The Universe of Discourse

Fri, 31 Oct 2008

A proposed correction to an inconsistency in English orthography
English contains exactly zero homophones of "zero", if one ignores the trivial homophone "zero", as is usually done.

English also contains exactly one homophone of "one", namely "won".

English does indeed contain two homophones of "two": "too" and "to".

However, the expected homophones of "three" are missing. I propose to rectify this inconsistency. This is sure to make English orthography more consistent and therefore easier for beginners to learn.

I suggest the following:

thrie
threigh
thurry

I also suggest the founding of a well-funded institute with the following mission:

Determine the meanings of these three new homophones
Conduct a public education campaign to establish them in common use
Lobby politicians to promote these new words by legislation, educational standards, public funding, or whatever other means are appropriate
Investigate the obvious sequel issues: "four" has only "for" and "fore" as homophones; what should be done about this?

Obviously, the director of this institute should be a thoughtful, far-seeing individual who will not allow his good judgement to be clouded by the generous salary. I refer, of course, to myself.

Happy Halloween. All Hail Discordia.

[ Addendum 20081106: Some readers inexplicably had nothing better to do than to respond to this ridiculous article. ]

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