Which 4 letters of the alphabet did Benjamin Franklin propose to have discarded in his 1768 spelling reform of the USA?

Susan203

I thought there were 6: c, j, q, w, x, and y Nov 23 07, 11:48 PM

zbeckabee

Looks like six: Franklin wrote his alphabetic proposal in 1768, while living in London. “Franklin Fonetic” consisted of 26 letters, but the conventional letterforms c, j, q, w, x, and y were all thrown out, to be replaced with new letterforms. http://stbride.org/friends/conference/temporarytype/sixnewletters Nov 23 07, 11:49 PM

tragic_flawed

I found: C, J, W & Y. The interesting info is why did he detest these letters which such fierce obstinance. Do you have a source(website-book) of the 6 letters? Nov 23 07, 11:51 PM

AyatollahK

Franklin didn't detest these letters; he thought they were redundant. For example, "c" can be pronounced two ways, as "k" or as "s". Franklin's idea was just to use K and S where we would have used C, and then add new letters in their place to match sounds without a unique representation. Here's a source that shows Franklin's replacement letterforms: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/franklin.htm Nov 24 07, 1:06 AM