of Dutton Speedwords is the maxim that frequently used words should be shorter than seldom-used words in order to speed up communication (see information theory). There are 493 one-, two- and three-letter roots. The 46 most frequent English words are equated with 27 one-letter Speedword roots also called parent words in the Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords book: a "at, to" (< French à) b "but, butt" (< English) c "this" (< French ce) d "of, from" (< French de) e "to be, is, am, are" (< French est) f "for" (< English) g "they, them" h "has, have" (< English?) i "in, within" (< English) j "I, me" (< French je) k "that" [conjunction] (< French que) l "the" (< French le) m "with" (< German mit) n "no, not" (< English) o "on" (< English) p "can, to be able" (< French peut) q "do (question particle), question, query" (< English) r "will, shall" (< ?) s "he, him" (< French se) sh "she, her" (< English) t "it" (< English) u "a, an, one" (< Latin unus) v "you" (< French vous) w "we, us" (< English) x "whether, if" y "was, were" z "as, then" (< English? "zen"?) & "and" (< English) Some two- and three-letter words are good -- gu know -- sa love -- am beautiful -- bel language -- lin game, play -- lud (Note that all but the first of these examples are taken from Latin roots —sapio, amo, bellus, lingua, ludus—as are "room" and "sleep" below—camera and dormio—while "good" and the root for "air" below come from German: gut, luft.) The few hundred roots are combined through the use of affixes to expand vocabulary. For example: the affix -a indicates an unfavorable connotation to the root-word; thus, bixy = kill, bixya = murder. Some compounds appear fanciful, or at least not immediately transparent, such as ky + luf (eat + air) to mean "picnic". Grammatical features include the use of single letters (as opposed to verb conjugations) to indicate tense; the letter r indicates future tense and y indicates past. Thus, j sa = I know, j ysa = I knew, j r sa = I will know. Nouns and verbs have the same form (as do many English words: the light, I light, etc.) as do adverbs and adjectives (bel = "beautiful" and "beautifully"). Compounds follow a headnoun-modifier sequence, as in