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CLASSIC: Ben Franklin Tried To Reinvent the Alphabet · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: No, we got a Ben Franklin episode.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we do. Your name's Ben too, that's weird. My
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: name is Noel, but yeah, Ben Franklin right, former president
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Ben Franklin right, not a president, dang it. He's on
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: the money though, he's on those hondos. He had sure
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: sure did? He potentially also like to mess around with
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: uh with dead bodies. That's an episode for another day.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: That's not today's episode. Today's is much more the ABC's
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: of Ben Franklin.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: If you will hashtag no pun left behind, let's ABC
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: about it. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to the show, Friends and Neighbors. My favorite letter of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the English alphabet is Z, and my name is Ben.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: My name is Noel, and my favorite song is the
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: ABC song. And for the purposes of today's episode, it
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: goes like this, A B D E F G H I,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: K L M N O, P R S t U
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: V Z app and I don't know how to pronounce
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: these characters thing of characters.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Right, Ben Franklin, Oh boy? And also, Noel, you laughed
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: at me. We were hanging out yesterday and I tried
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: singing that song with this folks. You may notice that
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: in the rendition of the alphabet song you just heard,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: there were some prominent letters missing. And it turns out
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: that's not an accident. This was on purpose.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: You see.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: There was a fellow, a found father named Benjamin Franklin
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: who did many, many things right. He was a renaissance man.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: He was a polymath of sorts, a genius. Most people
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: consider him an elder statesman and as you say, a
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: founding father, but also an inventor, a scientist, a postmaster,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and a diplomat. And he just kind of did all
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: the things.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And today he is sort of an American legend. And
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of stories about the guy that
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: turn out later not to be entirely true, you know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: but it is true that he was a prolific renaissance man.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: As an inventor, he created things like bifocals, He created
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the lightning rod. He created some swimming flipper sets for
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: hands of flexible catheters, which is weird that there was
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a time when there were inflexible catheters ouch, I know,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and the odometer. But one of the things that people
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: might not know about Benjamin Franklin is that, in addition
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: to inventing things. He also improved a lot of things,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: or attempted to, and one of the things that he
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: attempted to improve was the English language itself.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like, you know, we all know that
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: odominers are around still, swimming flippers are around still, bifocals.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: No one's really made them much better than old Ben Franklin.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: But you know, we don't really hear much about a
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: redone English alphabet that sticks around to this day, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: that's because it was a bit of a flop. But
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: before we get into its ridiculous, abysmal failure, let's talk
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit about what this thing was Ben absolutely noel.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Do you recall hooked on Phonics? Were you hooked on phonics?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Kid? It worked for me, there we go. Yeah.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Hooked on Phonics was this program in the US, at
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: least in the US, possibly in other places, that taught
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: children how to pronounce letters and combinations of letters in
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: English based on sound them out.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It worked so well for me, though, that I ended
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: up in phonics rehab. Oh yeah, you had to. I
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: had a problem. I had a real phonics problem. Monkey
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: on my back. But I'm cool now. Yeah, Yeah, I
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: don't pronounce anything correctly. It's one day at.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: A time, right, So Ben Franklin invented a phonetic alphabet.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: He did successfully invent this. He hoped that other people
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: would be fans of the invention and that this alphabet
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: would ultimately replace the alphabet we used to date, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: he started by removing letters.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he did. Franklin's alphabet basically asked six letters, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: those were C, JQ, W, X, and Y. You'll notice
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: they were missing from My Little Alphabet Diddy at the
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: beginning of the show, because he thought they were redundant, right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: He argued that, for example, the letter K could handle
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: the hard C sounds, so no need for C. You
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: can use a K for that. And then the letter
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: S could give a soft sea sound, so C was gone.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: And then he also added six more characters, which, for
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: my money, are unpronounceable. When you see them, they look
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: like something out of an ecronomicon, but they were pretty
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: functional from Franklin's perspective. There were basically two vowels and
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: four new consonants, and his idea was to add clarity
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: in pronunciation, and his characters were specifically based around sounds. So,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: for example, he had a new continent that made the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: en g sound at the end of like running or
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: or reaping or seeking.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you can see you can see the gist here,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the simplification, or at least the well intentioned steps toward simplification.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Franklin worked on this for a long time. He initially
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: developed the alphabet in seventeen sixty eight, but he didn't
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: start publishing it or or floating it around until a
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: little more than ten years later, in seventeen seventy nine.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He also published some letters that he had written in
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: this language, and in seventeen eighty nine Noah Webster, who
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: had heard of Franklin's proposal, included a description of it
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: in his book Dissertations on the English Language. However, there
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: was a problem. Webster, you see, did not have the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: correct type blocks, because at the time they had to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: use blocks, handcut blocks for printing presses, and he couldn't
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: really describe the alphabet. Webster couldn't because he didn't have
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: those special six characters cut out in a block, so
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: he couldn't really illustrate Franklin's changes, and the alphabet itself
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: really didn't you know. People didn't get it or see
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it in action until Franklin had new blocks cast to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: print the alphabet for his seventeen ten seventy nine collection
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: called Political, Miscellaneous and Philosophical Pieces.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: It's interesting too, because Webster was one of the very
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: very few supporters of this new alphabet, because he was
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: all about standardizing American spelling, and this was a big
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: thing for Franklin too. He argued that his alphabet would
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: help people spell better, whild would reduce spelling errors. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: it's interesting there are a few letters that Franklin exchanged
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: with his friend and confidante, Polly Stevenson, who was the
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: daughter of his landlady in London, and he gave her
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: away at her wedding, and it was a very important
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: person in his life, and she had some interesting objections
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: to this new alphabet, and here Franklin responds to a
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: few of them. I give you a quote from this letter. Here.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: The objection you make to rectify our alphabet, that it
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: will be attended with inconveniences and difficulties is a natural one,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: for always occurs when any reformation is proposed, whether in religion,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: government laws, and even down as low as roads and
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: wheel carriages. The true question, then is not whether there
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: will be no difficulties or inconveniences, but whether the conveniences
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: will not, on the whole, be greater than the inconveniences.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: So you know, the whole make an omelet. You've got
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: to break a few eggs argument, right, right.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: It's asking people a lot to change the way that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: they speak and write. Because if you've ever looked into
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: an Encyclopedia entry and you've seen the pronunciation guide, you
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: know where they have the strange characters. They tell you
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: this is a glottal sound, right, this is the schwa yeah, yeah,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the unstressed central vowel build upside down e in the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: International Phonetic Alphabet. When you see that, you can if
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: you're not familiar with pronunciation guides, then you can kind
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of get a sense of how someone would feel reading
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: a letter in Ben Franklin English versus you know, English
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: English totally.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And when you read some of these excerpts that he
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: wrote in this alphabet, your brain kind of has to
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: kind of like do some gymnastics to even parse that file,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: and once it does, it does kind of click for you.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting where you can make that leap. But
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: another interesting criticism from Franklin's friend Polly Stevenson was the
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: idea that changing the language would obscure etymology of words
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and their meaning, and Franklin could not disagree more. His
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: response was this, etymologies are at present very uncertain, but
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: such as they are, the old books would still preserve them.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: An etymologist would there find them. Words in the course
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: of time change their meaning as well as their spelling
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: and pronunciation, and we do not look to etymology for
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: their present meanings. So he really had a deep philosophical
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: belief that this was the right thing to do. And
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: it's interesting because, you know, we talked about at the
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: top of the show what a renaissance man Franklin was
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: and all the things he invented. But one of his
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: biographers kind of referred to this whole exercise as taking
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Franklin's passion for social improvement to radical extremes right.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons that he did find some
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: prominent supporters is because there was an ideological and political
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: aspect to the generation of this language, or the revision
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of the language from across the Atlantic. In his piece
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty nine, Noah Webster argues the following Chevrel, Shirkumsteince.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Just render a future sheparation of the American talking from
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the English necessary and I'm doing a Webster voice. Numerouslbcal
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: causes such as a new country, new associations of people,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: new combinations of ideas and arts and science, and some
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe will introduce new
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: words to the American tongue. So he was arguing that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Ben Franklin's concept was timely and prescient, and that American
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: English would need to have the opportunity to become its
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: own thing. And we do see, we do see different
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: versions of the English language dividing, you know, at least
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: in terms of slang or figures of speech. But this
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: idea was radical. This this idea was paving the way
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: for a written version of American English to be unintelligible
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to another English speaker.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. And to Franklin, language was beach
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: before writing. And then in a lot of ways, writing
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: was sort of an inconvenient byproduct of language. It was
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: just like a thing you had to do to preserve
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: stories and data and such. But it was ultimately a
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: byproduct and not the first and foremost concern to Franklin
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: at least right. Another quote from one of these letters
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: to Polly Stevenson addressed her third objection, which was that
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: all books already written would become useless. And you know
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: to that, and I agree with this, Franklin responds, this
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: inconvenience would only come on gradually. In a course of ages,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: you and other now living readers would hardly forget the
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: use of them. People would long learn to read the
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: old writings though they practiced the new, and the inconvenience
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: is not greater than what has actually happened in a
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: similar case in Italy. And you know this been formerly
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Italian spoke and wrote in Latin, doesn't mean that they
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: burned all the books that were in Latin. They're still
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: even today around here people that speak Latin and that
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: do translations. And translations becomes a very important thing, because
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: you know, you have to know the original language and
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the context and be able to translate the nuances of it. So,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean to say that to reinvent a
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: language is inherently bad, I think is false, agreed, especially
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: if it is a living language. A living language is
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: defined as a language that has living native speakers. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: you know, we know that there are dead languages in
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the world, unfortunately, throughout history. And we can see the
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: written evidence of these languages, and we can hear them
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: reference to read them referenced in other works of the
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: same rough historical era, but we don't know for sure
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: how these sounded languages change over time. One of my
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: favorite things about American English is that anything can be
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: a verb. Anything could be a verb. You just just
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: name something and then add I in G and now
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: it's a verb. Balling.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Let's see walling. You know, Ben Bollaning, Noel Brownanan, Yeah, exactly,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Noel Brownanan.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Noel Brown too, the brown ing.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I added an extra syllable there. But
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you know what, we're going to keep it. And as
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: ambitious as it might sound, you and I were talking
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: off air about the kind of chutzpus someone would have
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to have to see.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, because I would say, living language,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: my friend.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So how irritated does someone have to be by what
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: is essentially a tomato tomato argument to say I am
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: going to change the entire language. Everyone who's already speaking
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: this needs to conform to my expectation of what language
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: would be There's a really interesting thing that happens. At
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: some point when most people are learning the basics of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a new language, there will typically be a moment where
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: they say, well, why do you do it that way?
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: That's dumb?
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Why does why does every noun have to have a
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: gender attached to it or something like that? Sure, and
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the answer is, because that's the language. That's the way
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: this language works exactly, and it can feel, it can
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: feel kind of. I don't know if it's condescending or
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: if it's self centered for someone learning the language to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: tell everybody else already speaking it that they're doing it
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: wrong and they should change for one person.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's interesting too that one of Franklin's
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: big concerns in doing this alphabet was to eliminate spelling errors,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: which I find utterly pedantic, you know, and absurd, because again,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: it's like, you know, if you're a purist, okay, that's fine.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: If you're a stickler for the spelling, I get that,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, you know, what someone's saying, if the communication
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: is successful, isn't it successful? Isn't that what matters the most?
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And in fact, you know, Webster actually persisted and published books,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: as you said, using a sort of adapted orthography that
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: was a I believe it was not exactly Franklin's, but
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: he sort of used that as a jumping off point
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: and developed something of his own. And he was ridiculed
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: by critics. And this new language was called unsightly and corrupting,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: bastardization of the the proper English language. And that's you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: that's another question, right at what point is it evolution?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: And at what point is it devolution? You know, at
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: what point are they diluting or ruining a language versus
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: improving Because one alphabet entrepreneur's improvement is another alphabet entrepreneur's
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: you know, downfall. They see it as the ruination of language.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And Noah Webster did succeed in creating an American spelling
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: but he did also eventually walk away from alphabet reform,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: which he saw is a bit too radical. And it
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: turns out he was absolutely on the money about the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: importance of political identity or exactly you know, and language.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And we see this happening in other countries as well.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: There was a cool article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven that talked about how alphabet shifts
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: became common in times of instability. In former Soviet republics,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: for instance, alphabet shifts became so common that people started
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: calling the phenomenon new alphabet disease. So, you know, Azerbaijan
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: is probably the most famous example. It's changed their alphabet
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: three times. The whole thing. That's insane in the last
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: one hundred years. How could you keep up hundred years?
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: I guess you got time to learn it. But even
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: still that seems very extreme because, like you said, it's
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: so tied to national identity, which I think is probably
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the main reason that this exercise from mister Franklin just
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: totally fell flat.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And he you know, I'm getting this sensinel that he
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was very much a spaghetti at the wall kind of guy. Absolutely,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: if he had stuff, he came up with, he had idea,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: he just went for it.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Did you know that he even suggested that the eagle
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: was not an appropriate icon for America and that it
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: should instead be the turkey. Yes, yeah, the turkey, which
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I think he said was a proud bird exactly he
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: said it was that the eagle was a bird of
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: bad moral character. So you know, Franklin was also a
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: bit of a troll, which I love, you know, But
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: it's like this whole alphabet thing. When you look at
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: it from an academic perspective and from the mind of
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: a brilliant thinker like Ben Franklin, you could see how
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: maybe he would think this was a good idea, but
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: in practice it's just too much of a pain in
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: the ass, right, right it is.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: The people are very sensitive about language, especially because we
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: use it so often. Even if there were higher rates
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: of illiteracy as there were in this time, people are
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: still speaking, right, so we're consistently using the rules of language,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: even if we're not using the written aspects of it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And that's why this becomes important for Azerbaijan just to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: like walk through real quick what had happened was it
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: went from Arabic to Latin, then from Latin to Cyrillic.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: This was Arabic to Latin nineteen twenties, Latin issrelic in
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and then from Cyrillic to Latin again
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: most recently. And they're not alone. Former North Korean leader
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: or DPRK leader Kim Jong il was lauded for his
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: quote immortal feats for unif development of national Language Fearless Leader. Yeah,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: he also rewrote the alphabet. They say, sounds about right,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: what are you going to do? What else are you
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: going to do when you're at the top. Are you
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: trying to get a gift for that dictator in your
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: life who already has everything? Get them in alphabet?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, he's just trying out different haircuts
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: and inventing new alphabets. That's what you do.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And people who tried phonetic languages before in the past.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: There was a guy we found named William Bullocar, a
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: sixteenth century printer who created get this a forty letter
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: phonetic alphabet that seems like too many letters.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Just a lot of letters. It seems like a lot
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: of lets. What was the function?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: The function was, you know how Franklin added those six
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: new characters to indicate some groups of sounds. This guy
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was doing some of the same stuff. There's been a
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: spate of this over time. People are constantly trying to
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: come up with their own version of the alphabet, it seems,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and it's kind of treated like cryptocurrency totally might be
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a fad here today, gone tomorrow, but typically what we
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: see in the past is that when people try to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: construct these phonetic languages, they do the same thing. Ben
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Franklin was doing that. You know, they'll have one letter
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: that means I in G.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Right, at least Ben Franklin was trying to simplify subtracting
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: rather than adding, you knowwy five letters. That's insane. You know, though, Ben,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: this is still happening today, albeit in something of a
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: fictional realm. Have you heard of Arabesh?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Is it a language from space?
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Why? Yes, Ben, As a matter of fact, it is
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: from a galaxy far far away. In fact, it first
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: appeared on like computer readouts or spaceship readouts in Return
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: of the Jedi, which is part of the original Star
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Wars trilogy, and it was in the Death Star actually
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: and one of Darth Vader's shuttles. This is all according
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: to wookie Pedia, which is a thing that I love.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: And then in the nineties a guy named Stephen Crane
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: kind of transcribed this alphabet for use in a Star
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Wars miniature role playing game called Star Wars Miniature's Battle Companion,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: and it was given the blessing of Lucasfilm and now
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: you can get it in font sets. It's a thirty
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: four letter alphabet, and it actually was expanded to have
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: punctuation marks in an update to the role playing game
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: that like a supplement that came out a few years
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: later in nineteen ninety six. So you know, even though
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Ben Franklin's the thing didn't stick around, at least it
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: perseveres in a nerd culture.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And before you send the email, yes, we are
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: very aware that Tolkien himself was created languages. A lot
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: of times you'll hear certain members of our cohort here
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: at House of Works refer to Tolkien as a linguist
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: who made up a story to rationalize the languages he
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: was inventing.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Is that what was used in the Peter Jackson film
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: when you see the etchings on the one ring.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: M Yeah, I think that's the language of Mordor.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, that's right, that's right exactly.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, the Elvish that they speak was developed
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: as an actual language. Look at and people are speaking Klingon,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: people are doing marriage officiations and clingon.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Man, it's a brave new world, my friend.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And apparently George Bernard Shaw, famous playwright, had a huge
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: issue with the English language, so much so that he
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: one time, I don't entirely get this. I want to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: see what you think of this. One time he said
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: that the word fish may as well be written as
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: gho ti. The gh is from laugh, the O from
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: women or women, and the ti from nation. So he's
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: saying the way they fit together phonetically, yeah, doesn't make sense.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Stupid.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said the alphabet was hopelessly inadequate, and when
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: he died, he left money in his will to develop
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a new one, one last, Like Shot from the Dark.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I bet he and Franklin and Webster would have been buddies.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I bet they would have been principle, but then they
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: probably would have started arguing mine's better. Yeah, exactly. The
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: George Bernard Shaw Competition attracted four hundred and sixty seven entries,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and the winner was a guy named Kingsley Reid, who
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: had a phonetically accurate alphabet of forty eight letters, twenty
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: four vowels, and twenty four consonants. According to the clause
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in Shaw's will, this alphabet had to be used alongside
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the traditional alphabet in the new posthumous publication of his
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: play and fifty three thousand copies of Androcles and the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Lion were printed and one copy was given to each
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: public library in Britain, the Commonwealth, and North and South America,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and to all the national libraries of the world.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: So this book is out.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: There and you can find that award winning alphabet phonetic alphabet.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It's called, of.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Course, goaty fingers.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Goaty fingers.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it sounds like something delicious from a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: takeout menu. But goats had hooves, yes, but these are
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: not goat exactly. These are goate Oh I see, I see.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: So what are some other invented languages? I know it
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: seems like so much that we I feel like we're
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: cutting it short, but I want to let you fly,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Ben oh Man, Okay, yes, thank you for setting me
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: up there, Noel, Just briefly, we have to mention Esperanto,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: which is one of the world's most popular constructed auxiliary languages.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: It was this mind not to be necessarily a first language,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: but a common tongue that anybody could speak, and it
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: has like two million speakers worldwide and.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: A William Shatner starring movie, if I'm not mistaken.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, his shining moment in the nineteen sixty six
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: film incubus, which my friends who speak Esperanto tell me
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: is hilarious due to pronunciation.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Sorry, mister, they made.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: A suggested them have us.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, tecto.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Cikla from the last time three time.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Sans beautiful right, speaking of Renaissance men, Yes, exactly. Shatner
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: and of.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Course Ben Franklin is probably going to be a recurring
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: character in the story of Ridiculous History because he got
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: up to some really weird stuff.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: He was a kinkster.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he was keekster. He was a fan of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: air baths. People found skeletons a baths.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, is that like Airbnb?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It could be in an Airbnbka, it's it's you know,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it's reclining in the buff, bathing in the air. He's
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: hanging out naked.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, why not just call it streaking.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: It was a different time, okay. He also made improvements
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: to something called the glass harmonica, which sounds super spooky,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: and skeletons were found under one.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Of his old abodes. Not in his closet though, No, no, no,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: not in his closet. He was legit. He was legit.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: If anything, there were probably medical experiments, but that's a story.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: You and I will have to research for another day.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'd like to hear from you if
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: you were listening to this, I'm gonna go out on
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a limb and say that you probably write stuff in English.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: What improvements would you make to the English language?
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: And hey, if you happen to have invented your own
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: improved English alphabet, write us something in that. Send us
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: your phonetic musings to Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com, or
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: drop us a note on Facebook, where we're also Ridiculous History,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: and we're also on Instagram as Ridiculous History. I've driven
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: this Pinterest joke into the ground, so I'm not even
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: gonna say it. All I'm gonna say is we're we
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: will never have a Pinterest. We will never have a Pinterest.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Well, let's put a pin in it.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Not a hard no yet, I don't pin.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Well as Nola and I resolve this. We bid you
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Ado and hope you will tune in again very soon
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: for more Ridiculous History.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.