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Lupercali OP t1_ixulpeu wrote

Reply to comment by LanceaRupta in TIL that in 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright wrote and published a 50,000 word novel, 'Gadsby' which does not contain the letter 'e' . A warehouse containing most copies of the book burned down. by Lupercali

Yes, and it presented great difficulties for translators when it was published in English, as, for a start, the actual name of the book in English contained the letter e.

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paolog t1_ixumwqq wrote

The literal translation would be "The Disappearance"* (three e's), but I think they renamed it "A Void".

The point of the book was that "e" is the most common letter in French, making it hard to write, and in various other languages too, making it hard to translate. ("The" is one of the most common words in the English language.)

* Ironic, considering the fate of the book.

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M0rqu1ng4 t1_ixv3yyk wrote

E is also the most common letter in English usage - E, T, A, O, N, R, I, S and H in that order, if I recall correctly...

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Cetun t1_ixvzq20 wrote

There was a guy on Reddit who had a comet history years long that had never used the letter H or or F or something.

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aSimpleWardrobe t1_ixvskll wrote

I assume Q or Z are rarest?

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M0rqu1ng4 t1_ixvxse2 wrote

Yes, along with X and J. The numbers of tiles of each letter in Scrabble is a good indicator - different languages have different letter frequencies (and therefore different numbers of tiles in Scrabble).

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