Konstellation Konsonants: Part 6 - J

This time I'm going to attempt to remofe J from the alphabet. J is pretty mutj the last konsonant in the English language that doesn't okkur frekwently that I'fe yet to remofe. After that things are going to get really trikky and I'm going to struggle massifely.

In my last post I used J, along with T, as a substitute for the CH sound in the word much - mutj. So remofing it will kause problems here as well. Hopefully things will substitute seamlessly as I re-render eferything.

J is pretty similar to Y. The J in John sounds similar to Y, the J in Johann sounds identikal.

The J in John to my ears sounds a little like D then Y - Dyohn. So I think I'll replase J with DY or simply Y where appropriate.

June kan bekome Dyune, July kan bekome Dyuly, January kan be Dyanuary. Julius Caesar kan bekome Dyulius Saesar and our little lord Jesus kan bekome Dyesus.

How's it going to work for much though. My mutj rendering now bekomes mutdy. Hmm, not kwite right. This is getting hard. I'll hafe to leafe it like that for now though I guess. Maybe I'll get used to it. God knows whitdy letter I'm going to remofe nekst though.

We now stand at:

1. B

2. C = K or S

3. D

4. F

5. G

6. H

7. J = Y or DY

8. K

9. L

10. M

11. N

12. P

13. Q = K

14. R

15. S

16. T

17. V = F

18. W

19. X = S or KS

20. Y

21. Z = S

Or;

1. B

2. D

3. F

4. G

5. H

6. K

7. L

8. M

9. N

10. P

11. R

12. S

13. T

14. W

15. Y

Mutdy more konsise.

Konstellation Konsonants Part 7 - B

Konstellation Konsonants: Part 5 - Q

I'm going to make things a little easier for myself this time and remofe Q. Q is one of the less frequently used letters in the English language, so hopefully getting rid of it won't be too notiseable.

Q, of kourse, is normally always followed by a U and again, like C, it tends to hafe a K sound. Queue sounds identikal to cue - now both bekome kueue and kue with my stripped down English alphabet.

Queen bekomes Kueen, or maybe Kween. In fakt, that probably makes more sense phonetikally, I'll go with that. Quick bekomes kwik, quiet bekomes kwiet, quack bekomes kwak.

The kwik kween kwietly kwaked.

I'fe now remofed fife. We're down to just siksteen konsonants now. It's going to be fery trikky getting mush lower though.

In fakt, I'fe hit a snag in that last sentense with my attempts to render the word much. In part 3 I stated that C kould be substituted for either a K or an S. Howefer, when it komes to the Ch sound in the word much neither letter seems to kwite (:p) work.

To my ears Ch has more of a T sound. Maybe T + J in fakt. Tj, mutj - does that work? For the time being I'll go with that.

It's going to be fery trikky getting mutj lower though.

Konstellation Konsonants Part 6 - J

Constellation Consonants: Part 4 - C

The nekst consonant I think I'll remofe is C. It makes sense to remofe C as normally a hard C sounds identical to a K and a soft C sounds much like an S. The problem is C is a bit more common than the other letters I'fe gotten rid of so far (X, V, and Z), so things are going to start to look a little crasy :p I'll efen hafe to start spelling consonant differently.

So cat becomes kat, much like kitten. Cradle becomes kradle - the kats in the kradle and the silfer spoon.

Cease and Cede bekome Sease and Sede respektifely. Things are starting to look quite weird now, but the sounds of the spoken English language still seem to be adequately represented by the remaining konsonants. We're now down to sefenteen.

1. B
2. C = K or S
3. D
4. F
5. G
6. H
7. J
8. K
9. L
10. M
11. N
12. P
13. Q
14. R
15. S
16. T
17. V = F
18. W
19. X = S or KS
20. Y
21. Z = S

Konstellation Konsonants Part 5 - Q

Constellation Consonants: Part 3 - V

In my last post I aksed X from the English alphabet. I've had a think about what to akse nekst and have decided to remove V.

V to my ears sounds almost identical to F. Take leaf and leaves for eksample. Or life and lives. So I think it can go. Plus V looks a bit too similar to U for my liking. Get it out of here.

Now I'fe remofed three consonants - X, Z and V. We're down from twenty-one to eighteen and I seem to be managing okay. The spell checker's getting a bit stressed out though. My aim was to get down to twelfe. Just siks more needed.

Constellation Consonants Part 4 - C

Constellation Consonants: Part 2 - X

In my last post I got rid of Z from the English alphabet in my quest to create an alphabet that can adequately notate the spoken English language with as few consonants as possible. Ideally only twelve.

This post I'm removing X, another letter that hopefully we wont miss too much. X normally stands for an S/Z sound as in xylophone, or a K type sound as in extra. In fact, the K sound is probably more a KS sound. Eks marks the spot. So extra could be rendered ekstra, which sounds eksactly the same.

Xylophone could become sylophone. Zylophone would maybe work slightly better, but since we've decided that S and Z are essentially the same sound we'll have to make do.

We've now stripped the English alphabet from twenty-one to nineteen consonants and things seem okay. It might be a little tougher to decide what's nekst though.

1. B
2. C
3. D
4. F
5. G
6. H
7. J
8. K
9. L
10. M
11. N
12. P
13. Q
14. R
15. S
16. T
17. V
18. W
19. X = S or KS
20. 19. Y
21. Z = S

Minus the five vowels of course; A, E, I, O, U.

Constellation Consonants Part 3 - V

Constellation Consonants: Part 1 - Z

Not too long ago I read Joscelyn Godwin's The Mystery of the Seven Vowels. A fascinating book, highly recommended for anyone interested in language and/or music. The theme harks back to the seven sacred vowels in the ancient Greek language, these vowels corresponded to the seven planets/gods of their ancient cosmo-theology.

Anyway, at the time I was thinking a lot about the relationship between the numbers seven and twelve in all things ancient. Seven days of the week, twelve months of the year. Seven travelling planets in the sky, twelve constellations. Of course, these correlate - the days of the week named for their respective gods, the months in loose correlation with the signs of the zodiac.

There's also seven notes in a musical key, and these in turn are plucked from the twelve notes of the western musical scale. Again this correlates with the Music of the Spheres and the planetary movements.

[As a side note, I also wondered if maybe the birth chart in astrology was essentially the location of the seven planets in relation to the twelve constellations; i.e. that the twelve constellations were the twelve notes and that the planets' positions would essentially pick seven notes by their location. If Mars was in Libra at your birth and Libra represented, say an 'A', then an 'A' would be one of your notes. If you have seven notes that fit harmoniously in a key then that bodes well. If your seven notes are discordant and all over the place then bad luck.]

Anyway, on reading about the seven sacred vowels I started wondering if there were twelve corresponding sacred consonants. I looked and couldn't find anything on-line suggesting this, but I thought I'd try it out. In English we have twenty-one consonants. Can they be stripped back to an essential twelve? How many consonants are needed for a functioning English language?

I've been wondering about this. So for an experiment I'm going to try removing some to see what happens. Maybe I'll remove one a post? Let's see how many posts I can get through.

I'll start with an easy one: Z

I think we can get by without Z - it's just a fancy S really, Fizz can become Fiss. Zebra can be Sebra.

I should point out at this point that it helps to actually mouth the words out as well. Zebra and Sebra might not look the same on paper, but they certainly sound more or less the same, and that's what counts :) We won't miss Z once we get used to not having it.

..so go out, cross the sebra crossing, and buy a fissy drink ...but wrap up warm 'cos it's freesing out there.

Constellation Consonants Part 2 - X

Conan the Barbarian, the Illuminati and Shape-Shifting Reptiles

Last night I sat up 'til about 2 in the morning watching Conan the Barbarian (the 1982 Schwarzenegger version). It was the first time I'd ever seen this film and it was surprisingly entertaining (although it had me in stitches at times as well). The whole film looked pretty cool, quite iconic actually. My main reason for posting about it though is that I was surprised to see it contained all the elements of the modern pop-culture 'illuminati' mythos.

(Conan the Barbarian - stills from the movie)

Conan takes on a snake-worshipping bad guy who shape-shifts into a snake and rules over humanity using violence and manipulation to keep them subjugated. The humans are seen as sacrificial pawns, willing to literally jump to their deaths for their reptilian ruler. The palace headquarters of this evil snake cult is a den of sexual licentiousness, where people indulge in orgies and drink from a brew containing human body parts. The cult even has a classic Illuminati-style eye-in-a-pyramid type symbol, although theirs is also adorned with twin serpents.

(Serpentine and all-seeing eye symbolism)

It made me wonder whether this was the subconscious inspiration for David Icke's world view. It was a pretty big movie in the 80's and I'm guessing most people will have watched it. Did it seep into people's minds and inspire a generation? Of course, the alternative view would be that the movie was tapping into a historical vein of truth and that maybe it resonated so well at the time because of this. I guess it's a chicken and egg scenario. Still it's interesting that these themes were so well established in 1982. I'd be interested to see how true the film is to the original Conan fantasy stories created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930's. Were these themes there then as well?

On a parallel note this got me thinking again about our inherent fear of serpents. I think it stems in part from how serpents devour their victims. As humans we seem to be naturally horrified by the idea of being eaten alive. When a big cat kills its prey then eats it, it somehow doesn't seem as horrific as when a bird or a snake simply devours a living creature whole.

I remember watching a nature programme where a baby bird wandered from its mother and subsequently got devoured - whole and alive - by a huge seagull. The image was worse than anything I'd ever seen in any horror movie. Seeing the bulge of a living creature slide down its throat. It actually made me feel depressed for days after it. Even now when I think back I feel a sense of despair. The question is why?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that as humans we kill animals first before we eat them. We can't digest bones and would choke on them if we tried. So maybe this is partly why we see swallowing animals whole as just plain wrong. And, of course, there's our fear of dying and being killed in general. And being eaten alive must be an especially horrid way to go.

When you see medieval visions of hell, where humans are being boiled, burned and eaten, it's quite often birds or bird-headed men that are doing the eating. Again there's just something inherently more awful about being eaten by a bird or a reptile as opposed to being killed by a lion or tiger. Eating something alive seems in this light to be the very embodiment of evil.

I don't wanna get on my high horse too much, but all my thinking on this does make me relieved that I chose to be a vegetarian. I think if you want to have a positive impact on the world a good place to start is to decide not to eat anything that's conscious of the fact it's being ate.