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ome of the most magnificent creations by mankind are the tools used in the art of communication. This has always been on par with other scientific development such as engineering and medical. Communication refers to language, literature, art, documents, records, etc. I don't intend to cover all of these areas but what I will do is to highlight the lack of simplicity in English.English texts are usually written in its current modern form, ie Roman alphabets (eg. Aa, Bb, Cc, etc) and Arabic numbers (eg. 1,2,3,etc). What was referred to as ‘lack of simplicity’ applies to the Roman alphabets - my attempt to criticise the syntax and convention used in applying the Roman alphabets in its representation of the intended phonetics. To illustrate, let us observe the following:
The letter ‘C’ is intended to have a phonetic sound of ‘Che’ as how it would sound in the word ‘Chance’. While the name for this letter is ‘Si’, the phonetic sound for ‘Si’ has already been addressed from the existence of the letter ‘S’. However, in the modern day application, the letter ‘C’ is also used for phonetic sound for ‘Khe’ as how it would sound in the word ‘Car’. It is ironic that the letter ‘C’ is used for this phonetic sound when we already have the letter ‘K’.
In addition, there are cases where the letter ‘K’ has been used for the phonetic sound ‘Khe’ but the letter ‘C’ appears as a silence letter such as the words ‘Back, ‘Lack’ and ‘Sack’. Why bother using the letter ‘C’ when the letter ‘K’ is independent to represent the intended phonetic sound? Another example is the phonetic sound ‘Che’. The letter ‘C’ would suffice to give adequate representation but instead, the letter ‘H’ is used to strengthen this representation as how it is used in the words ‘Chance’, ‘Latch’ and ‘Scratch’.
What simplicity seeks to achieve is to align the application of Roman alphabets to its proper and rightful phonetic sound - hence, establishing a convention far more logical than what we have been practising today. Only when human beings learn to simplify matters and discard the unnecessary, will they be able to embrace the concept of efficiency and effectiveness truly.
At the moment, we have the following Roman alphabets which are widely used for the respective phonetic sound (See below). You will realise that there are a lot of duplication in application that we can do without.
• Aa: ‘AA’ as in ‘Arm’ or ‘Car’; ‘AE’ as in ‘Ambush’ or ‘Care’
• Bb: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Ball’
• Cc: ‘CHE’ as in ‘Chance’ or ‘Latch’; ‘KHE’ as in ‘Car’ or ‘Rack’
• Dd: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Doll’
• Ee: ‘EE’ as in ‘East’ or ‘Free’; ‘EA’ as in ‘Empty’ or ‘Bear’
• Ff: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Fall’
• Gg: ‘GHE’ as in ‘Girl’ or ‘Log’; ‘JHE’ as in ‘Knowledge’
• Hh: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Hall’
• Ii: ‘EE’ as in ‘Italy’ or ‘Relic’; ‘AI’ as in ‘Science’ or ‘Italic’
• Jj: ‘JEH’ as in ‘Jog’ or ‘Major’; ‘YEH’ as in ‘Johannesburg’
• Kk: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Kenya’
• Ll: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Lizard’
• Mm: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Mocha’
• Nn: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Nasal’
• Oo: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Orange’
• Pp: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Poppy’
• Qq: Same phonetic sound as ‘K’, eg ‘Queen’
• Rr: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Rose’
• Ss: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Snow’
• Tt: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Trumpet’
• Uu: ‘YOO’ as in ‘United’; ‘’AA’ as in ‘Umbrella’, ‘IU’ as in ‘Bureau’
• Vv: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Voice’
• Ww: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Wall’
• Xx: ‘ZHE’ as in ‘Xylophone’ and ‘AKS’ as in ‘X-ray’
• Yy: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Yolk’
• Zz: there is only one phonetic sound used for this, eg. ‘Zest’
Then, we have the combination of alphabets to achieve certain phonetic sound such as the letter ‘P’ and ‘H’ where, if coupled together, we will get the phonetic sound for ‘F’ as how it would sound in the word ‘Physics’. The following table shows the combination of alphabets (ie. trace alphabets vertically and horizontally) for such cases.
The following examples will illustrate how the above table works:
• The letters ‘C’ and ‘H’ gives the sound for ‘C’ as in ‘Chance’
• The letters ‘E’ and ‘A’ gives the sound for ‘I’ as in ‘East’
• The letters ‘E’ and ‘U’ gives the sound for ‘Y’ as in ‘Europe’
• The letters ‘H’ and ‘O’ gives the sound for ‘O’ as in ‘Honest’
• The letters ‘K’ and ‘N’ gives the sound for ‘N’ as in ‘Knowledge’
• The letters ‘P’ and ‘H’ gives the sound for ‘F’ as in ‘Phone’
• The letters ‘P’ and ‘S’ gives the sound for ‘S’ as in ‘Psychology’
• The letters ‘S’ and ‘C’ gives the sound for ‘S’ as in ‘Science’
• The letters ‘S’ and ‘T’ gives the sound for ‘S’ as in ‘Tsunami’
There may be numerous combinations other than what have been highlighted above. The fact of the case is that, there are combinations of alphabets to achieve a phonetic sound of what another single alphabet could or can achieve. In many cases, we see that the combination ended up silencing an alphabet as what happened to ‘H’ in ‘Honest’ and ‘P’ in ‘Psychology’.
What this study aims to achieve is a structure that eliminates unnecessary application as what we have observed earlier. To give readers a flavour of what this means, let us observe the below:
Original vs Suggested Solution
Chance = Cans
East = Ist
Europe = Yurop
Honest = Ones
Knowledge = Nolej
Phone = Fon
Psychology = Saikoloji
Science = Sains
Tsunami = Sunami
Rack = Rek
Car = Kar
Ambush = Embush
Latch = Letc
Free = Fri
Empty = Emti
Care = Ker
Relic = Relik
Italic = Aitalik
Major = Mejer
Queen = Kuin
United = Yunited
Umbrella = Ambrela
Bureau = Biro
Xylophone = Zailofon
X-ray = Eksray
The attempt to logically apply the original phonetic representation of the Roman alphabets, as what is transpired above, was once done by a nation called Malaysia. They called the concept ‘Baku’. Malaysia has Bahasa Malaysia as its national language that progressed from its ancient origin of Bahasa Melayu. This language was originally written in Arabic characters rather than Roman (or was it in Sanskrit? Can't remember my history). The socio-transformation of its society and civilisation that was heavily influenced by the British Empire had resulted in Bahasa Malaysia being written in Roman alphabets in both formal and informal engagements (eg. Government documents, School medium, letter writing, etc).
Whilst Roman alphabets are used in these two different languages, the most important difference between Malaysian use of Roman alphabets and its counterpart in Britain is that, they, via their ‘Baku’ concept, had applied the logical use of Roman alphabets synchronised to the phonetic sound - as demonstrated below
As a result, there are only 24 letters left for the application of Roman alphabets in whatever language it may be used. These 24 alphabets should now have their own unique phonetic representation. There should not be any cases of silent letters and the spelling convention will be that of phonetic influence as suggested above. To give readers the final illustration of how this would look like if applied in a more comprehensive manner, a translation is done for a full sentence as follows:
“ Thank you everyone for reading this paper. It has been a pleasure sharing my radical thoughts with such worthy readers. Cheers !”
Translated into a simplified application as follows:
“Tenk yu everiwan for riding dis peaper. It has bin a plesher shering mai redikal thots with sac wordhi riders. Ciers !”
* kopihangtuah
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