By: Tanvi Ambekar

Opinion Editor

Your Honor and members of the jury, my name is Tanvi Ambekar, and I appear before you today to propose changing the spellings of certain English words to remove unnecessary letters, or better yet, eliminate them from the alphabet entirely. Despite the English language only having 26 letters, we somehow still manage to make about half the characters in a word useless. To be honest, it ticks me off. Especially when my lovely English teacher drops my essay grade from a 90 to an 89 because I switched around the last E and U in entrepreneur; never mind that you would read it the same anyway. My evidence is as follows. Please give your most rapt attention. 

First and foremost, an uncountable number of words in the English language contain unnecessary letters. For example, words like palm, should, and caulk all contain silent Ls for one singular purpose: to make them feel taller. While I can relate, being barely five foot three myself, I don’t have the heart to tell Calm over there that throwing in a random letter will not make him more powerful than a word like dollop or frolicking, no matter how much he tries to copy their spelling. 

This also goes for the atrocious number of silent Bs in English. Think about it; words like comb, tomb, thumb, and lamb neither rhyme nor have any similar meaning. Their vertical insecurities must be taking a heavy toll on their mental health; it’s the only explanation for why they are all so determined not to be associated with each other through spelling or pronunciation. We should probably just send all the words to group therapy; there’s no way you can carry around that many useless letters and still be emotionally stable.

Either way, I propose that we spell words based mostly on their actual spelling; maybe then my spelling calf without the L wouldn’t have made me a laughing stock in sixth grade. Yeah, Emma, I still hate you.

However, I recognize that some silent letters redeem themselves. For example, the silent E at the end of many words changes the pronunciation of consonants like G and C, as well as the way we say many vowels. Without the E, cute would become cut and rage would become rag; the number of words in the dictionary would halve – which, if you really think about it, might not be a horrible idea given that we have a word for chucking someone out of a window (defenestration, for anyone interested). 

Besides E, though, the list of letters thrown arbitrarily into words is astounding. Why do we spell February with two Rs when the first one is never pronounced? Why do we spell Wednesday with an extra D? Why does listen have a random T?? At this point, if English were a person, it would be that one character on Hoarders that keeps a broken lamp for years because it has “sentimental value.”

As you can see, Your Honor, my argument stems not from frustration, anger, or fear of failing English class, but genuine concern for our language. If we don’t take radical action now, the silent trauma of these words may spread without us noticing. And trust me, more words with phonetic attachment issues are the last thing this language needs.