http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12 ... z2UAvE0Vl7

I'm not going to cut and paste the whole article---the advertisers at mentalfloss.com pay the writers to get people like us to see their ads on their web site---even if none of us has any intention of buying a Mini Cooper. But it's a fascinating article. Some of these letters may look familiar, but a lot of them don't. Incidentally, the real name for the letter "&" is "and"---you won't believe where "ampersand" actually comes from. Know what's really funny? Ever seen a foreign language with a weird alphabet like Greek, Russian, or Chinese (although that's not really an alphabet) and wondered "why can't these idiots just use the Roman alphabet---that would make it easer to read!" Well, the French and other Europeans which used the Roman alphabet thought that about OUR alphabet which is why most of these letters were eventually discarded. Since I would find it much easier to remember 26 letters than 38, I have two words for the French---"merci beaucoup!"

I wanted to type "fascinating" using as many of the 12 discards as appropo,
but I cant get the keyboard to play along.

fæʃınetiŋ

This is why I look up to you.

In the days of the "long S" printers with a limited stock of type sometimes ran short of them and substituted "f". Which is why you sometimes see that on facsimiles of old pamphlets.

The TIRONIAN “OND” confused me for a good long time, especially when
they would use it with another letter.

It always made sense to me.

Ond Dasher, Ond Dancer, Ond Prancer, Ond Vixen, Ond Comet, Ond Cupid, Ond Donner, and Blitzen.

Then again, the English language seems easy to me in hindsight because I'm a smart guy and I've already learned it. But although written English may be easier to learn than Chinese, it's still pretty tough. Take that last word for example----you have to learn by memorization that "tough" is not pronounced the same way as "dough" or "plough." In fact, all THREE words are pronounced differently. Other languages like Spanish are more phonetic and are spelled exactly as they are pronounced. Might English make more sense if we kept those letters?

Here's another article at Cracked.com you might want to read:

http://www.cracked.com/article_20713_5- ... sense.html

What's enlightening is that today if someone were to write about walking up a church "aile" or flying off to an "iland" or "yland" resort, we'd make cracks about how badly that person did at school. The truth is that those used to be correct spellings for English words. Another reason to dislike William the Conqueror.

Well, it's been said that in English you can theoretically spell fish "ghoti"

gh as in "enough"

o as in "women"

and ti as in "attention."

I do feel sorry for anybody who has to learn English as a second language. Although I recall a non-native speaker once saying that the thing he likes most about English is the fact that it can be as much trouble for native speakers as it is for him.

I learned that by watching an episode of Batman!

Bloody hell there are too many people born and raised in America who can barely speak and read the language currently. Lets not make things harder for them.