Benjamin Franklin was America’s first multi-hyphenate: philosopher, scientist, inventor, writer, politician, and so much more. Many of his ideas caught on, many did not. This is the story of one of the least popular schemes of ol’ Ben’s storied life.
He tried to re-invent the alphabet.
As America was starting the work to come into its own, spelling and pronunciation was a bit confusing (and still is today, although things have gotten better). Franklin tried to fix that.
First, he eliminated six letters-C, J, Q, W, X, and Y-stating that they are redundant and unnecessary. After all, the S can take care of the soft C, and the K the hard C. As for X, well, who needs it? Certainly not him. Next, he added six new letters which he created himself. These new letters are to eliminate the need write two letters to create one sound. Franklin believed in the idea of one letter equals one sound. It is much cleaner and easier way. For example, one new letter replaces ‘sh”, and one replaces the “un” letter combination.
A secondary reason for creating the new alphabet was that a new country should have its own language, albeit one based on British English. Franklin decided to take the opportunity, as the war started to wind down, to put this theory to the test.
Franklin’s new alphabet was supposed to make spelling easier to learn, and give pronunciations “a more natural order,” giving the new letters sounds that are easily created by breath, with little to no involvement from the lips, teeth, and tongue.
While this new alphabet was developed in 1768, it was not published for the first time until 1779, when he finally was able to have printing blocks made with his new letters. He published his proposal, “A Reformed Mode of Spelling”, in his book of that year, Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces, a collection of essays on all of his interests. In his essay, he notes that, "Much as the imperfections of the alphabet will admit of; the present bad spelling is only bad because contrary to the present bad rules: under the new rules it would be good …" In other words, the current alphabet is bad because the rules are bad,: change the rules, and all will improve.
Although Franklin’s new alphabet never caught on, it is interesting to think about.
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