It would seem, at least it does to me, that the alphabet gods when distributing words among the twenty-six alphabets of English, gave W more than its fair share of questions. Why, what, when, where, which, who, whose, and also whom. Hmm.. are there any more? In case you have any more up your sleeve, drop them in the comment box. I’d very much like to add them to my W-question-kitty.

Anyway, you know I am just kidding, right? As always. There are no alphabet gods and they don’t distribute words. That’s not how language or words evolve over time. But you already know that. Still, I can’t help but wonder why W gets to stand first in line in so many of the questions being asked.

In the present times of course we cannot imagine it being any other way. No W anywhere and where would be? More importantly, what if we wake up tomorrow and find W has disappeared? I’ll tell you: We’d be miserable and lost!

How the heck would we ask so many of the questions brewing in our minds waiting to be asked? Without W, ‘why’ would just be a plain two letter hy. Totally meaningless. Same goes for ‘whom’ which will end up being a plain Jane hom, and ‘which’ will become a hich with no real clout to be the flag bearer of many a question.

On the other ‘what’ without W would become a hat, and with the real hat holding its own with clearly defined meaning as to what it stands for is not going to like it at all. You see, people might mistakenly ask the real one to step in to lead a question. With no experience of any kind in raising questions, it might not feel worthy enough to throw itself in the ring.

‘When’ will face a different problem altogether shortened to hen. It wouldn’t know whether it should start following the rooster around clucking all the while. What a come down! Poor ‘Where’ instead of being a question would become the answer here, opening a different can of worms altogether. And what about the tiny ‘who’? It would end up being a mere echo of Santa Claus. Ho, ho, ho!

Okay. I think that’s enough nonsense for one day. I hope I have succeeded in wasting a few precious minutes of your life. Just in case you do have a smile on your face after reading this, I’ll consider my job here well done. 😉

©️ Shail Mohan 2024