I updated the alphabet. What do you think?

ATTENTION: The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/robwords06230
The existing English alphabet is out of date. In this video, I attempt to bring it into the 21st century by stealing letters from other languages, removing unnecessary letters and even inventing an entirely new one.
Let me know what you think of my new and improved alphabet. I welcome you suggestions for improvements.
==
Thanks to Oat Milk Studios for letting me use their lovely old factory.
==
Check me out online, on Twitter & TikTok:
robwords.com
/ robwordsyt
/ robwords
==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
1:06 Þ: Bring back thorn!
3:32 Ş for SH
4:48 Ч for CH
6:06 Getting rid of Q
7:03 Inventing a letter: Part 1
8:03 Skillshare
9:24 ß for SS
10:20 Ñ for NY
11:30 Ə: Our most common sound
12:54 Ŋ for NG
13:49 Inventing a letter: Part 2
15:01 Replacing W
16:35 &
16:53 Ž for ZH
17:14 BIG MUSICAL FINISH

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

The easier thing to do is just say Q only properly makes the the “kw” sound and drop out the u. Then you just replace q with k in the few words where q actually makes its own sound.

[@ppeter1982]

Yes, exactly what I said. Just drop the U

[@powerofanime1]

I went through a whole rabbit hole to come up with the same idea. XD

[@eggsngritstn]

Yep, I came to the comments to say the same.

[@cyberherbalist]

Yep, that's what I said, too. But you beat me by an hour.

[@HerbertLandei]

Swedish dropped the letter (except for surnames) and replaced "qu" with "kv", which I think is a good solution.

[@danielchapman6032]

If we are fantasizing we might just make the letter 'C' into the CH sound. C doesn't do anything that K and S can't do.

[@VictoriaKimball]

I love this idea!

[@al3xa723]

I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR SO LONG I HATE WHEN PEOPLE REMAKE THE ALPHABET AND THROW OUT K SAYING C CAN DO IT. IT INFURIATES ME TO NO END. That being said, agreed.

[@ChrisMoody]

Yes, I was wondering why he didn't do away with C, it doesn't make any sound of its own

[@ragnkja]

@@al3xa723 The Etruscans already did that (throw out kappa), and it’s the reason the Latin alphabet’s letter G looks like a modified C rather than the Greek letter gamma.

[@notIAmPlayer]

That's what is what C is being used for in my native language (Malay/Indo), and it works way better.

[@combusean]

Cyrillic has pretty much all of your additions covered. Adding new glyphs rather than decorations on existing letters is a more clean approach anyways.

[@MichaelJones-ni5pb]

I agree, but use C for Ch, X for Sh & 3 for Zh in my own secret alphabet. K & Q simply dispenses with hard C for this reason.

[@vulpes7079]

What makes it better than a simple diacritic?

[@combusean]

@@vulpes7079 Diacritics are sloppy. I like languages without them. And considering that Cyrillic was created to cover the shortcomings of Greek, it would make sense to not reinvent the wheel.

[@vulpes7079]

@@combusean how are they "sloppy"?

[@combusean]

@@vulpes7079 Becaue they offset the weight of the glyph and most of the time not even connected to it. and besides, with the infinite options to create letters, why essentially reuse one, especially if they don't really sound that similar?

[@singlesideman]

I was waiting for a discussion about Eth, and you brought it! So beautifully done! Incredible! Thank you immensely for doing that! I am extremely happy and impressed. You really are excellent. Your narration is absolutely perfect. It's clear, slow enough that one can actually imagine and absorb all that is suggested, implied, and told. Excellent. Just excellent. Well done, my good man! Well done indeed!

[@HistoryMemerMango]

m-ETH

[@singlesideman]

@@HistoryMemerMango irrelevant.

[@KyneticEnergy]

@@singlesidemanrelevant.

[@januszlepionko]

Rob, if you would like to use Ž for "zh", then use Š for "sh" and Č for "ch". Consequence gives ease of learning.

[@umwha]

Hey I just noticed that 'SH' and 'ZH' are the exact same but you dont vocalise with SH but you do vocalise with ZH.

[@umwha]

@@JimCarner Ž for "zh", then use Š for "sh" and Č for "ch". Well I assume you mean with the squiggle on the bottom not the top! The symbol on the top was used for N to mean 'ng'.

[@januszlepionko]

@@JimCarner You are right. But I'll not correct my previous comment.

[@januszlepionko]

@@JimCarner Why should I do it when it is not necessary?

[@bojko_tt]

To avoid diacritics at all you can take the cyrillic Ж and Ш. So that these sounds will have their own letters and avoid confusion. Greetings from Bulgaria ❤ 🇧🇬

[@theorangeoof926]

“English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.” - Sir Terry Pratchett

[@Merecir]

It learned that behavior from one of its parents: Norse

[@julianbrelsford]

​@@Mereciror any number of other conquerors' languages - Latin, French, West Germanic...

[@robloxuniverses9912]

You mean "Eŋliş”?

[@Painocus]

@@Merecir Norse doesn't take particularly heavy from other languages. If anything Norse went around and stuffed random pieces of itself in other languages' mail-boxes. Unless you mean continental Scandinavia after the black plague. But that was more just so many people died that the language's grammar completely collapsed and it lost multiple sounds. Because it's kinda hard to keep a language stable when the closes person to you is the 6 year old feral girl two villages over because, except for the two of you, everyone in your village, hers and the one in-between died.

[@hersirhakarl2109]

The eszet is a solution to problem better solved by the elimination of the practice. Also, C is just a cut-rate K and a double for S, so chuck it, same for X (sounds like KS or Z). Kwak is cracked, just keep the Q and let it ALWAYS make a KW sound. I really dig the addition of Thorn and the other letters, though I dispute your ditching of the Eth. Instead of Ð, perhaps we could use a larger version of ð, or make a grammatical rule that whenever the TH sound begins a word it's always Þ, and is pronounced as a hard TH (e.g. that), while a th sound that comes in the middle or end of a word is always a soft TH (e.g feather or with) and is represented by an ð. I really think we need new vowels to cover the sounds OO, OI, and OY make and a removal of the EA vowel combination from the language. Just use an E, an EE, or a yet-to-be-determined letter to replace the AY vowel combo. Now that I think of it, can we just get rid of double letters altogether when they don't make the distinct sound of two letters (e.g. unnamed)?

[@AntonXul]

The X is useful because it helps truncating the word. I would use it in other words with KS sound like axesory, trax, exept, the name Jaxon, etc. There are so many redundant ways of spelling that truncating words should be done if possible like getting rid of double letters and silent letters. The letter C is the most useless letter and should scrapped.

[@mktbalem]

Þis is lovely Nice one Robwərds!

[@michaeljosephharrison1803]

For ch,sh,zh to keep things consistent you could just simply use č,š and ž from the Czech alphabet. These characters or letters are called or known as chet, shet and zhet and they are used to make the ch, sh and zh sounds in the Czech Republic Alphabet and we could have them in English as well.

[@ConceptJunkie]

I like that. Above I suggested using a Z with a cedilla instead of zhet, but I like this idea better.

[@michaeljosephharrison1803]

@@ConceptJunkie I see

[@EmilyTienne]

Perfect. I thought the same.

[@DavidFraser007]

Modern Czech was designed to be phonetical , and it makes it easy to read without understanding it. But some of the single letters have different uses. jam = džem. However, boat = loď and is pronounced lotch. And Character = charakter, but the ch in Czech is pronounced like Scottish Loch.

[@PBadasie]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! the háček looks sooo much neater than the Cedilla! Read my comment above.

[@panter9282]

For ch, sh and zh I would recommend you the letters č, š and ž coming originally from the Czech language. They are used in most of Balto-Slavic languages.

[@mattynek2]

Yeah, it would make sense to use those, because they all use the same sign at the top. It wouldn't be a good idea to have for example the ç letter represent the "ch" sound but for "zh" to use the ž letter, it needs some consistency.

[@ukyoize]

Agree. I like these letters a lot.

[@harrychalfin5835]

I was gonna suggest the same exact thing.

[@Ifakkedyourmum]

THIS

[@Lil_Bruh1923]

in turkish, just the "ç" "ş" "j" for these

[@jillezuka4530]

Oh, my! LOVE the new alphabet, the video, and ESPECIALLY the song!!! Rob, you're the best.

[@PortugueseKeto]

"...the sign of Eth is rising in the air," Rush, "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"

[@reidflemingworldstoughestm1394]

If you change the alphabet you are required to also include a workable alphabet song. No exceptions.

[@Omegavision79]

Yes! Our current song does weird things to the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. If TTLS was to use the Alphabet Song's tempo: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, how I wonder what-the-hell you are. Up above, oh so high, like a dot, in the sky. Now I know my ABCs, this sounds bad so stop with me.

[@EllenKozisek]

Actually, the two songs differ in rhythm, not tempo.

[@craiglungren8703]

⁠​⁠@@EllenKozisek does this 3rd song differ in rhythm rather than tempo itself? … Baa, Baa, Black sheep. Have you any wool? Yes Sir! Yes Sir! 3 bags full! One for the master! One for the dame! And one for the little boy, who lives down the lane! Baa, baa, black sheep! Have you any wool? Yes Sir! Yes Sir! 3 bags full!!! 🙂

[@EllenKozisek]

@@craiglungren8703 Yes. Tempo is how fast the beats go by. More or less notes on a beat is rhythm.

[@jameshumphreys9715]

You could add a symbol to a letter for Qu

[@addymant]

One major problem with giving the schwa a letter is that, as you mention, English speakers often reduce other vowels to schwa. This means that, if you're spelling words how they're pronounced, you might need to accept that nearly every English word has multiple correct spellings.

[@ktipuss]

Yes; both "Taiga" and "Tiger" have the schwa at the end in British and Australian/New Zealand English, but not in U.S. English, where the R in tiger is pronounced. An American student objected when I said that Taiga and Tiger are pronounced identically.

[@RainbowMama143]

We might have to accept that there are different forms of English that require different spellings.

[@addymant]

@@RainbowMama143 I'm not talking about different dialects, though that's certainly a problem as well. I'm referring to using multiple spellings for a word within a single dialect (for example "the" /ði/ and "the" /ðə/)

[@Dayanto]

This is actually a big reason why Swedish can't fix the horrible mess with /x/ (the sje-sound). It's basically used as a schwa, but for for consonant clusters. It can take on many different forms, so spelling things phonetically would obfuscate where the words came from. (which is confusing and clashes with how some people pronounce them)

[@aaronmorder1965]

Yeah as an American we like to pronounce our r's

[@StarLightShadows]

See Idk if this was deliberately meant as something you're supposed to notice on your own while watching this video, but especially the part at the end where you haphazardly slap the extra letters into the Alphabet song without even attempting to change the notes of the song perfectly demonstrates what I believe to be the big problem with these attempts to make a new english alphabet. Syllables that are created using two letters aren't linguistic "waste" as many act like they are, they are actually the simplification. Replacing them with other unique symbols makes the words of the language have less letters, at the cost of the alphabet you need to memorize and recognize becoming significantly more complicated The great thing about stuff like TH and SH is that they are super intuitive because the syllable they form is a hybrid of the syllables of their constituents. If not in how they sound, then in the mouth movements used to create it. If you try to make the T sound and the H sound at the same time, you get the exact syllable that TH makes. The less letters your alphabet has, even if you have to combine some of them to make certain sounds, the easier it is to read and even write words. (Note that easiness is not to be confused with quickness.) Then there's stuff like Ñ, which even just listening to it you can tell is two syllables, so combining it into one letter would only serve to make words like "Union" less intuitive due it jarringly having less letters than it does syllables. An actual double-N would make more sense, even though in the specific case of things ending in "-nion" it wouldn't apply because it's created from the combination of N and I, not two Ns. Also since the only thing wrong with W is its name, I'd suggest changing its name to "Wu"

[@shawkathasan7500]

I really admire and appreciate your deep knowledge on languages and linguistics. Specialized knowledge can make things interesting even if it’s as dull as alphabet.

[@jimdavis3051]

Hi Rob, I was in first grade in 1966/67. They carved out about 30 of us and got our parents to agree for us to be part of an experiment. We learned to read using the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA). They did exactly what you are doing; they added characters to match common sounds. Every word was written exactly as it sounded. You can Google it and see their alphabet. The results of the experiment was that we, the ITA students, learned to read much quicker and were several grades ahead in our reading ability. However, because we had to then adapt to the traditional alphabet we had the arduous task of learning a very illogical system utilizing a bunch of silly extra and sometimes silent letters. To a first grader the ITA system was superior and made much more sense. I still have a couple of kids books written in the ITA language. As an adult I am a very proficient reader, not sure if I can attribute that to ITA or not.

[@dinky..]

Wow, this is fascinating! Thank you for sharing this😍 What a shame, after the success of the experiment, they didn't roll this out to schooling! Think of where we'd all be now, had we followed in your footsteps!!

[@Luke_the_Luk]

Bros 1000 years old 💀

[@FandomsXinema]

​@@Luke_the_LukYou clearly bad at Math 💀 he's 57-58 years old

[@leadhesh]

Next video on this plz

[@julieepp5332]

Me too, except preschool and 1969. Mom & Dad were worried because I was already reading the Latin alphabet. Teacher said not to worry, I was proficient with both & I'm still a total alphabet nerd. :)

[@geektome4781]

The problem with having schwa (“ə”) as a separate letter is vowel reduction. Vowels are reduced to a schwa based on the stress. But sometimes the same word will be used in a different context or in a different form, changing the stress and, if schwa were a letter, changing the spelling. Sometimes the word “a” is pronounced as a schwa, sometimes not. Sometimes the word “to” is pronounced with a schwa, sometimes not. Etc. So we’d have: “To be competətive, Americə is goiŋ tə have tə give American compətişion reciprocity if ə dəzen or more countries pass a reciprəcaşion чreaty.”

[@janTasita]

And not only that, but different speakers (particularly with different accents) don't necessarily reduce vowels in exactly the same ways.

[@MemezuiiSangkanskje]

not everyone pronounces the first t in treaty as a tʃ.

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

i like ` for that where schwa is written as whatever vowel it originally was (or à if its unclear/irrelevant/whatever) so finite and infìnite for example

[@HyTricksyy]

Using the schwa in spelled form is dumb to begin with, all languages have it, none write it.

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

@@HyTricksyy i understand and to some extent agree w the general sentiment but you just very confidently made two claims that are both like objectively verifiably wrong

[@YouBazinga]

Great videos regarding letters. Such a specific topic, yet so interestingly explained.

[@kumatoni5245]

Recent subscriber, and you've brightened my day when I needed it. Cheers, Rob. :)

[@lexasss]

How about Š for "sh" and Č for "ch" from Czech and Baltic alphabets? This solution is a bit more consistent than adopting a Turkish and a Cyrillic letters for this purpose. EDIT: and now after I discovered that you propose to adopt Ž from Czech, this idea looks even better.

[@19Szabolcs91]

Exactly, if we design a new alphabet, we might as well make it look consistent. No need to have three different squigglies.

[@trevorkirby3781]

I love the Czech alphabet loads of useful letters to steal, just please god , don't add Ř. Any letter that requires a large proportion of the population to have speech therapy to pronounce it, should have been strangled at birth.

[@patriciapetersen904]

100% on board with that. I remember admiring the Slovak alphabet because of those letters the first time I encountered it. So intuitive.

[@JB9000x]

Yeah but then you're adding another letter into the alphabet, which in my opinion makes it more, not less, complicated

[@lexasss]

@@JB9000x And the reason is that there are these sounds in the language. Strictly speaking, there are much more sounds in each language than the letter they use to represent these sounds, and only "essential" sounds have dedicated letters. Sh and ch are certainly among those what I called "essentials" and deserve, imho, to have separate letters. If the simplicity of the alphabet is the target, then we could drop some letters (obviously "c", "q") to replace them with some combination of 2.. Say, lets replace "j" with "dz" and "f" with "ph". Saving 2 letter, getting short alphabet! But I would not vote for moving this way.

[@bigd3996]

I'll never forgive English for getting rid of the runic letters 😔

[@vrillionaire88]

They are closely related to frisian, and not altogether different

[@IshayuG]

I actually did what RobWords has done here, with runes instead, but for Danish. If anyone is interested I could share it but I doubt it. xD I resurrected most of Elder Futhark to get the characteristic straight lines, then I added a whole bunch of letters for vowels, added some for a couple of new sounds like the soft d, added a letter for the stød that you place after it, and updated the spelling for hundreds of words. Some letters go away, such as C, Q, W, X, Z, though no vowels do. There’s also some funny stylistic choices. For example it’s got a line above and below so you can write non-straight lines and : is used to separate words. ; for a comma, and : plus a large actual space for a new sentence. Loads of things I haven’t figured out though. I only did this because that’s how runes looked.

[@ZetaPrime77]

Runes are unequivocally awesome looking and I completely agree it's a shame they were done away with. But remember, the power is yours to start using them again if you'd like to! NOTHING CAN STAND IN THE WAY OF FULFILLING YOUR RUNIC DREEEEEAAAAMMMSSSS

[@darrell20741]

I have an anglo saxon runik font & when I use it I use T and N (Torn & ing) very frekwently.

[@MyMy-tv7fd]

dont be angry bud, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to Dark Side.

[@apenasgargorio]

i always liked the idea of a new standardized alphabet But the addition of new letters would make articulated use of the alphabet difficult for most outside readers. All of the letters, including the Greek Alphabet, can be difficult to handle, the Czech has the S with Cedilla, the Thorn letter, and quite like Half of the letters of both Cyrillic and Greek are way specific to count. i remember even having a friend that used double Vs to make the W letter This was a fun video though, heheh

[@JfromUK_]

Praiseworthy work, Rob! Last year I had a go at developing an accent system for English to try to make it more phonetic by simply "decorating" existing spellings, but these are some thought-provoking changes focusing on making it more efficient, too! It was great that you presented so many examples from different languages across the globe searching the globe, but I agree with many others that Czech's háček accent (Č, Š, Ž, even Ď and Ť potentially) is particularly neat -- they made it into my system.

[@RobWords]

I'd be interested to see your interpretation!

[@hopscotch4636]

@@RobWords I have my alphabet abçdefghijĐklmnoprsşßtþuvwyzž

[@hopscotch4636]

Actually I'm working on it

[@Nagito_Komaeda]

I'm a native Polish speaker and "kwak" made me laugh so much. I don't mean it in a mean way, haha. "Kwak" is the sound that a duck makes, and if I'd write the proposed name of the letter using Polish letters, I get "kłak" what means a single hair. Fun fact: in the elementary school they teach to pronounce "ł" as "ły" but after graduating most of people is spelling it as "eł".

[@Nagito_Komaeda]

@@BombaskaTelewizjaBoza Kwa kwa kwa

[@przemysawdata6246]

Miło widzieć rodaków...

[@The_Moth1]

kwaaaak

[@Nagito_Komaeda]

@@The_Moth1 🦆

[@Popcat293]

quack

[@TheFlyingDogFish]

The alphabet is not the main problem. What English needs is consistent spelling so people don't need to remember the pronunciation and the spelling of each word separately. It's so much easier to write stuff when the same letter (or a combination of letters) represents the same sound everywhere. Even the ridiculous German spelling of č (tsch) is ok, because it's consistent.

[@indigobunting5041]

The problem with that idea is the fact of dialects are different not only between English speaking countries, but even in different regions of the same country.

[@TheFlyingDogFish]

@@indigobunting5041 Not really. There are plenty of languages with dialects that have consistent spelling.

[@EnigmaticLucas]

@@indigobunting5041 Who says we need a single spelling system for all dialects? There are already competing spelling systems so we might as well just let different dialects spell things differently.

[@mgntstr]

How gracious of you to permit others to spell things as they actually saond... just use the phonetic alphabet?

[@NNnn-zc2bm]

​@@indigobunting5041 no big deal. The same thing happens in Spanish and still we have consistent spelling.

[@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa790]

Another idea someone was able to do before me. Thank you for this

[@vladimirdosen9767]

Well done. Good program. You are getting closer to best of BBC ( from the good times) with this episode.

[@saltyyankee5149]

in all seriousness, would love to see thorn make it's comeback

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

Thorn is better than many letters still in the alphabet.

[@j.a.weishaupt1748]

*its

[@saltyyankee5149]

@@j.a.weishaupt1748 finally after over 50 years of life I find a response worthy of my overblown ego. I’ll take your grammatical insight to heart and change my evil ways. The trauma of 10th grade ‘advanced grammar’ class has been manifest all these years in my errant use of the apostrophe. You’ve exposed the deep trauma and truly your correct earned the thumbs up and your second sigel on your shoulder patch

[@oyoo3323]

​@@saltyyankee5149 that's errrr... a unique response you've given there www

[@briandouglas2123]

I would love to see the disappearance of the misplaced apostrophe.

[@byronpower2766]

I’m fully here for binning C… it seems more confusing than useful, having two potential sounds that are both duplicates of other letters in the alphabet.

[@azazelazel]

What about just turning 'c' into the 'ch' sound? That seems like a good compromise imo.

[@zoecass]

if you removed ‹c›, you'd have issues such as the words ‹ice› or ‹ace› becoming ‹ise› and ‹ase› which would be read as though they're ‹ize› and ‹aze› doubling the s to create ‹isse› and ‹asse› would make the words look as though they're pronounced /ısə/ or /asə/, due to how doubled consonants typically function in english if you wanted to fully ditch ‹c› in such positions, the most sensible replacement that i know of would be ‹ß›, creating ‹iße› and ‹aße›. however, rob's already replaced just a simple double-s with ‹ß›, which isn't actually how it works in german, as ‹ß› is used to indicate that there's a /s/ sound and that the preceding vowel is long, which is how ‹c› is currently used in english when it makes a /s/ sound

[@indigoguy12]

Unpopular opinion but I like the letter C more than K because it looks nicer

[@moonkiitty]

I must disagree on principle :P

[@grassytramtracks]

​@@zoecassI say, we just use (or rather, uze) ⟨s⟩ for the /s/ sound, and ⟨z⟩ for the /z/ sound. Why not write words like phase rose, and demise as faze, roze and demize, and replace ice and ace with ise and ase, job done. Why use ⟨s⟩ for the /z/ sound when we have a perfectly good letter ⟨z⟩ for it?

[@MoolsDogTwoOfficial]

Þank you for bringing back my favourite letter.

[@LarsPallesen]

I really like your presentation style. It's very enjoyable.

[@CuriousMoth]

The letters 'X', 'Q' and 'C' always seemed like something you could comfortably nuke out of our alphabet and replace with other letters or pairings of letters. I guess there'd be one Twitch streamer who might not be overly happy about it though.

[@May-gr8bp]

Hah, too true.

[@weskos]

don't nuke, that's a waste of keyboard places, reassign instead. reassign instead of creating new letters. maybe we still need to borrow some, but we have more than enough letters to make English at least a little more logical.

[@kaytiinein]

What are you going to use for CH then? Tsh? Kh makes the sound in loCH

[@rivergreen1727]

Yeah I was surprised he didn't just get rid of X, Q, C, and W, when other letters can make those sounds. I kuestion uay ue kan't niks all 4!

[@siyacer]

We can make them use other sounds

[@brevortofficial]

The problem with using phonetic alphabets is that not everyone pronounces words the same way, for example, "crayon" has 5 different pronunciations, but as long as people understand what people are trying to say, I guess it works.

[@3lisem168]

too true. I had to take a second to realize that some people do pronounce it "nyew" when I saw the thumbnail lol

[@QDinar]

another problem is that pronunciation is expected to change again in future. another problem is that some people are going to use old alphabet. i have watched only 1 m 21 s only for now.

[@dustinchase9187]

The trouble with that idea is that there is never a time when everyone understands something. There are always people who will get it wrong. That is one of the reasons that the English language is so hard to learn, especially as a second or third language. People who are influential got things wrong and we are stuck with their mistakes.

[@Miguel.L]

Spanish has a phonetic alphabet and we can understand each other just fine even with different pronunciations. If anything it would help to further standardize the language. I find it interesting that Spanish has a regulatory body called the RAE or Real Academia Española which regulates the language internationally regardless of country, it’d be nice for English to have a similar thing in the future.

[@jazzydiver4519]

@@3lisem168 Yup - I pronounce it "noo", not "nyew".

[@norm31513151]

I sent a lot of the with this "stealing letters" concept. However, I found that having doubled letters represent single sounds and doing away with capitalization in order to use capitals as different letters works with current keyboards as well as handwriting standards.

[@spiffisnothere]

č for the ch sound (i guess) and for the /ə/ schwa or any e with a diacritic

[@Jivvi]

Fun fact: ẞ and ß were originally two different letters, ẞ is a digraph of ſ+z, and ß is a digraph of ſ+s. Eventually they became interchangeable, but without a capital, so ẞ is sometimes used as a capital ß.

[@Skaryys]

ẞ is officially the capital of ß in my country since a few years! Hello from someone with ß in their last name that can finally have the real name on passport etc. instead of it being written ss. 😂

[@SchemeTintFocus]

​@@Skaryysß is not really a legitimate letter, is how I was told. Like umlaut.

[@sean3rnand3z37]

@@Skaryysßẞ

[@gefitrop3496]

​@@SchemeTintFocusan umlaut is a legitimate letter tho, just not in english

[@albaaviles7148]

@@SchemeTintFocusin German letters with the umlaut (ä,ü,ö) are legitimate letters that each have their own sound, same with the ß. What many people do nowadays is if they can’t write ß because they don’t have the right keyboard or something is writing ss or sz (this one is not vey common, at least from my experience). If you can’t write the letters with the umlaut you can write ae for ä, oe for ö and ue for ü

[@pinkunicorns3185]

The way you use ß is actually different from the German way. In German, it is used to signal that the vowel that comes before it is a long one. So "graß" would be pronounced in a British way and "poßeß" would just be weird😂 Edit: I just realized that the first ss in possess is actually not voiceless (which ß always is) so that makes it even worse🥲

[@Ashille01]

Doesn't necessarily mean that we need to adopt the exact same grammatical rules as in German language. We could still use the letter to contract double ss without any rules attached to it!

[@oilydoubloonz6001]

@@Ashille01 im more on the side of removing double letters altogether instead of adding a new letter for that job

[@everettflores738]

If getting rid, just drop one of the s's. Spelling should become easier still with less need to know when to write a double letter.

[@imaadhaq540]

@@oilydoubloonz6001 the thing is there is actually a pattern with them. They denote a certain type of stress between syllables (e.g. poses has stress on the first syllable but possess has stress on the second. However you could probably get rid of the second double s)

[@caspar_van_walde]

​@@Ashille01True. But as Rob in other parts of the video stresses, he doesn't want to use letters, that are differently used in other languages, so he shows inconsequence here. Maybe also a lack of knowledge of this rule. But it doesn't make me wonder, as in practice the ,,elder Generations" (eg Generation X) haven't accustomed to the spelling reform of 1996. Back then the use of ss & ß was the opposite of how they are used nowadays, they swapped places. Therefore for an unknowing nonmotherspeaker it if one writes ,,dass" or ,,daß" seem interchangeable, whilst the latter's spelling is wrong and just a relic, that is merely a sign, that the writer likely is not of the younger generations.

[@LyleLylefr]

You can replace /ku/ sound with a C and replace every word using a C with a K like ‘ciet’ ‘quiet’, ‘cest’ ‘quest’, and ‘cotient’ ‘quotient’. And the other words: ‘kome’ ‘come’, ‘komplete’ ‘complete’, and ‘kan’ ‘can’. With words that end in ‘ck’ like ‘quick’ and ‘kick’, you can just drop the ‘c’. ‘cik’ ‘quick’ and ‘kik’ ‘kick’

[@hanskotto8630]

You can not just spell any in high German (Swiss German doesn’t have ß) with ß. It has a unique orthographical function. Mirroring the use of other letters being doubled. after along vowel or diphthong when s is “hard” you spell after a short vowel for “hard” s you spell and after long vowels for “soft” s (the z sound) you spell s

[@muyeikasamurabi1602]

Hi Rob, my late father researched this very topic for over 30 years. However his focus was vowels and their many sounds. IE many more than 5 in English. He was developing what he called "12 Vowel English", specically aimed at people learning English from Asain decent to have an intermediary step in understanding how to navigate English. If you would like to know more, lemme know. Great content!

[@user-rr1ft7bb8l]

I would like to know

[@SpookySoulGeek]

@@user-rr1ft7bb8l same!

[@davidarvingumazon5024]

Leaving a comment for a reminder.

[@ghostlykasp]

This sounds so interesting!!

[@muyeikasamurabi1602]

Okay, thank you all for showing interest. Please allow me some time to do some digging. It was supposed to be a free/open source thing. My father wanted it to je accessible to anyone. I believe there is an internet ready page but it wasn't renewed, years ago. I will have to contact the fella that did that for my father. Will reply in this comment section when I have more. Hopefully soon but please don't wait in suspense. Thank you all again for showing interest amd pardon the tardy response. Good day!

[@caennymc]

a better character for CH would be the Czech Č because it resembles the C and does not get confused with the digit 4. Instead of shwa you could use the Romanian ă which is pronounced like shwa, and it resembles the letter A

[@fallout8516]

@давид Бедные люди Either Caps Lock + 4 or Shift + = followed by Shift + C

[@dustinchase9187]

Why not change the C to a CH? A C is nothing but a K or an S. We don't need it. (Kat, kan kap, kar.)

[@vahonenko]

a worse problem with Cyrillic Ч is that when you write it in cursive, it looks exactly the same as the Latin r

[@BadValOfficial]

@@vahonenko But you can not do this and it will look like _ч_

[@plazmatik533]

​@@vahonenkoyea ur right im half russian and half turkish and i see it confuses people

[@zetartisticalphabet]

Someone made this as a Artistic Alphabet. wow.

[@FleanSyn]

I love this so much!

[@alexc836]

Nice! My recommendations: Instead of the new letter, just use Q for the “qu” sound. Australia has been doing this for years with “Qantas.” Seems more efficient than a new letter. And for “ch,” I prefer Ç because it follows the same logic as Ş and makes sense in English. I wouldn’t worry so much that Ç is used differently in other languages, because we’ve already seen such rule differences and we just need to establish the rules for English.

[@marioluigi9599]

Then again... all CH is, is just a T in front of a SH sound SH is a completely different sound to S. So maybe have a different letter for SH instead of just a cedilla on an S. Add a cedilla or something to the new SH letter, to indicate the T sound at the beginning and make the CH sound.

[@alexc836]

​@@marioluigi9599 I like that idea too, that might be even better.

[@KazBodnar]

I've always pronounced it as kantas

[@brittanybrown7286]

Why didn't Rob add ü,or ç

[@ConceptJunkie]

It reminds me of the letter J. As far as I'm aware, English is the _only_ language that gives it a soft G sound. Every other language pronounces it differently.

[@redhidinghood9337]

I think there was a better solution for 'sh' 'ch' and the "zh" sound like the 'su' in 'pleasure'. In my language (Bosnian, a south slavic language), they're written like š, č, and ž. It makes it super consistent and easy to understand. Much simpler than taking the letters for sh from turkish, ch from cyrillic, and zh from czech. After reading the comments I see a czech person has already suggested what I just did lol. Our alphabet is based on the Czech one so it makes sense lol

[@ender5312]

çange

[@Naddnieprianszszina]

Привет бо҆шняк

[@MitchYouCantScratch]

I'd also drop the j letter and replace it with an annotated 'd' since 'J' is phonetically part of the same family, no?

[@zidane8452]

​@@MitchYouCantScratchJ is still a needed letter.

[@ararune3734]

There's no Bosnian language, you literally just took Croatian language and alphabet and slapped Bosnian on it. You've got some Turkish words, but it's a dialect of Croatian. Your alphabet is Croatian alphabet, made by Ljudevit Gaj, which based some of the letters on the Czech alphabet, and some he made up because he didn't want too many letters. Like LJ, NJ and DŽ No such thing as Bosnian

[@aussiesoapgirl3378]

I'm all for your new alphabet!!

[@zyrondevalno1954]

it's good that somebody eventually got around to this🤗

[@yikeselise6060]

one of my favourite things is that we have an 'f' in english and yet we still use ph to create the f sound

[@remycallie]

Only in words derived from Greek (photon, photo) because that's how the "f" sound is make in Greek.

[@chriswinstanley6824]

@@remycallie No, Greek has the letter "phi" (Φφ). The Romans didn't have phi, so when they imported Greek words containing phi they replaced it with "PH" (Latin only had what we call "capital" letters) just as they replaced "theta" (Θθ) with "TH." Europeans using the Roman alphabet followed this practice when they made up new words based on Greek roots.

[@remycallie]

@@chriswinstanley6824 Interesting. I should have known this because I know the Cyrillic alphabet, which is basically a combination of the Latin and Greek alphabets, and their letter for "f" is almost the same as the Greek (can't represent it here). Cyrillic creates one letter for a whole bunch of sounds that we require two (or more) letters to represent in the Latin alphabet, including "sh" "ch" "shch" (like freSH CHeese) "ts" (like iT'S) and "yo" (like Yo -- Adrian!).

[@eole_silvin]

Yes, english and french are the only living languages borrowing ancient Greek who write like that... even tho the Greeks themselves never did because they had their own alphabet and old English and old French used the f The ph spelling only dates from a few centuries back when smart people saw the ph in old latin texts and decided that was cool

[@foxus-a113]

The Latin Turkish alphabet has been developed quite recently, about a hundred years old in fact so I believe that is why we have ı i, cç, sş, oö, uü, gğ letters refer to different but similar sounds. It makes it much easier to mimic other languages in Turkish because we already have the written concepts of the common pronunciations.

[@dejanjovanovic2298]

What alphabet had been used in Turkey before that?

[@foxus-a113]

@@dejanjovanovic2298 Turkic languages had used the Orkhon scripts in the old times. And in the Ottoman period, Turkish people used Ottoman Turkish which was written in Perso-Arabic script.

[@zk513]

Especially in words of Arabic and Persian origin, I would say? We have had the sounds those letters are referring to (except ı and ğ) in my native Hungarian language for close to a thousand years ago, so for me it's relatively easy to read Turkish. ğ is not even a real sound AFAIK, more of a glottal stop? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[@foxus-a113]

@@zk513 We pronounce ğ the way British people pronounce R, that's the best way I can describe it :D

[@nephy21]

The "ğ" letter in Turkish helps to prolong the vovel comes before itself.

[@Solitaire001]

Instead of introducing new letters, I think a better option is to establish clear and consistent rules for spelling. I see no problem with letter combinations (like th, kl, and sn) as long as they are consistent. Likewise with dropping the U after Q making it a standalone letter, and giving C the CH sound. Two other things to consider: - Rather than using special marks to indicate the sound of a vowel, why not just use a letter combination? As an example, a single vowel is short, a doubled vowel (like EE) is long, and other letters that follow the vowel can affect its sound (like AH for the A sound in words like "want"). - Add hyphens as a part of the actual spelling to make it easier to show how the word should be said. An example: "know-ledge" vs. "knowl-edge" It would also eliminate the need for many silent letters, like the "e" after the "g" in "judgement" (to make the g soft). Of course, a better option is make the G always hard and replace the soft G with a J.

[@LeifTunteri-lm6un]

English used to represent its vowels with specific letter combinations in the Middle English period. After the Great Vowel Shift though, things became inconsistent. Great, sweat, meat, all have different vowels now, for example.

[@ABCMarkerFromTPOT]

I will be using this for eternity

[@djalland1]

Why not just remove the U after the Q? We all think of Q having a QU sound anyway.

[@petertrudelljr]

It's fewer strokes than the silly 'kwak'. I mean the 'kw' is just too complicated a character. There should be a four stroke max limit!

[@d00dEEE]

Except for queue, which I pronounce keeoo, not kwee...

[@mandowarrior123]

​@@petertrudelljr should be 3 strokes. Capital M and W can be fixed by turning the middle into single strokes

[@mrwalruss401]

@@d00dEEE thats just a horribly spelt word in the first place when we already have 'cue'

[@Simplicity4711]

​@@d00dEEEwhen I read "keoo", I just realized you use the O differently in English. O in "Own" , "sOund" , "Off" are all pronounced differently 😂😂

[@weskos]

Dude, I've been using your kwak for the symbol of myself for decades. My first name begins with W and my last name K, so it seemed quite logical. When asked for my initials, I write this symbol. Additionally, as a student of language, and in particular orthography, I've been pondering this task, also for decades. I do more replacement than creating & deleting, as you do. I won't go into my own replacement ideas here, because everyone and their sidekick have engaged themselves in this fun little game.

[@prim16]

Whoa, that's really a neat coincidence. Now you have a name for your K/W combo

[@RobWords]

If I hadn't described the precise development process for kwak, you'd be well within your rights to accuse me of plagiarism. Now I want my own special symbol too.

[@gerardvila4685]

@@RobWords It's called a monogram. Also used when royal married couples combine their initials.

[@prim16]

@@RobWords You're going to have to find a way to combine the R and the W in your name into a single symbol ;)

[@CsZsolt]

@@prim16 I have an idea: something like \R/

[@singlesideman]

So few people are just plain right. You are. It's amazing. Thank you! You do this tremendously well! The logic is just impeccable. Wow. Congratulations! Well done, my good man! Well done indeed! 😊

[@alejandrocivitanovae8320]

I have been waiting a whole life for this video, I would like a frenchman like you to do the same with his alphabet

[@yosefamrami3815]

Love this! I get that the bigger issue with the English alphabet is that we use just 5 - 7 letters to represent about 20 vowel sounds.

[@nix-consulting]

We could get rid of vowels completely, like in Hebrew.

[@user-el3fw2ht5q]

Digraphs would solve the matter, they just would have to be applied consistently

[@zecuse]

​@@nix-consulting Hebrew still has vowels though, they're just memorized. They can optionally be written as nikkudot (kind of like diacritics) as well. Honestly, it makes for a rather shitty language if your written form has implied spoken parts that just have to be memorized (which is a reason why I partly hate English, unfortunately my only language).

[@cahallo5964]

Not really, the biggest issue is unconsitency, and accents are just a really bad excuse, we Hispanics speak really differently and we all write the same.

[@fazex4185]

There is actually a difference between "ß" and "ss" in German. "ß" is used in the middle or at the end of a word after a long vowel, indicating its length. "SS" is used when the preceding vowel is short. The use of "ß" or "SS" is not interchangeable, even though "SS" is occasionally seen in older texts due to outdated spelling rules. "ẞ" is also called "scharfes S" ("sharp S"), especially in Austria.

[@b5fremdet]

You use it in Austria too? I thought both, Switzerland and Austria removed it from their alphabets. Seems I was wrong Also, funfact: They recently added a capital version of the ß: ẞ cool huh?

[@indigobunting5041]

I always thought of ẞ as S set, a set of S's. I didn't realize there was rules in its use.

[@mathmusicandlooks]

These rules are the accurate use of ß as according to the German language spelling reform in 1996. For several decades prior, people just used ß to replace all double s’s. That wasn’t terribly long ago, so there are plenty of documents around that use different rule sets still.

[@victorrand8811]

Lets just make it cool looking like this ⚡️⚡️

[@troelspeterroland6998]

@@b5fremdet Switzerland and Liechtenstein don't have it but they never introduced it officially either (that is, when it was defined as a separate letter in Germany and Austria), so in a sense they didn't remove it.

[@creativedeepfakes]

ah yes, the 34 letters of the new alphabet we should call it rob-wordian

[@gurntsaltta7421]

really been loving your videos Rob!! although i must admit, about the kwak letter, i feel like the design just, doesn't really work lol, looks a bit big, janky, and i feel like it'd be a bit hard to write down on paper, to the point where it might literally be just easier to stick to writing kw, while here it's just trying to slam the two letters together and it ends up looking a bit weird, and not all that practical IMO

[@lksbat]

It would be nice if the new alphabet was also in an order that made sense. Like maybe all of the vowels are grouped together and then the consonants are in their voiced/unvoiced pairs.

[@sherylbegby]

That's a great idea!

[@bigsmallgiant3751]

god no can you imagine the nightmare scenario this causes in paper filing

[@sherylbegby]

@@bigsmallgiant3751 That's the least of the nightmares a new alphabet is going to cause, but you're completely right. Will reprints of books be in the new or old spelling? You notice it when you read 19thc German literature. All these 'th's where today it's a straight T (Thor become Tor, Thür Tür etc.)

[@errolv]

The current order, I believe, is arbitrary. Consider Chinese. All those strokes to make one character. A Chinese dictionary is organized in stroke count. I offer you: I C J U S O X T L V P D Q G H N F A Y Z K R B M W E

[@PICTVS]

The problem with having a separate letter for schwa is that most people don't consciously perceive it as a different type of vowel but rather just a weaker version of other vowels. I think it would be better to consistently use a letter that is already used frequently for schwa, like "a" or "e", to write it in al cases. In Dutch we also have schwa as an unstressed vowel, but it's always written as "e".

[@dirk_math6794]

You forget words like "gezellig" and "eindelijk" where the schwa is spelled as "i" or "ij".

[@PICTVS]

@@dirk_math6794 You’re right, I feel so dumb now!

[@pjcdm]

I think phoneticians are splitting hairs too much, but some argue using 1 schwa.

[@pjcdm]

Not a bad video. Thanks. But i think the idea to add letters will demand unnecessary costs (new keyboards in school), and break down communication if we use the French reform model (current users & new learners, starting at grade "allowed" to use either spellings, which happens already with words like colour & color). But a teform is needed. The English spelling system has tens of 1000s of errors, if we extrapolate on Masha Bell's research, that impairs learning to read by 2 y. (Seymour, 2003) for most English-speaking students (vs Finnish students learning a very phonemic orthography). Why do we fix kids when we should fix systems? Do we fix drivers of cars that have faulty parts after crashes? So, lets use the current system. Tweak thousands of words a little. If homonyms scare you, the truth is that no one BATS an eyeLASH OVER them, especially in oral communication. There are many. Context matters of course. If there are too many misunderstanding, alternate spellings could be used, but in rare instances. Sign my petition. twitter.com/DmarePierre/status/1649296424247640064?t=1-mU1QoZnJtyqNhNg0d95w&s=19

[@eidyngloria]

Add schwa but only use ending words with 2 or less syllables. Or between two vowel sounds that is always weak form.

[@sundasrehman3774]

Ur videos are amazing

[@dummie4guitars]

I would choose *š* and *č* to substitute _sh_ and _ch_ respectively. 5:15 Cyrillic letter *ч* is not the best choice: 1) It belongs to non-roman script which is somewhat related to the Greek script. Cyrillic letters are stylistically different from Roman script letters. Ч would surely look alien in a line of Roman letters. Just like Greek, Armenian or Georgian letter would, let alone Chinese or Japanese. 2) Hand-written variant of small letter *ч* is easily confusable with that of Roman small letter *r.* 3) Capital letter *Ч* is easily confusable with digit 4 in some typefaces.

[@RaidenKazehare]

I would make the letter c make a ch sound instead of it making an S or K sound. I would use š for sh, ž for zh(like the su in measure), Q will make a kw sound without the U. I would add both the Þ/þ and Ð/ð(other languages shouldn't impact this at all), I would add the Æ/æ letter. I would add ñ. So the sentence "I love fish and chicken" would become "I love fiš and ciken" as an example Edit: I left out a lot from my vetsion of a revised English alphabet

[@iforgoree]

I agree, that sounds way better!

[@RajasMultiverseOfficial]

In indonesian c already makes the ch sound

[@davefoc]

I didn't include the idea of using c for ch in my long post about this but that was an idea I've had for a long time in my pointless musing about the alphabet. What is the point of the letter C making the sound of an S sometimes and the sound of a K other times. So eliminate C for all current purposes and repurpose it for CH. Let's do it.

[@ILoveGeometryDash29]

How did you type thorn

[@ILoveGeometryDash29]

Oh rught

[@VictorPM1550]

About the ß: in proper German, it has little to do with efficiency. ss or ß determines whether the vowel before it is short or long. Masse (mass) has a short a, Maße (measures/dimensions) has a long a.

[@TheZett]

Also in German a single consonant denouns a long previous vowel, while a double consonant denouns a short previous vowel. While that works for most consonants, such as Hefe (long e, one f) versus Riffe (short i, double f), it doesnt work for S, as a single S in German is already doing the same sound an English Z makes (Nase = Nah-ze), thus we needed another S for the "long/double vowel, singe S" approach, which ended up being how the ẞ is used today (Rose/Ruße/Russe, first two have a long vowel last has a short vowel; first one has an English Z sound "Roh-ze", last two have an English S sound "Ruh-se, Rus-se").

[@matheuslopesdesenhosejogos7647]

U made an awesәme чoice, þese lettәrs are incrediblә!

[@texasmiller5781]

Brilliant. I love it

[@nickynoo70]

I enjoyed this. Phoenetically, "qu" is not one sound but two so, in my opinion it shouldn't be seen as one sound in the alphabet here. I loved that you added schwa. I have taught that to my students every year as we use it so very much in Australia. I liked the addition of thorn, eng, sh and cheh too.

[@kamuidedraak]

*laughs in X*

[@baberiel]

NG is two sounds as well, but you don't mind adding Eng? It seems unnecessary to me

[@kamuidedraak]

@@baberiel Ng is actually only one sound on its own. In fact it's used as such in some languages.

[@baberiel]

@@kamuidedraak but in English, it doesn't appear on its own at all, or at least not that I know of. This is an upgrade for the English (En-glish, not Ng-lish) alphabet. If we start adding all the other sounds from other languages, we should add the clicks from languages like Zulu, etc...but then it's no longer an English alphabet; it becomes a global phonetic alphabet, which is no longer the point.

[@kamuidedraak]

@@baberiel That is not even close to what I said, nor did I suggest such a thing. And it's comically missing the point, to an extreme degree.

[@pradofs]

Well, since the point is trying to simplify the orthography, eliminating confusions, I think it'd be important distinguish the "th" sounds, using Ð (only for /ð/ sound) and Þ (only for /θ/). Plus, despite loving ß, it'd more efficient just turning all the SS into S (when sounded like /s/), using Z when it's /z/. I also think that J should be used with all the /dʒ/, and G only for /g/. C could represent /tʃ/, once K would be used for all the /k/, while Q (without U) could stands for /kw/, so it wouldn't be necessary a new letter. I really enjoyed the other solutions though, like Ə, Ŋ, Ñ, Ş and Ž.

[@dizzydaisy909]

the voicedness of θ doesn't matter in english for almost every word

[@sherylbegby]

Hard agree. I don't think we need a ss/ß distinction which in German only exists to reflect the length of the preceding vowel.

[@Siansonea]

I think using diacritics is the way to go. Essentially it's what ñ is, an n with a tilde diacritic. I think using hačeks for voiced and unvoiced 'th', 'ch', 'sh' and 'zh' (treasure/pleasure/measure 's') is the way to go. With the two forms of 'th', we can use d for voiced 'th' and t for unvoiced 'th', each with a hacek to demonstrate that it's not the standard letter sound. For that matter, the simple solution to q is the throw a breve on it. Take a note from the ñ orthography and put a small u on top of the q. What we really need to do is make separate vowel characters for each vowel sound. Probably easiest to crib the ligatures from IPA or wherever.

[@mackenziekelly1148]

@@dizzydaisy909 "Therapy" "Think" "Thank" "Thick" "Throng" "Throw" : "This" "That" "There" "Them" "Though" "Then" I think you're completely wrong on this one, just my opinion. Those words were right off the top of my head. Maybe I can't think of any that are particularly confusing, but the point is they're two entirely different sounds. We don't write "dough" as "tough" or "go" as "ko" so why should we represent both sounds with only one letter?

[@walterjess4893]

I'm Amazigh from Morocco and I am really happy when you pronounced this letter ⴽⵯ from Tifinagh 😍

[@apenasgargorio]

Something fun about Portuguese is that from my acknowledge, the Ç (Cee with Cedilla) was a later addition. Before, we used either double Ss. in ex: Assucar. and say, Çado, was normally changed to something like, "Icado" in ex: Adocicado.

[@RobWords]

So what do you think? And are there any more letters I should add or take away? EDIT: Who knew that the letter C was so many people's trigger? I'm coming round to the idea that we should get rid of it too. Especially as I've solved the problem of needing it for CH. Keep the ideas coming.

[@mian09]

Ai dont know. Ai sii it ferst.

[@elizabethmcglothlin5406]

Down with c

[@mian09]

Quenya alphabet

[@hrukjan4225]

I have seen the rune ᛢ/ CWEORTH used to represent the Kw sound. Hopefully that helps!

[@MarshallTheArtist]

I think that all of your decisions in this video essay were for personal taste and that none of them make the alphabet more practical. In fact, I think you've made it vastly more awkward.

[@baberiel]

A couple notes: firstly, I think introducing the number four as a new letter pronounced ch...may be problematic. Instead, there's an incredibly simple solution: C says Ch. S and K can do its old job no problem, or even ß and K. Second, as someone else mentioned, we can keep Q as the QU, while simply dropping the U. Third, if we introduce ß, would it be viable to have S say SH by itself, since ẞ is pronounced as an unvoiced S? I know it typically represents SS, but the sound is the same. So instead of adding Ş to say SH, we can just make S say SH and ß say unvoiced S, while Z says voiced S. Does that make sense to anyone else?

[@benledger6451]

Yeah I was waiting for him to say “Make ‘c’ a ‘ch’ sound since it’s utterly redundant on its own.” If I had to change the alphabet, that would absolutely be the first change I’d make. I’m all for your other suggestions, too!

[@idontknowwhatimdoinghere]

You could also assign the ‘ch’ sound to the letter ‘Q’ and assign the ‘sh’ sound to ‘X’.

[@gabenugget114]

cell & sell now: sell & sell ^ unneded homophone

[@pjcdm]

Not a bad video. Thanks. But i think the idea to add letters will demand unnecessary costs (new keyboards in school), and break down communication if we use the French reform model (current users & new learners, starting at grade "allowed" to use either spellings, which happens already with words like colour & color). But a reform is needed. The English spelling system has tens of 1000s of errors, if we extrapolate on Masha Bell's research, that impairs learning to read by 2 y. (Seymour, 2003) for most English-speaking students (vs Finnish students learning a very phonemic orthography). Why do we fix kids when we should fix systems? Do we fix drivers of cars that have faulty parts after crashes? So, lets use the current system. Tweak thousands of words a little. If homonyms scare you, the truth is that no one BATS an eyeLASH OVER them, especially in oral communication. There are many. Context matters of course. If there are too many misunderstanding, alternate spellings could be used, but in rare instances. Sign my petition. twitter.com/DmarePierre/status/1649296424247640064?t=1-mU1QoZnJtyqNhNg0d95w&s=19

[@Writer_Productions_Map]

And instead of Ş, Ч and Ž, make it Š, Č and Ž and remove X (ks)

[@spaceexplorer9000]

I’m still trying to convince myself that this could be the new English alphabet.

[@singlesideman]

You know, there are a lot of S variants: school, spool, stool... I wonder what could be done with those phonemes...

[@ararune3734]

Skul, spul, stul. Get rid of the bloody OO, it's crazy. Your U is useless. Your whole alphabet needs a revamp, Rob didn't do enough. Most of your problems go away if you take the alphabet of South Slavs, pronounce every letter as it's spelled in the alphabet, that's it. English is the only language that doesn't know how to read U.

[@flynns5807]

A lot of these changes are accent-specific. Would people with different accents spell words differently from each other? (For example: ‘ñew’ works for people who pronounce it ‘nyew’, but others don’t add a ‘y’ sound. ‘Lettə’ works for those who “drop the r”, as they say, but others don’t)

[@harlangrove3475]

If the language should be democratic, wouldn't North America dictate English's future? So Americans and Canadians could keep spelling it 'new', but the English would have to spell it 'ñew'. On a tangent, would 'pure' become 'pyur' or 'pyu ər'? If long U should always begin with Y, that'd be 'pur', but 'new' could just be 'nu'. If 'cute' and 'lute' should retain their similar spelling but different pronunciation, who cares how to spell 'new' no matter how it's pronounced?

[@tcconnection]

​@@harlangrove3475 Interesting insight!

[@marjae2767]

@@harlangrove3475 Ƕut abaut pjeir?

[@Yoreni]

@@harlangrove3475 pyó

[@chickadeeacres3864]

When I was learning Spanish, I was thrilled to learn that everything is spelled exactly as it sounds. What a joy!

[@harrychalfin5835]

There are silent Us in Spanish whenever you see the sequence “gue” or “gui.” To indicate that the U must be pronounced, the convention is to write “güe” or “güi” as in “vergüenza” or “pingüino.” And of course, all Hs in Spanish are silent (except in English loanwords).

[@spocksvulcanbrain]

That alone would help the English language 98%. I agree. And for God's sake don't ever reintroduce genders to words for agreement. It's the hardest part of learning Spanish.

[@spocksvulcanbrain]

@@harrychalfin5835 Actually the "u" IS pronounced. For example in the word pingüino, it is "guu eee no" not "gee no" as if the "u" were silent. It's a diphthong. If people enunciated correctly that is.

[@harrychalfin5835]

@@spocksvulcanbrain let me clarify: In Spanish, the letters C and G are hard before the vowels A, O, or U; C and G are soft before the vowels E or I. (Though I think in Spanish they reverse the "hard" and "soft" labels when referring to these sounds.) In IPA notation: Hard C: \k\ Soft C: \s\ Hard G: \g\ Soft G: \h\ (or \x\) But what if you want a *hard* C or G sound to be followed by an E or an I? For a hard C sound: Use Q, followed by a silent U (ex: ¿qué? ¿quién?). If the letter C is used instead of the Q, it means that the U must be pronounced (ex: ¿cuándo? ¿cuánto?) In the original Latin (and in the other modern Romance languages I believe), these were all spelled with QU, pronounced \kw\, as in modern English. For a hard G sound: Retain the G but insert a silent U (ex: guerra, jugúe, Guillermo). The presence of the silent U tells us that the G is hard. But this still leaves open the question how we should spell a word with the sound \gw\ (as in "Gwen") followed by an E or an I. That's where the dieresis comes in. Examples: 1) vergüenza (pronounced /beɾˈɡwensa/, NOT /beɾˈhensa/ or /beɾˈgensa/) 2) pingüino (pronounced /pĩŋˈɡwi.no/, NOT pĩŋˈhi.no or pĩŋˈgi.no) 3) lingüistico (pronounced /linˈɡwi.sti.ko/, NOT /linˈhi.sti.ko/ or /linˈɡi.sti.ko/) Hope that clears it up. Do you agree?

[@NanobanaKinako]

​@@harrychalfin5835Also in Spanish double L is pronounced L + Y like Sevilla is actually pronounced Sevilya.

[@LIGIJOSEPH-pr4rl]

Dude I LOVED the letter “kwak”. It’s so good. And the letters “thorn, eng, and ente(including kwak) made efficiency of the English Alphabet a 100 times better.

[@lamMeTV]

reusing letter is always better than random new letters.

[@MK-mm7ui]

Do you mean repurposing? Like X would make SH sound for example?

[@DanLynch2814]

This is something I've been thinking about for years - just call 'W' WE instead of double-U. Then it fits with most of the other letters (except H, weirdo) and it could double as the word 'we', saving more time. Side note - I'd keep 'zed' as I just like how it sounds.

[@pjcdm]

Not a bad video. Thanks. But i think the idea to add letters will demand unnecessary costs (new keyboards in school), and break down communication if we use the French reform model (current users & new learners, starting at grade "allowed" to use either spellings, which happens already with words like colour & color). But a teform is needed. The English spelling system has tens of 1000s of errors, if we extrapolate on Masha Bell's research, that impairs learning to read by 2 y. (Seymour, 2003) for most English-speaking students (vs Finnish students learning a very phonemic orthography). Why do we fix kids when we should fix systems? Do we fix drivers of cars that have faulty parts after crashes? So, lets use the current system. Tweak thousands of words a little. If homonyms scare you, the truth is that no one BATS an eyeLASH OVER them, especially in oral communication. There are many. Context matters of course. If there are too many misunderstanding, alternate spellings could be used, but in rare instances. Sign my petition. twitter.com/DmarePierre/status/1649296424247640064?t=1-mU1QoZnJtyqNhNg0d95w&s=19

[@cferracini]

I like it. Double-u is dead. From now on W is pronounced we. Long live W(we)

[@martabateman4241]

I love the cyrillic alphabet, there is a letter for every sound and once you know the alphabet you can read everything perfectly, as it is absolutely phonetic. It has the sh letter which looks like a cursive W, it has the shch letter which is the cursive w with a little tail, it has the ch letter you displayed and the ts letter which sounds like the zeds in pizza or the ts in lots, bits, etc. And it even has the soft sound to add when you want to soften a letter as in a soft n sound.

[@lonesail]

Cyrillic also neeeds to be adapted to local langages. For example as far as I know no cyrillic alphabet has a letter for "TH" sound, or even any way to approximate it, and russian cyrillic doesn't have a letter for "W" sound - but Belorussian does.

[@martabateman4241]

@@lonesail True, we just don't have those sounds in our languages.so not a problem.

[@reotor]

​@@lonesailThe English alphabet has already been converted to Cyrillic, although not officially the other day look at the alphabet "Cyringlisch" from "Niño Eduardo Evan Fernande" (I hope I spelled it right).

[@reotor]

​​@@lonesailse the expanded Cyrillic. Like you use the extended Latin alphabet, the Germans or Czechs use it. Because the same Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet is Cyrillic, but expanded. (The following Cyrillic characters can be used for th: Ђђ-[ð] Ћћ-[θ] (they are from the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet))

[@benismann]

it's not "absolutely" phonetic coz of vowel reduction in languages like russian and consonants shifting into kind of a "weaker" forms at times. But that's still very minor difference compared to, for example, english, so ye, kinda also soft sign literally only exists in russian

[@TheHairlessGibbon]

Thank you, you and three others make KZbin worth its salt. How Do We change the alphabet Or the Months or even Days ? My handle on here does find itself being justified with our inability to adapt and move forward. So my question - What hurdles must we clear to make these changes ?

[@szymonj.rucinski3843]

I absolutely loved the chaotic energy this video had

[@sandrafaith]

Damn, that's a perfect description. Chaotic energy. I LOVE IT

[@AAurum-yy7rv]

I stan thorn but I will hear no more tarnishing of the good name of Q she’s perfect the way she is and she deserves to be seen

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

Indeed! The problem isn’t with q it is with u. We need to accept that q makes the kw sound not the k sound. Then just drop the u from any word where it is paired with q since it is no longer needed and use k for the few words where q makes a k sound.

[@michaelstreeter3125]

@@donkeysaurusrex7881 I hereby declare that if I _ever_ see a Q with no U (for example qeen) I will not try to correct it.

[@harshsrivastava9570]

​@@michaelstreeter3125 but the word originally was 'cwen'

[@servantofaeie1569]

@@harshsrivastava9570 No, "cƿen" is the oldest spelling (in the Roman alphabet). Anglo-Saxons didn't use "uu" (often modernized as "w") until after the Norman invasion.

[@carol5763]

Would we have to change the Freddie Mercury band to Qeen then? What of the logo?

[@Quirktart]

I say that we either ditch c or change its purpose to only be used for the "ch" sound, as its the only sound c is used for that can't be replaced by another letter

[@kodabernacki3554]

I thought this was going to be a joke video but nope. This is some great work ill use it to help standerdize this.

[@NicoPinedo]

This was almost therapeutic to watch. Like cleaning out an old cupboard, except the cupboard is the English language, and old meaning hundreds of years. I’ve recently been learning a bit of Basque, and was surprised to find out their written language was only formalised in the 1960s. This seems to have made their alphabet very efficient and logical.

[@RedNightDragon1]

Basque uses "tx" for "ch", which is amazing, but they didn't invent their own letter for that sound. Which shows that most languages are going to employ diagraphs rather than have a single letter.

[@TheofanisIII]

The German ß does not actually replace a double s. Old signs are just spelled wrong because there was no type for ß, and for some reason it established itself that way. In reality they are distinct, the regular German s is voiced like an English z, but an ß is unvoiced. A double s on the other hand is unvoiced and additially modifies the vowel prior to it to be spoken faster, just like in English.

[@boghund]

Yep. Mase, Masse and Maße are all pronouned differently

[@cantopig9639]

I was just about to say that lol

[@cogspace]

Replacing an „ß" with „ss" isn't wrong exactly. It's a recognized alternative, at least in Hochdeutsch. Indeed, it's the standard when words are written in all-capitals. But going the other way, you can't always replace „ss" with „ß". I know, it's confusing. Tut mir Leid. =)

[@Hirnspatz]

In addition, German speaking countries reduces the use of ß in the big "Spelling reform" where ß after a short short vowel was replaced with ss. For example, Fluß (short u) became Fluss, whereas Fuß (long u) stays as it was.

[@christ2381]

Yes. Or it was a street in Switzerland or Liechtenstein where they don't have a "ß". It got lost in the change from Fraktur to Antiqua whereas it was reinvented in Germany for the new font. And some Germans think that the new writing rules changed every "ß" to "ss". In my hometown are new signs "Hauptstrasse" and "Berliner Strasse" even I don't see any Swarowski there.

[@jonathanwei2477]

it's not really consistent if you want to add þ but not ð, ş but not ç; furthermore you can also look at czech for example, they use š to make the sh sound, and as others have mentioned, ž and č. it's all or nothing ;) also, the ß, not all "ss" combinations are replaceable, for example, "dass" (that) in german is not "daß". so there needs to be some rules for replacement.

[@saaiib]

i honestly rlly like this pls make this the new alphabet😭😭😭

[@mschatten]

I love the initiative! Being a Croat I was always flabergasted by the complex spelling of most languages. As kids we never had to learn spelling, just the letters because of the simple idea that YOU SPELL IT AS YOU SAY IT. All around ex-Yugoslavia we have this principle and it makes the spelling obsolete, we just use a phonetic way of spelling mapped to our alphabeth. There are no spelling contests around here ;) In the same way it would be much easier for the English language to use such a principle. We even already use it as a joke in Croatia, since you can spell almost all of English the way it sounds, for example - Robvorc iz a grejt čenl - Robwords is a great channel. (or another example, a famous joke here in Croatia: Pipl mast trast as - People must trust us).

[@harlangrove3475]

There are at least 8 ways to pronounce A in English. Phonetic spelling isn't possible in English unless one accepts phonetic overloading for almost every letter.

[@patrickmccurry1563]

@@harlangrove3475 And only uses one accent. Spelling would be different for how I pronounce English compared to how he does, for example. (I'm Pacific NW U.S.)

[@Leanzazzy]

Both of you guys are right. You can use phonetic spelling because every person pronounces words differently and each person has a different idea of what each letter sounds like.

[@commentfreely5443]

i'm all for using Latin alphabet. less letters not more.

[@lajosszel]

Hey neighbo(u)r, tell me about lj, is this really a different sound than just l and j after each-other? We also have these soft letters like "ny/nj" so I understand the difference, but in case of lj I always wondered whether it's really a different sound. In Hungarian, ly is completely unnecessary, sounds like 'j' in Croatian and we also have j for this.

[@pawel.uszakow]

In this case you can just switch to cyrillic alphabet, where there are a lot of characters that represent the English sounds. TH can be replaced with an old letter Ѳ (fita), that has the origin of Greek's theta. In old Russian script it represented F sound, but it was used only in borrowed Greek words with theta. W sound looks like Ў in Belorussian, shwa also exists in Cyrillic, different J-like sounds exist in Serbian. Соў, ѳə модəрн инглиш лэнгўиџ куд лук лайк ѳиз энд, ай кэн ассйум ѳэт ит ўил би мач изиəр фор йу ту спел ѳиз ўей [So, the modern English language could look like this and I can assume that it will be much easier for you to spell this way].

[@thefountainpendesk]

YES!!!

[@BlackRasta207]

That looks so cursed omg xD

[@jojo.s_bekaar_adventures]

إف ذۍټ إز ذ کېس ذئن وي کۍن آلسؤ یوْز ذ ماډيفايډ پرسؤ-ۍرَبک (پښتو) ۍلفابئټ ټوْ رايټ إنګلش ۍز وئل If that is the case then we can also use the modified perso-arabic (pashto) alphabet to write English as well

[@Nitrox-.]

Fun thought indeed. In general most slavic languages do a pretty good job with their alphabets. However, (all hypothetical obviously) making a population that is used to roman letters switch to fully cyrillic probably won't gain a lot of support. A variant of the roman alphabet with representation of these sounds would probably be a more practical solution. Something more like the czech alphabet with š, ž, č. And I don't really understand the reasoning behind not using both θ or þ and ð either - the IPA actually does this.

[@pawel.uszakow]

@@Nitrox-. I don't disagree and actually I do support your way of doing things, because my take was more of a joke, than a reasonable offer. However the biggest problem with your proposal is the reading habits. If you just replace everything with the same letters, it will be much harder to relearn to read and to write comparing to the brand new system with a different alphabet

[@Bolpat]

10:00 In Germany and Austria, if you write “Strasse”, the teacher will mark it as incorrect - because it is. ẞ serves a very good purpose: It’s an undoubled consonant, whereas ss (obviously) is. The A in Maße is long and the A in Masse is short; the single/double consonant indicates that. possible → poßible hostess (stay) fitness (stay) bass → baß (at least for the fish) grass (stay) possess (conflicted) stress (stay) chassis (stay)

[@artschool673]

That was hilarious!! I think that the best way to represent the sounds is to use the IPA (perhaps changing the symbols for tʃ and dʒ which are double). Anyway, you left out all most of the vowel system out, which is the real issue for speakers of languages with fewer vowel sounds. 0:04

[@rateeightx]

Trying to respell English Vowels would be a nigh-impossible task, It already has a significant number of vowel sounds (Among the highest of any language, I believe), but how many vowels there are and which specific vowels there are also varies heavily by dialect, not to mention what vowels are used in what words.

[@sanicmaniac]

18:08 is this how we're spelling chum now 💀

[@OlegDorbitt]

There's a typo. It should be "чum"

[@LucasLegalBatata]

Çum

[@Tetracontakaitetragon]

​@@LucasLegalBatata why

[@YouTube.Guest.Account]

ayo

[@jonforbes9792]

I'm a school-based speech-language pathologist and I have been discussing the schwa sound with one of the students on my caseload. I'll have to show him your section about the schwa. Also, I vote for including both thorn and eth to differentiate between voiceless and voiceless "th." Theta from the Greek alphabet also is an option for voiceless "th."

[@jdhatl]

The two pronunciations of "th" are such a difficult thing to explain to people needing to pronounce words correctly. A separate letter (or letter pair) would be nice.

[@pjcdm]

Not a bad video. Thanks. But i think the idea to add letters will demand unnecessary costs (new keyboards in school), and break down communication if we use the French reform model (current users & new learners, starting at grade "allowed" to use either spellings, which happens already with words like colour & color). But a teform is needed. The English spelling system has tens of 1000s of errors, if we extrapolate on Masha Bell's research, that impairs learning to read by 2 y. (Seymour, 2003) for most English-speaking students (vs Finnish students learning a very phonemic orthography). Why do we fix kids when we should fix systems? Do we fix drivers of cars that have faulty parts after crashes? So, lets use the current system. Tweak thousands of words a little. If homonyms scare you, the truth is that no one BATS an eyeLASH OVER them, especially in oral communication. There are many. Context matters of course. If there are too many misunderstanding, alternate spellings could be used, but in rare instances. Sign my petition. twitter.com/DmarePierre/status/1649296424247640064?t=1-mU1QoZnJtyqNhNg0d95w&s=19

[@francisboyle1739]

@@jdhatl I suspect that would just transfer the problem to the spelling which would be worse.

[@_blank-_]

Or just write voiced "the" as "dhe". "Dhis", "dhere", "dhat", "dhem", "dhose".

[@meteoman7958]

@@pjcdm See my comment above.

[@michaellokejy9724]

Your logo looks good

[@Becky_Cooling]

this is a great idea! just one thing that i would change, i would use some other letters (even if they have to be designed) instead of the letters with accents.

[@smeeself]

I love your KWAK, but couldn't we just keep the Q and dispense with having to put a U behind it?