Sunday, November 15, 2009

Thoughts on The Letter C



The letter c is worse than worthless; it infringes on the letters k and s, two outstanding phonemes. Restated, c is a poser letter waffling in sound from s to k; it is nothing on its own. Any word with the letter c may be better written with one of the other two based on the word’s sound. Thus, the letter c needs to be removed from English.

A c supporter may argue that c is needed in words like cheese and chip. However this digraph or letter blend makes its own sound independent of either the c or h. The letter k would work equally well here.

The letter c’s insidious behavior is not limited to it’s wan-a-bee sounds. It has undeservedly removed E from poor students’ grade reports. The letter grades A, B, D E, F would work quite well without modifying a 4 point grading system. c doesn’t belong here either.

It gets worse, fine words like see, seize, sea and even the Spanish si are needlessly libeled by c. None of these plaintiff homophones are even written with a c

Again, the undeserving, c sneaks into our language as a prefix in words like c-section and c-clamp. It fails here as well. A c-section delivery of a baby has nothing to do with a c shape. Instead, based on word origin, it refers to the method of Julius Cesar’s birth, thus cesarean-section. Under the improved system it would rightly be referred to as an s-sektion. Next, c-clamp is equally wrong. The tool would more truly be named a D-klamp based on shape. Note the improved spelling.

I implore you to think about the damage c’s do everyday. A thoughtful pondering to this essay will inevitably have you seeing the alphabet my way.

Sinserely,
Heath Anderson

P.S I must note a key dissimilarity to c’s in musik where they are in the midst of many great works.

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