I was on the phone the a few months back and had to give my name to the operator so I did; then she asked me to repeat it. I said it again and she still didn’t get it so I had to spell it for her. I started with S which I thought should have been easy enough.
She responded with F at least that the way it sounded so I had to ask her to say it again. Our conversation turned into something of a bad Who’s on First sketch with both of us cast as Lou Costello.
In our alphabet, we have twenty six letters which, when used in various combinations, helps to form all of the words of the English language. I hate to be Captain Obvious here but the rules of English are anything but obvious. At first glance, English seems easy enough but with so many letters sounding like other letters, and letters even changing their sound depending on the word they’re in, it’s no wonder I had to take English classes from grade school all the way through college. And with all of this education, including a bachelor’s degree in English, I still make mistakes.
In our alphabet, we have twenty six letters which, when used in various combinations, helps to form all of the words of the English language. I hate to be Captain Obvious here but the rules of English are anything but obvious. At first glance, English seems easy enough but with so many letters sounding like other letters, and letters even changing their sound depending on the word they’re in, it’s no wonder I had to take English classes from grade school all the way through college. And with all of this education, including a bachelor’s degree in English, I still make mistakes.
After the telephone experience, when spelling words (usually to operators over the phone) I go through the motions of not only saying S, but I now say S as in Sam. There is no fam in English so it makes it easier for the listener. It’s funny that one letter is confused with another even though they don’t sound alike when used in words; for example, I don’t know anyone who has ever confused fat with sat.
I went through the alphabet a letter at a time which is hard to do because I have to sing the alphabet song which is fine for my purposes here but wouldn’t work so well on a road side sobriety check while I’m hopping on one leg at 2am.
While singing the song of my kindergarten alma mater, I realized that there are many letters which sound similar. A and K are tonally equivalent. The letters T, B, C, D, Z, E, C, P, and G, all sound alike; to avoid confusion, I’ve had to invent my own set of universal words to represent each letter. Now I say P as in Peter and Z as in Zebra but there are certain words which are not considered spellbindingly acceptable.
T as in Thomas seems somewhat standard whereas T as in thespian is not. It might have something to do paying penance to the apostle Thomas after the whole doubting Jesus incident which spawned the term Doubting Thomas. B as in boy is okay but B as in bologna is considered odd. X as in x-ray works but you can’t say X as in Xerox. C as in cat is thumbs up and C as in caricature seems like something someone with a word-a-day calendar would say as is Caesar and Celtic and Cyrillic and celestial.
It would make sense if we had the same issue with numbers but we really don’t. I’ve never said there are 9,742 people in my town; that’s 9 as in a cat has nine lives, 7 like in The Seven Dwarves or the seven deadly sins, 4 as in four-score-and-seven-years-ago, and 2 like in I’m putting in my two cents. The Number de Architect (as I like to call him - his real name was Digit Numbfucius) put a lot of thought into his whole number plan. There are ten basic numbers and anything outside of that, is just two or more numbers hooked together. Numbers don’t have crazy definitions or pronunciations that change depending on the number that precedes it or comes after it. Like a C, a 3 never sounds like a K or an S depending on its surroundings. Why even have a C anyway? The K covers half and the S has the rest.
It seems as though the alphabet was written much in the same way the last house in a large development is built. They use the framework of the best layouts but have to do it with whatever parts are left, and on the property with the entire development’s tree stumps buried in the backyard.
English has become the mullet and tank top at the black tie event of languages. Rather than go for a change of attire, we just put on a baseball cap of mispronunciation and long sleeve shirt of new rules of phonics.
We could blame this whole language debacle on England; we actually borrowed English from England as it was too difficult to plan a tea party, a revolution, and create a new language in addition to naming every town and village on the eastern seaboard using the names of towns and villages from England.
I need to stop writing and get this to my publisher before it’s late. That’s L as in litteraphobia, A as in alphabet, T as in thesaurus, and E as in etymology.
