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Phoneticists working at the Lexical Research Center in Palo Alto, California, announced the creation today of the letter []. The letter, which is produced by bombarding a Z with glottal stops, is hailed as a "major breakthrough" by Dr. Susan Kern, the head of the research group.
Earlier in the year the group had succeeded in fissioning a Y into an I and a U, also by bombardment with glottal stops. This was widely acclaimed as the first evidence of "subliteral" particles, or tiny phonetic elements that make up letters, which were previously thought to be indivisible. However, the creation of a new letter took the group "completely by surprise".
"This opens up the possibility that we may create many other transalphabetic letters not found in nature," Dr. Kern said in a press conference called to hail the breakthrough. "[] is just the beginning."
Experiments performed so far have suggested [] is a consonant, like the majority of the natural letters, and is highly unstable, decaying most commonly to a K and a T. However, Dr. Kern said today that "much is unknown" about the properties of the new letter.
While most are excited about the prospect of new letters and the possibilities they might bring, some were critical of the discovery. "This letter has some dangerous properties," warned Dr. Len Markov of Princeton. "If unstable transalphabetic letters are used in words, then the meanings of those words will be dramatically altered when the letters break down, as they inevitably will. Sentences spoken harmlessly months ago could suddenly become offensive, false or completely meaningless." A colleague of his wryly commented that many of Dr. Markov's sentences had this property already.
However, Dr. Kern stated that although [] is unstable, there might be a "plateau of stability" in other transalphabetic letters. "We simply can't tell at this point," she said. "It's an e[]iting time to be alive."