I have a strong command of the English language. I speak and read pretty good German, passable French, and basic Greek. I have dabbled in seven or eight other languages, from Mandarin to Klingon, and then of course there’s mathematics. So it cannot be truthfully said that, when I call for radical reform of my native tongue, I do so from a position of ignorance.

We are limited, tremendously, by the language we learn as children. Our ability to form ideas is, in large part, bounded by our knowledge of vocabulary and (less obviously) grammar, especially syntax. This is a difficult and convoluted notion, so today I’m going to point out that it exists, urge that you spend a few minutes thinking it over, and move on to something simpler: spelling.

As I see it, there is absolutely no reason not to have a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Some languages (Bosnian comes to mind) are very nearly phonetic, while others (English and especially French) flirt with chaos. The primary reason for this seems to be that the spoken language tends to evolve faster than the written one, and some orthographies have fallen way behind.

We can fix this! Let’s start with the vowels. Five letters, ten main vowel sounds. Hmm. Why not just use lowercase vowels for the “short” sounds and uppercase for the “long” sounds? There are a few other vowel sounds, such as the “oo” in “book,” but that’s nothing an accent mark couldn’t handle.

We have too many consonants. Do we really need the letter C, for instance, when we have K and S? Speaking of K and S, smush ’em together and you no longer need X (as for xenophobic xylophones, Z needs more to do anyway). And don’t even get me started on W.

Sometimes, though, we have the opposite problem. Think about the combinations TH and GH. Don’t they have enough to do? Why not put some other pairings to work on the excess workload?

No need to standardize the English language once and for all; it’ll keep evolving, as it must. But a little maintenance along the way might be just what we need. Otherwise, with text-based communication becoming so prevalent, written and spoken English may well diverge entirely. How do you pronounce the smiley face again?