Ordering The Alphabet

The letters are all out of alphabetical order! "A" first? "Z" last? What's the point of "C" when it can either be "S" or "K"? All those questions you never had, and more, coming right up. Disclaimer: This only works for American English. Sorry, 95% of the rest of the world!

Old Alphabet

Currently, the alphabet as we know it contains 26 letters. It's ordered:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

But this makes no sense, we can make it better.

Sounds

Let's start by removing redundant letters. For example, "X" is equivalent to "KS". I could spell the word "example" as "eksample" and it would sound the exact same. I propose removing the following letters:

Letter	Replaced By
C	K or S
Q	KW
W	OO
X	KS
Y	EE or AIE

There are a few sounds missing from the alphabet that need their own letter. For now, they will be written as letter pairs, but if a permanent alphabet 2.0 is created, we would be able to design 3 whole new characters to put in it!

Sound
Ng
Sh
Th

As you might have guessed, the "ch" sound can be written as "tsh", so there is no need to include a redundant "ch" letter.

There are also a few rule changes when it comes to what sounds each letter can make:

Letter	Allowed	Not Allowed	Correct
F	for	of	ov
G	get	wage	waje

Letters

Now, let's talk about individual letters. There are many letters that are spelled incorrectly. Let's fix that:

Letter	Current Spelling	Proposed Spelling	Changed?
A	Ay	Ha or Hae	y
B	Bee	Bee	n
C	See		removed
D	Dee	Dee	n
E	Eee	Ehh or Eee	y
F	Eff	Fee	y
G	Djee	Gee (hard "G")	y
H	Aych	Hee
I	Aye	Hih or Hi	y
J	Jay	Jee	y
K	Kay	Kee	y
L	Ell	Lee	y
M	Emm	Mee	y
N	Enn	Nee	y
O	Oh	Hoh or Hoo	y
P	Pee	Pee	n
Q	Kyew		removed
R	Arr	Ree	y
S	Ess	See	y
T	Tee	Tee	n
U	Yoo	Huh or Hue	y
V	Vee	Vee	n
W	Double yoo		removed
X	Eks		removed
Y	Wye		removed
Z	Zee	Zee	n

And for our letter additions:

Letter	Proposed Spelling
Ng	Ngee
Sh	Shee
Th	Thee

Vowels

I've been deliberately holding off doing vowel rules, because this will be a doozy. Each vowel currently can make so many different sounds. We need to make (and enforce) new rules that say exactly what each vowel can make. You might have already seen a "teaser" of this in my letter spelling. For vowels, I included different spellings depending on which vowel type you are using.

For example, the letter "A" can be used in the words "apple"/"half", "car"/"ball", and "baby"/"anger", where all of these have different pronounciations. For the sound in "car"/"ball", I propose using the short "O" sound, so these would be spelled "kor" and "bol", respectively.

This new alphabet also alleviates the need for double letters. It should also go without saying that there are no silent letters. For example, "fight" would be spelled "fait".

Vowel	Allowed (short)	Allowed (long)	Not Allowed	Replaced By
A	apple, half	baby, anger	car, ball	short "o"
E	pen, let	feel, meet	the	short "u"
I	bin, six	fine, tiger	fling	long "ee"
O	loft, hot	short, no	do, food	long "u"
U	run, stunk	dune, fluke	round	short "ao"

This limits vowels to just 2 "types", short and long. We could create separate letters for each of these sounds, but for now I have kept them together with just 2 different pronounciations.

We also need to add one more vowel for the "oo" sound in "book", which for now I will write as a double "O".

Vowel	Proposed Spelling	Examples
Oo	Hooh	book, wood, foot

Note: Vowels by nature will simply be more permissive. For example, as I'm writing this, I realized I never accounted for the "a" sound in "ran". Perhaps it could be the "long" sound for for "Oo"? There are too many vowel sounds that we make in our language.

Ordering

In the standard alphabet, the vowels are in positions 1, 5, 9, 15, and 21.

A___E___I_____O_____U_____

It starts out with a decent pattern: 1 vowel, 3 consonants, 1 vowel, 3 consonants, 1 vowel... and then 5 consonants, 1 vowel, 5 consonants, 1 vowel, ending in 5 consonants. The pattern breaks quickly, so what I propose is to group all vowels at the beginning of the alphabet, including our new "Oo" vowel. We'll sort these based on where the sound comes from in your throat/mouth, starting from most constrictive to least (using short sounds.)

I, E, A, Oo, U, O

Using long sounds, you get a similar but slightly different pattern:

E, I, A, Oo, U, O

Let's order the consonants the same way. First, grouping them up by sound location.

1. Mouth Open
   • H
2. Tongue on teeth
   • Th
3. Lips touching
   • B
   • M
   • P
4. Teeth on lips
   • F
   • V
5. Toungue behind front teeth
   • D
   • L
   • N
   • T
6. Tongue on front roof
   • S
   • Z
7. Tongue on middle roof
   • J
   • Sh
8. Tongue on back roof
   • G
   • K
   • R
   • Ng

And we'll order by least to most "impact" for each subgroup. For example, "T" is more impactful than "L" within its group, so it will show up later in the alphabet.

H | Th | M, B, P | V, F | L, N, D, T | Z, S | Sh, J | R, Ng, G, K

Alphabet 2

So, here is the final proposed, Alphabet 2.0, with its 25 glorious letters!

Letter	Spelling	Example
I	Hih/Hi	pit
E	Ehh/Eee	pet
A	Ha/Hae	pat
Oo	Hooh	put
U	Huh/Hue	pun
O	Hoh/Hoo	pot
H	Hee	hot
Th	Thee	that
M	Mee	mat
B	Bee	bat
P	Pee	pat
V	Vee	vat
F	Fee	fat
L	Lee	pal
N	Nee	pan
D	Dee	pad
T	Tee	tad
Z	Zee	zap
S	See	sap
Sh	Shee	ship
J	Jee	jab
R	Ree	rap
Ng	Ngee	rang
G	Gee	gap
K	Kee	kin

Practical Use

Just for fun, let's write an English sentence and then translate it to alphabet 2 using the rules I've created. Let's use the famous:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

In case you weren't aware, it uses every letter in the English language (so far!) So, without further ado, here it is translated:

Thu kwik braon foks jumps ovr thu laze dog.

Here's one more:

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

Sfenks uv blak kworts, juj mi vao.