GenZamin Franklin alphabet to simulate Ben Franklin’s proposed changes to English

Exploring the GenZamin Franklin Alphabet: A Playful Take on Language Reform

Have you ever wondered what English might look like if historical figures or contemporary cultures influenced its spelling and character set? Recently, I stumbled upon a fascinating thought experiment: what if Benjamin Franklin’s proposed language reforms had been adopted, combined with modern Gen Z emoji culture? The result is a creative, chaotic alphabet system called the GenZamin Franklin Alphabet, which reimagines English in a playful, visually striking way.

While there’s no historical record of Franklin designing a new alphabet, this exercise serves as a fun exploration of language adaptation and visual encoding. It utilizes a set of modified rules inspired by Franklin’s spelling ideas, integrated with the vibrant and expressive symbols prevalent among Gen Z.

The Core Concept

The system replaces certain letters based on their phonetic sounds, drawing from Franklin’s suggested spelling reforms, and substitutes others with emojis or symbols for a visually dynamic effect:

• Letters retained: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V
• Letters replaced when they produce specific sounds:
• C becomes K (hard sounds) or S (soft sounds)
• J transforms into 🌀 or the sounds “dge” / “zh”
• Q becomes “KW”
• W turns into “UU” or “OO”
• X is replaced by “KS”

• Y becomes “I” or “EE”

• Common sound combinations are replaced with emojis:

• SH → 🤫
• CH → 🧊
• TH (voiceless) → 👅
• TH (voiced) → 👄
• NG → 🧠
• ZH (like in “vision”) → 🌀

Stylistic options include elongating vowels with double letters or colons, emphasizing words with ✨ or 🌟, and adding a playful plural marker 🐑.

Applying the Rules

To give a sense of this system in action, I applied it to Robert W. Service’s poem, The Men That Don’t Fit In. The transformed version reads with an energetic chaos that’s both challenging and amusing to decode, highlighting how flexible language can become through playful modification.

Here’s a snippet from that transformed poem:

👄e kwikk bruun fok