Kicking out X or Z?

There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it.

Is it a complete cop out to choose one of these letters? There is a reason they are worth so much in scrabble. It’s hard to think of words that use them. In cursive an ‘x’ isn’t even given much of a form, it almost looks like it’s a connector to another letter until you go back in after the fact to add the slash. Now so far I’ve only used either once and that was because I was directly referring to it so I don’t think it really ‘counts’. However what if those letters had never been incorporated into our alphabet? What would my childhood favorite animal (the horse with the black and white stripes) be called then? A Stebra?

I’ve had dealings with working with alternative alphabets before and it was odd. When I studied abroad in Italy I was surprised to discover (or perhaps finally notice) that the letter ‘J’ isn’t in the Italian alphabet (only for foreign words like jeans). This made it pretend difficult for yours truly since my name is Jamie. My Italian professor (who was giving us a crash course in the language) had a hard time differentiating my name with my classmate Jenny. As a result I didn’t have to answer too many questions, not a bad trade off. However this didn’t make me wonder, how did we all come to know Julius Caesar? Should we not all know Yulius?

If we had to get rid of a letter I’d rather we pitch silent ones. To this day I don’t understand why we insist on using a ‘w’ for the words wrench, wrong, write etc. Or the b’s in subtle or lamb. The former word I used so much in my writing and not speech that for a while when I would say it I would pronounce the b. In my head I’d always stress the b so I wouldn’t misspell the word. Oh the fun with inner thoughts versus spoken ones. Anyway, that’s my cop out for this lovely Monday. Kick out the 24th and 26th letters (or if I’m choosing one the 24th because there were a couple times I wanted to use the latter).

words I had to rethink:

• notice (instead of realize)
• stress (instead of emphasize)
• had never been incorporated into our alphabet (instead of didn’t exist)