Friday Unwind #19: A New Alphabet; Moby Dick and the Sinking of the Essex
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🐇A Bit of a Change This Week…
Hi Friends. I usually have five or six things that I throw out there each week. This week, I fell down the rabbit hole while exploring the history of the alphabet and then the history behind Moby Dick. I got totally sucked in lol! I hope you’ll enjoy the adventure with me.
🔠 A NEW ALPHABET AND NEW SPELLINGS JUST FOR YOU!
Hey there friends. That old alphabet has been around since the 16th century. Time for a change, doncha think?
After all, there have been changes over time.
The first letter ‘A’ was actually upside down. It looked like a deer with antlers. ‘B’ wasn’t much better. It laid on its belly and looked like a house with a roof. The letter ‘E’ was a stick figure with two arms and one leg (must have been a pirate letter, aarrrgh). ‘H’ got dumped from the alphabet around 500A.D., but somehow sneaked back in later in life. Every letter had a pretty strange start.
So I’ve made slight modifications, which I’m sure you’ll appreciate (heh heh). Say good-bye to the letter Q. (Sorry keyboard…)
And the way we spell words… did we just hire someone and say, “Now make spelling as hard as you can so those little kids struggle to win the Spelling Bee”? I think so.
Granted, before the printing press, humans relied on other humans (good idea???) to translate and rewrite books. That definitely left words up to the interpretation of the penner.🖋
And the English language is really an amalgamation of words from other languages, so that has mucked things up too.
I got to thinking. Time for a change! And away we go (thank you Johnny Carson):
Vowel Conventions
We’re keeping those cute little vowels:
‘A’ can make a long sound like ‘a’ in ‘mate’ or ‘late’. Or ‘A’ can sound like ‘a’ in ‘can’ or ‘pan’.
‘E’ can make a long sound like ‘e’ in ‘seen’ or ‘mean’. Or ‘E’ can sound like ‘e’ in ‘hen’ or ‘went’.
‘I’ can make a long sound like ‘i’ in ‘wipe’ or ‘time’. Or ‘I’ can sound like ‘i’ in ‘hit’ or ‘sit’.
‘O’ can make a long sound like ‘o’ in ‘hope’ or ‘rose’. Or ‘O’ can sound like ‘o’ in ‘hot’ or ‘top’.
‘U’ can make a long sound like ‘u’ in ‘useful’ or ‘huge’. Or ‘U’ can sound like ‘u’ in ‘under’ or ‘bun’.
That sounds pretty standard, right? Now, fasten your seatbelts because….
When a vowel makes the long sound, you will put a dash over the letter.
Why? Because we are dumping that silent ‘E’ at the end of words that we have used to show us when to use the ‘long vowel’ sound. Who needs it!
If there is no ‘dash’ over the vowel, then it makes the short sound. K? Easy peasy.
Consonant Conventions
These guys need a little attention too. So we’re gonna give them a little love. The following letters are getting a makeover:
C: This letter will only be used with the letter ‘H’ to make the CH sound as in CHANGE.
E: In addition to its vowel conventions, we are dropping the letter E from the end of words (we used it to make the previous vowel sound long). Instead we are using the dash over the vowel to make the long sound. 😁
F: This letter will only be used to make a true ‘F’ sound as in FUN. It will no longer be used in words that actually sound like the letter V, as in OF. That word is now spelled UV (because the short sound of U is like UNDER)
G: This letter will only be used for words that make the ‘hard’ G sound as in GO. It will no longer be used for words like GENTRY. The letter J will do that work.
J: This letter will be used the make the soft J sound as in JOKE.
K: This letter will be used to make all hard C and K sounds. As an example, COKE will become KŌK. (Remember, we dumped the silent E at the end) Isn’t this fun!
OO: The combined letters OO will make the sound as in COOL. (Now KOOL). Examples: YOU becomes YOO, DO is DOO, SHOE is SHOO.
OW: These two letters combine to make the sound OW as in TOWN and CLOWN, also in NOUN which is now NOWN and AROUND which is now UROWND (See vowel U).
Q: Q is gone, replaced by the letter K. To get the old QU sound, use KW. The old QUICK is now KWIK.
S: The letter S will be used just for the S sound as in SUN. When it makes a Z sound, as in EASE, it is being replaced by the letter Z. So, using our new conventions, the word EASE becomes ĒZ. If you want to say EASY, you write ĒZĒ.
SH: Forget that whole ‘tion’ thing we’ve been using. Like INSTRUCTION. TION is being replaced by SH. INSTRUKSHUN.
UR: The letters UR will be used in words that make the sound as in the word CURD, replacing words such as WORD and HERD with the words WURD and HURD and LEARN with LURN and HER with HUR.
Y: The letter Y will no longer be used at the end of words to make the long E sound. Y will be used in words to make a Y sound as in YET.
Z: The letter Z will be used to make the soft Z sound, as in ZEBRA. It will replace the letter S in words where S was used to make the Z sounds, as in EASY (See letter S, above).
B, I, J, O, P, R, T, U: These letters can actually be words. Why write out ‘be’ or ‘bee’ when you can just use ‘b’. Same goes for the other letters listed here. This strategy is only to be used when the letter is the whole word, not part of a word.
Confused yet? This will be fun. Really! And of course, you’ll find words that don’t fit these new conventions so we’ll just have to deal with them.🤣
Here’s a sample using our new conventions. See if you can interpret! (You go, Mitch Allen):
Wē r now ūzing thu noo wurd konvenshunz too rīt evrēthing. This wil b sō much fun. Mābē wē r thu furst in thu wurld too trī dooing crāzē langwej līk this. Whut doo u think?
Trī rīting sumthing in thu cawments. (Noo York aksent!🤣)
Did Ī māk enē mistāks? Probablē.
……………
PS: There is a bit of a hitch in this giddy-up… getting those little dashes on top of the vowels is a trick. I opened a blank word document, then used the ‘insert’ feature, then clicked on ‘Symbols’ (more symbols), then searched for the vowels with the dash on top, then inserted each one in my word document, then copied and pasted the concoction into this post. Phew…. or Fū!
OK. On to the next Friday fun….
⛵ MOBY-DICK AND THE SINKING OF THE ESSEX
On November 20th, 1820 (203 years ago), an 85 foot white sperm whale rammed the 88 foot whaling ship, the Essex, at a speed of nearly 28 miles per hour. The bow of the ship shattered and the Essex sank. Two thousand miles west of the coast of South America, the crew of twenty manned the three remaining damaged 28 foot whale boats. They had a few navigational tools, a little water and some food, mostly Galapagos turtles.
The journey that started on August 12, 1819 with 21 crew members, ended with the final rescue of the 8 survivors, the corpses of 7 crew members having been eaten.
In October 1821, surviving first mate, Owen Chase, wrote penned his account of the disaster Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Herman Melville used this as inspiration for his 1851 book, Moby-Dick.
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💬 COMMENTS
Got a poem, a story, a sentence to share using our new alphabet and words? 🔠
Umm, about that alphabet things……huh?
Do you think our new word konvenshunz standS a chance?
How about that Essex? Eeeeps. And 31 years later…. Moby-Dick.
Do you like fishing? Could be a whale of a good time… 🐟
What interesting news (non political please) have you uncovered this week?📰
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Wherever you are, I hope life is sunny. 🌞❤Heather
PS: My other publication, Kindness Magnet, has recently returned from getting a makeover. Here’s how you can subscribe (Oh, please do.). If you head on over there you can dive down the rabbit hole with me and some awesome readers…🐇
How about Û? rûf, lûk, shûd?
As far as keyboards changing.... forget it.
Heather, you are right there with my fictional character Joey as my favorite autodidact!
I predict Mitchell will love this!
I am also guessing you have great fun in the rabbit hole. Great job