Tuesday, April 28, 2009

'E', 'H'

Often I find my mind wandering off from reality to contemplate things much larger than my widening world can encompass. There is an array of topics that I tend to fixate upon, none very important, all fairly narrow in scope despite their large philosophical elements. Now, that makes it sound like I find myself to be important in thought and that all fleeting thoughts deserve contemplation. This is far from the truth. Let me explain.

Walking from the gym to my car today I began to contemplate the syllabic make up of individual letters. The way in which, if asked, you would write out the pronunciation of all 26 letters in the English alphabet. Understandably you will have to suspend some reality in order to have success in this venture. It is easier to spell each letter out with simply it self. That's cheating. And the question can be raised; "How do you spell somethings' sound with itself?" Don't think about that. The challenge comes in using more than one letter to create each letters sound. Here's what I was able to come up with:

'A' - "ay"
'B' - "be"
'C' - "see"
'D' - "dee"
'E' - "...

Then I hit my first road block. How do you spell that sound your mouth makes thousands of times a day. The letter 'E' is obviously going to be a part of the spelling of many of the other 25 letters cohabiting the alphabet, but how the hell do you spell it? I have no idea so I'll keep going...

'F' - "eff"
'G' - "gee"
'H' - "...

So I got to 'H' and realized that the very language that I am currently trying to dismantle and explain is doing me dirty. The only spelling I can conjure up for 'H' is "a-c-h-e". But any moron knows that's a verb referring to pain & suffering. I am stumped. Only 8 letters into my very very important experiment and I have no where to turn. Since I just spent 40 minutes at the gym reading an article in The New Yorker on Adderall, I will continue my quest to solve all (or nearly all) 26 letters.

'I' - "aye"
'J' - "jay"
'K' - "kay"
'L' - "el"
'M' - "ehm"
'N' - "en"
'O' - "oh"
'P' - "pee"
'Q' - "kue"
'R' - "are"
'S' - "ess"
'T' - "tee"
'U' - "you", "ewe"
'V' - "vee"
'W' - "double you"
'X' - "exse"
'Y' - "why"
'Z' - "zhe"

So there, I have done it. The question I want to know now is why does 'E' get the most play. It occurs in (roughly) 20/26 of my renditions of the English Alphabet in syllabic form. Yet, it cannot be defined in this manner? This is a question that will likely plague me for many more walks to and from my car. For now, I apologize that you have read this and am going to regretfully inform you that; no, I cannot in fact return the time you have spent reading this posting. All apologies.

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