[gizmo686]

Removed the "do not"

As far as the alphabet itself goes, I do not think that Latin is that bad. All symbols have a canonical sound associated with them. The problem is that our usage of the alphabet is horribly inconsistent. This is partially due to the fact that English has sounds that cannot be expressed using the "pure" alphabet. Arguably Japanese has this same problem in their system, with the ゃ、ょ、ゅ modifiers. But at least they distinguish those from や、よ、ゆ by size, and are disciplined about their usage, so we can consider the set of compounds to be their own characters and not have a mess.

Of course you still have the ず/づ issue, and the pronunciation of は and を as わ and お in their most common usage. But, even in modern Japanese, these oddities are not universal.

Out of curiousity, are you aware of any numeral system that beats Arabic? By pre-Arabic European standards, Arabic numerals are a masterpiece of symmetry.

[jacobolus]

Here’s my proposal for base twelve numerals, http://i.imgur.com/UobIObq.jpg ; multiplication mod twelve, http://i.imgur.com/dRielBv.jpg

It can also be nice to use a “balanced base”, with digits for negative numbers, e.g. in a base ten context you’d have digits for –4 to 5 (or if you’re willing to have multiple expressions for the same number, –5 to 5).

A balanced base twelve multiplication table might look like this: http://i.imgur.com/quEcxH0.png