K is for Kookie. And Kompressor.

April 29, 2003 8:23 AM

Just in: Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter “C” Unusable.
posted by Su (28 comments total)

To paraphrase Monty Python;

"What a silly bunt"
posted by metaxa at 8:31 AM on April 29, 2003

Via Webword, BTW, who generally have topics of greater interest than just making fun of Jakob.
posted by Su at 8:32 AM on April 29, 2003

Axe meet grinder.
posted by moonbiter at 8:38 AM on April 29, 2003

he will be branching out from website/software usability and now be including lingual and cultural usability into his studies.

Perhaps his first objective should be to research how language evolves naturally as a result of common usage. You can't force language to go a certain way. It happens as culture uses it, and then we can look back at it and study it's evolution.

What exactly is cultural usability? Since when is culture something that one uses?
posted by archimago at 8:40 AM on April 29, 2003

*rushes to register amazon.kom, google.kom, and of course, metafilter.kom*
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:40 AM on April 29, 2003

If any letter's not needed, it's K, not C. But try telling that to KC and the Sunshine Band.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:53 AM on April 29, 2003

Meh.
posted by UrbanFigaro at 8:56 AM on April 29, 2003

just to spite him, i will only refer to him as Jacob.
posted by dobbs at 8:57 AM on April 29, 2003

Just In: World Declares Jakob Nielsen Unusable.
posted by Foosnark at 8:58 AM on April 29, 2003

The European Union commisioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications rather than German, which was teh other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

In the first year, 's' will be used instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve the news with joy. Also, the hard 'c' will be replaced with 'k'. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasum in the sekond year, when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced by 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograph' 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wilagre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' by 'z' and 'w' by 'v'.

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou', and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vd hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vfl finali kum tru!

[on preview, very nearly what UrbanFigaro said...]
posted by twine42 at 9:04 AM on April 29, 2003

sorry... meant to put that in small tags...
posted by twine42 at 9:04 AM on April 29, 2003

You mean pronounce "blassified" with a K?
posted by Stauf at 9:09 AM on April 29, 2003

Oh, another parody of Neilsen? That's just about as funny as picking on the handicapped kid on the playground... Time has proven that he's irrelevant, let's just leave him to his... well, whatever it is he does.
posted by JollyWanker at 9:12 AM on April 29, 2003

As always, he's right

Funny (in my opinion).
posted by timeistight at 9:17 AM on April 29, 2003

so, to quote Orrectly:

"The sheer uselessness of a letter which just mimis the sound of not one but two different onsonants is staggering. It only auses onfusion and is probably osting ompanies millions every year."

Aye.
posted by betobeto at 10:34 AM on April 29, 2003

If any letter's not needed, it's K, not C. But try telling that to KC and the Sunshine Band.

Or to KFC.

"F - we do iken right!"
posted by betobeto at 10:38 AM on April 29, 2003

That's krazy talk.
posted by Cyrano at 10:53 AM on April 29, 2003

KU later.
posted by ginz at 11:02 AM on April 29, 2003

Bad news for far leftists. Kinda takes the fun out of spelling it "Amerika".
posted by 4easypayments at 11:02 AM on April 29, 2003

This idea's been toyed with before. Dan Ackroyd once did a comedy routine on Saturday Night Live which was called the "Decibet." Ackroyd suggested that the alphabet be converted into the metric system, and that it be trimmed down to ten letters. In the Decibet, the C was left alone, but LMNOP became one letter, and all the letters from Q to Z were squished together. Unfortunately I'm having difficulty finding a link to a copy of the old transcript online, but it was really funny.
posted by ZachsMind at 11:04 AM on April 29, 2003

Dan Ackroyd once did a comedy routine on Saturday Night Live which was called the "Decibet".
posted by psychomedia at 11:14 AM on April 29, 2003

Ah! Found it!

Mucus will be LMNOucus
posted by ZachsMind at 11:20 AM on April 29, 2003

Where’s the option to buy the full report as a 300 dollar .pdf file?
posted by Gary at 11:34 AM on April 29, 2003

Oh poopie, PsychoMedia beat me to it. =P
posted by ZachsMind at 11:36 AM on April 29, 2003

This is still my favorite joke at Nielsen's expense...(and no, he wouldn't deserve it if he weren't so damn self-important)
posted by LairBob at 12:14 PM on April 29, 2003

Where’s the option to buy the full report as a 300 dollar .pdf file?

lol - so true, so true.
posted by SpaceCadet at 1:07 PM on April 29, 2003

Ah, I can't wait for the advent of Euro-English.
posted by junkbox at 1:49 PM on April 29, 2003

For a much more entertaining read, check this book out.
posted by MsVader at 8:34 PM on April 29, 2003