oh my word!

The first, though certainly not the last, argument I ever had with my wife was: which order should the cutlery drawer follow?

This was in the days when the traditional life sequence was: A. Wedding. B. Set up home together. C. Have children. I believe the sequence of events can be somewhat different these days.

Many years ago, upon moving in to our new home after a luxury honeymoon in an Arbroath caravan, we organised our newlyacquired cutlery. I insisted that, from left, the compartments should hold forks, knives and then spoons. My wife believed in a completely unreasonable knives-forks-spoons arrangement. She wanted it done this way for the pitifully poor reason that it was how her mother’s cutlery was stored. Good sense won the day, however, with the incontrovertible argument that forks-knives-spoons follows alphabetical order. I like things in alphabetical order. Phone books (remember them?), dictionaries, and bookshelves all have a sense of rightness if they start with A and progress to Z. But who decided A was to come first followed by B, and that Y and Z should be in the caboose? A quick skim-through of alphabet history would reveal that the Romans modelled their alphabet on the Greek, who had in turn copied the Phoenician alphabet of 3,500 years ago. There were a few changes made before our English A, B, C, D was settled upon around the 16th Century. And letters have been added, subtracted, and undergone changes even since then. But no one knows why the Phoenician alphabet was ordered in its particular fashion. Goodness knows what state their cutlery drawers were in. I find this unsatisfactory. Surely we can do better than that. The alphabet would be better if ordered by letter frequency in words, which would give: E, T, A, R, I, O, N, S, H, D, L, U, W, M, F, C, G, Y, P, B, K, V, J, X, Q, Z.

I think that would help us understand our language, help children learn about English, and kill stone dead that annoying American song that recites the alphabet and pronounces Zed as Zee. The thing is, though, because no one is in charge of the English language there is no one to approach and suggest an alphabet change. I’ve said it before and am the type of annoying chap who will probably say it again. Our language needs an official regulator to decide not only (admittedly not entirely serious) questions like this, but also how English should be properly used. Almost every other current world language has such a body.