the same work for "K" and "S", when itsn't forming a "CH" sound.

Let me keep my "J," though. "Yesse" just doesn't have that "punch" to it (even if it is closer to my Hebrew name).

> i'd rather add some

In fact for English to work properly with the Latin writing system it needs another *15* symbols (plus-or-minus).

hhp

The Decibet, presented by Mr. Joseph Franklin of the U.S. Council of Standards and Measures.

If English "worked properly," then we could never pronounce ghoti the same as fish . . . where's the fun in that?

Gee, Hrant, I guess I could use some "superficial rationalism" of my own! I'd kill to be able to design type like Fred Smeijers!

Smeijers is a master type designer. Quadraat is one of my all-time favorite fonts, and over the years I've sung its praise in public many times. Hey, Smeijers makes me envious too!

But designing outlines is very different than designing writing systems*. One could even say that they're opposed to some extent, in that the former deals with superficial shapes while the latter deals with deep structures. The former is needed to make great fonts, the latter is needed to push the envelope - which Smeijers (in spite of his "j" episode) seems to have admitted is not his cup of tea.

* That's why there's a separate category in MyFonts: http://www.myfonts.com/Activity46.html

:->

hhp

Personally, I'd kill the thorn. Oh wait, someone beat me to it. Speaking of which - who is responsible for this indefensible resurgence in interrobang usage? What the hell ?!

Poor thorn, hasn't it been beaten to near-death already? Along with the eth it would be so useful in English spelling - and it *was*, but since British printers started by borrowing fonts as-is from across the channel (instead of making their own), English orthography suffered.

hhp

My name is Jordan. I guess that should be Yordan? Giordan? Dzhordan? If anything, we should be adding sounds to our language, not taking them away. One-letter-one-phoneme works great for most other languages, so why not english? Think of how much easier spelling would be with extra letters. Take that sentance; Þink ŭf hœ mutŝ ēsĭer speļiŋ wūd bē wið èkŝtra lèŧers (ānd/or āčènts). It's not hard to read. Its easy to spell... Why not? And as for the interrobang, I think we should bring it back for good. It expesses modern sentiments. We are a sarcastic, disdainful society, and I'm sure someone will answer this with some remark like, "How stupid can you get!?". Its perfect for situations like that. Or like on the latest cover of Time; "Ahhnold!?". They should have used one!

Jordn, it's just that you'd need to add 20-something new letters for English! It's pretty hopeless.

hhp