Down with the Letter C

I before E,

Except after C,

Unless pronounced "Ay"

As in neighbor and weigh.

That's not the way it's recorded in Ebenezer Brewer's 1880 Rules for English Spelling, but that's the way I memorized it in school. This little rhyme reminds me so much of my frustration with the English language. You see, I'm a fan of phonetics in alphabets and languages, which is a trait not to be found in English. But English isn't what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about a little piece of it that is much older--the ninth syllable in the above rhyme and the third letter in the Latin alphabet, the letter C.

The letter C came into being through a series of changes in calligraphy and pronunciation. Phoenician was kidnapped by the Greeks, the Greek alphabet was modified for use by the Etruscans, the Etruscans lent their alphabet to the Romans, and the Romans influenced languages all over the world. Altogether it was a messy transformation due to the fact that each language was missing the sounds and order of its predecessor. Many new characters were created, superseded, and passed on. C being one of them.

My big question is, why haven't we deleted C from the alphabet after all this time? Is it a bad habit we're too lazy to kick? K and S both make the sounds C can produce, and G takes up the original pronunciation C had back when it was called gaml, gimel and gamma. Not to mention, relinquishing C would alleviate part of the struggle faced by those learning and reading English and other languages of Latin descent.

Now, I know linguists who think the banishment of C would be a travesty, but honestly, wouldn't it be more productive to have individual symbols for combinations like SH, CH, TH and each vowel sound than to have a redundant copycat letter that makes spelling more complicated than it needs to be? C's day of glory has long since passed in my humble opinion, and as the world continues to slowly merge and interact a single phonetic alphabet that includes a character for every known sound would be much more effective. Some languages wouldn't need to use every character in the alphabet, but the use of a single alphabet would make it much easier for people to learn each others' languages and translate those languages.

I say down with the letter C and its unneeded fellows, and up with a single, worldwide, phonetic alphabet. What do you think? Am I crazy or am I right? What do you think? Comment below.