澳大利亞墨爾本的餐館老板保羅?馬西斯最近創造出一個新字母“?”來代替單詞“the”, 如今他正在游說蘋果公司讓他在iTunes商店里推廣關于新字母“?”的應用軟件。馬西斯表示，他的發明并不重要，更不會改變世界，但是對大眾來說很實用。馬西斯說，“the”是英語中使用頻率最高的單詞，縮減成一個字母將會使人們在使用社交網站和打字時更加快捷。英語中最常用的前五個單詞是the, be, to, of, and，其中排在第五名的“and”已有符號“&”來表示，“&”有時直接被當成英文字母表中的第27個字母。

馬西斯30年來在澳大利亞各地開了20多家餐館和酒店，人送外號“麥得斯”（希臘神話中佛里吉亞的國王，能點物成金）。這次馬西斯投資38,000澳元（約合人民幣21.4萬元）開發這款應用軟件，雖然之前遭到蘋果公司拒絕，他仍在努力改變他們的決定。

Paul Mathis, a restaurateur from Melbourne who owns a string of dining establishments, has designed the letter “?” – representing the word “the”.

Paul Mathis, a restaurateur from Melbourne who owns a string of dining establishments, has designed the letter “?” – representing the word “the”. Now he is lobbying Apple to allow him to promote his app, which features the new character, in its iTunes store.

“Is this important?” he said, in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald. “No. Is this going to change the world? Not really.

“But is it something that might be useful for people? I think so.”

Mr Mathis, who has opened more than 20 restaurants and hotels across Australia in a career spanning three decades, is known as “Mr Midas” for his ability to create booming venues. He currently owns and runs six restaurants in the city.

Yet in a move to branch out of the food business, the entrepreneur has invested AUS $38,000 (￡23,500) in the new app, but has so far been rejected by Apple. He is hoping he can change their mind, pointing out that reducing the word “the” – the most used word in the English language – to one character would be helpful for Twitter and swift typing.

“The word 'and’ is only the fifth-most used word in English and it has its own symbol – the ampersand,” said Mr Mathis. “Isn’t it time we accorded the same respect to 'the’?”

The top five most commonly used words in the English language are said to be: the, be, to, of, and 'and’. The ampersand has at times been used as the 27th letter of the English alphabet.

“The Benedictine monks developed the modern version of the ampersand in the Middle Ages, when they were hand-copying religious texts.

“I’m not putting myself in the same league, but who knows – maybe in 500 years’ time people will be amazed that there was a time when we didn’t use 'th’.”

(Source: The Telegraph)

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（中國日報網英語點津 實習生 張益欣， 編輯 Helen ）