I think we’ve been living with a mistake, but I don’t know who to go to so that it will get corrected. Look at this: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Do you see it? It’s near the end. It’s the X and the Y. They should be flipped around.
It’s crazy, right? This is something so basic we learn it before we even start school, but we all learn it wrong. Just look at the alphabet above and compare it to this: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYXZ. Isn’t the second one much more pleasing? Of course it is.
Once you see it, it is so obvious that it needs no explanation. But for those who haven’t seen it, here are some reasons. X and Z are meant to be together. They are soul mates. That makes Y a third wheel, which isn’t fair to anybody. Not only do X and Z make the same sound at times, visually they are meant to be. YZ makes me uncomfortable with the way the Y is pulling away while the Z is reaching out. XZ is calming. The two letters are in sync, almost caressing each other. Plus, Y and W would get along beautifully if they got to know each other. The word “why” starts with a W. They are both friendly at the top and shy at the bottom. So, they’ll be comfortable with the same things. Putting Y between two such aggressive letters isn’t fair. Y can bond with both W and X over being auditory shape shifters. And W and Y can console each other about not fitting in, W getting added to words where it’s not even pronounced and Y only being a vowel some of the time.
I know many people are so entrenched in their ways that they will refuse to see it. The alphabet as we learned it has to be correct because that’s the way we learned it. But that’s a classic appeal to tradition fallacy. All I need is for enough people to ask, “Why is the alphabet the way it is?” Once their minds are open enough to think about it, the wrongness of the current alphabet will be obvious and we can get this thing fixed.
