So limited, the alphabet,
so few letters, only 26.
Twenty six, for god’s sake.
Can you believe it?
What can be said with a maximum of two dozen plus two?
Think of how much more could be said with only a few letters more.
Or thoughts we could have in the noisy silence of our private brains.
Lavish vocabularies.
Expanded dictionaries,
both on and off line.
Thesauruses brimming.
Vast glossaries.
More words from the wise.
The spell cast by misspelling.
Red ‘x’s’ on 8th grade papers.
Essays gone awry.
Philosophies unarticulated for lack of a letter’s missing sound.
If only we had more letters, KLUPNOSXTE could be fixed into a word.
But wait, there’s a price to be paid:
the strain on the tongue, teeth, and lips forced to make unconventional sounds.
The strain on the brain free to think unconventional thoughts.
If you k n w what I mean.
.