Decabet

The Decabet was a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Mr. Joseph Franklin (played by Dan Aykroyd) of the U.S. Council of Standards and Measures introduces The New "metric alphabet"--the "Decabet".

In the Decabet, the first four letters, A, B, C, and D remain the same. The letters E and F are combined into one character, Г. For example, the word "eagle" would be spelled "ГaglГ" and would be pronounced, "Ee-fag-lef" The letters G, H, and I would become one letter, "GHI" and the letters L, M, N, and O would become "LMNO", pronounced "Elemenoh", as in, "Please lmnopen the door."

Lastly, the so-called "trash letters" (P throught Z) would be combined into a single letter, so an ordinary "stop" sign would look like an incomprehensible mess of letters all squashed together. For example, the word 'alphabet' would be spelled A-LMNO-PQRSTUVWXYZ-GHI-A-B-EF-PQRSTUVWXYZ

The sketch was written as a satirical jab at the U.S. government's attempt to convert the U.S. to the metric system. In an ironic twist, Americans found the Metric System confusing and hard to use, and the project was abandoned.