Among other bygones I remember alphabet soup. Was that from my own childhood or that of my children - or grandchildren? I haven't seen that estimable comestible lately. Have Campbell's and Heinz abandoned that primary educational project, thereby contributing to the lamentable decline of literacy among our youth? Whatever! I fondly remember spooning pasta letters of the alphabet into sometimes reluctant young mouths.

The letter B has been doubly my initial. On elementary school seating plans I was either "Billy Bothwell or Bothwell, Billy". Those seating plans often caused confusion since there were also in the class a Murray Wallace and a Wallace Murray whose names were, or sometimes were not, similarly reversed. When I arrived at U.T.S. I was simply "Bothwell". There was no informal "Bill" from martinet masters there in a then all-male society.

One assumes that alphabet soup was never exportable to the Arab, Indian or Chinese markets. Certainly, their own alphabets could no more be combined with broth and vegetables than Pitman shorthand could be. Only Latin or Greek letters can be put into soup tins. Or was it feared that such exports might be seen as one more act of Western aggression on the Middle and Far East- imperialistic, anti-Islamic, that sort of thing? Only CSIS or the RCMP knows

We, the heirs of classical Western culture, love our 26 Latin letters (22 in Greek) that have been called the original snap-on tools. They can be joined easily to create the words that make our thoughts visible. They are, thus, the foundation of culture.

The adoption of any hieroglyphics, pictograms or alphabetic characters was a giant step forward for mankind. No invention other than the wheel has been more important. One might, of course, include the lead pencil or the pen as successors to a chisel or paint brush in record keeping. For the advancement of human happiness some have argued frivolously for the advent of sliced bread. Again, whatever!

There are currently two dozen different sets of signs for making sounds and words visible. The 700 or so ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs date from 3000 B.C. The 60,000 Chinese word pictures, from which the modified Japanese characters are derived, defy the use of a compact keyboard as much as they would resist reproduction in pasta. Even if everything else is eventually imported from the Middle Kingdom its 'alphabet' is not likely to spread much beyond Chinatown.

The first six letters of our alphabet are also academic ratings, from the welcome A to the sad F for failure, the f-word that, above all other, shocks our society. The hard G, as in gun, is indispensable but the soft one, as in gin, could just as well be a J. As for H, it narrowly qualifies as a letter. In Greek its aspirate sound is indicated by an accent mark over an initial vowel rather than by a separate letter. Some who speak English drop that H altogether. How do you pronounce 'herbal'? You may remember Prof. Higgins's difficulty in getting Eliza Doolittle to pronounce Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire correctly.

I, like A, E, O and U, is a necessary lynch-pin between our English consonants. People from India and Pakistan tend to suppress those vowels in speech. The long I, as when I allude to myself, is 'ei' in most European languages. Eins, zwei, drei und so weiter auf Deutsch. The short I ('ee') as in Iraq sometimes becomes "Eye-rack" on CNN. Iraq raises the question of the value of the letter Q. Would C or K not do as well?

Except, of course, in C(K)uébec.

Is Koran or Coran not as acceptable as Qu'ran? Or is that simply cwibbling? In French, Korea is Corée. Perhaps advocates of phonetic spelling should turn their attention to a simplification of the alphabet. Readers of this column know that Z could be eliminated. 'Civilization' is always 'civilisation' here. South of the locked down border they can't even pronounce the letter Z properly.

L enables our vocal chords to push air past the sides of the tongue, a useful procedure when declaring something late or someone lazy. Or in citing latitude or longitude. As for M, a labial sound made by the lips, it may be the first sound a baby can make. Like N, it is also a nasal sound, one of only two in English speech.

The vowel O, mentioned above, has actually caused a lawsuit between the German fashion magazine "O" and Oprah Winfrey's publication "O". It was decided that their contents are so different that no one could confuse them. It is certainly essential in the market area of Toronto ON, especially in abbreviated 'O'ville'.

P is a pouty letter that pops unpleasantly into microphones. Obviously another 'labial', its place could be taken by B in words like "spill" and "spuds". Alphabet reformers of the future, please note. Its capitalised lookalike, R, growls even when it is not used in that guttural word. In French it is a gargle, in Scottish dialect a trill. It is even more variable in other languages. In Oriental speech "rice" becomes "lice". Conversely, "lemon" is "remon".

S is the serpentine letter, the nemesis of lispers. Ranking #8 in English alphabetical usage, British usage prefers it to Z, as argued above. Who, after all, would excuze themselves to blow their "noze" or complain at the dentist's about a "post-nazal drip"? T is silent in words like "listen" and is swallowed by Cockneys and words like "battle and "bottle". It is pronounced "sh" in "nation". Toronto and Ontario, make its retention essential.

U and V are the same letter in ancient Latin inscriptions. Julius Caesar was Ivlivs Cæsar. So, let's call them half-brothers. The French call W 'double V' but English 'West' becomes 'Ouest' as any traveller on our major highways knows.

X, Y and Z are each letters we could do without. They serve best as the three unknown quantities in mathematical equations. That is sufficient reason for retaining them in common usage but not enough to prevent any future simplification of the alphabet.

The most entertaining book I know on the development of our alphabet is Language Visible (Saks, D., 2003, Knopf Canada).