new letters sensation

From the Onion:

Alphabet Updated With 15 Exciting New Replacement Letters
NEW YORK—Dynamic, sleek, and sexy is how a panel of typographic and marketing experts described the 15 new replacement letters they unveiled Monday in an effort to reinvigorate the faltering English alphabet.

Ho, ho, ho.

Reading on we find that the new, reinvigorating letters are all straighforwardly one-for-one replacements of old letters. Humdrum old T gives way to a new “edgily reimagined” , while U is replaced by “innovative new” .

There is no mention of possible more radical reinvigorations such as the abandonment of obsolete letters no longer required (Q, anyone? who needs X?) or the addition of thrusting new letters (hail, Ə! hi, ŋ!).

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In other news, Masha (ˈmɑːʃə) Bell, author of the very useful Understanding English Spelling (Pegasus Educational, 2004), has launched a new spelling blog on the same host website as this one.
Masha is great at compiling lists of examples, exceptions and inconsistencies, and has an excellent appreciation of the relationships between sounds and letters. I only wish she felt confident enough to deploy some phonetic symbols.

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And in yet other news… today is the 150th anniversary of Zamenhof’s birth. Google has created a special logo to mark the occasion. You won’t find it on the UK site, but it’s there at google.fr, google.de, google.pl, google.cn, and google.jp and a dozen others.