The Basic Code  ISecrets of Traditional English Spelling The morpho-phonemic systejm used to write the English language has some  phonemic regularity and quite a bit of morphemic [or grammatical] regularity    To embed a font, go to www.MS.com/typography

The Basic Code The code overlaps consonants 1  2  3 Spelling rules -  spelling rules The other code sites  truespel 104 symbols References

Those who have taken the time to learn the basic code behind English spelling can spell better than those who are unaware of these statsitcal regularities.  Many adults have said they were never taught that the silent e is often used as a marker to indicate that the preceding vowel is long.  There are quite a few such regularities in English spelling that many people may be unaware of. 

The basic code:  Each phoneme represented by only one letter or digraph.  See truespel-3.html 

While there are no spelling rules without exceptions, there are probabilities and these can be learned and used to increase the matches with traditional spelling.  This is the basic code.

According to McGuinnes (1997), most of the confusion in TO (the traditional orthography)  is caused by 26 alternate vowel spellings, 32 alternate consonant spellings, and 21 code overlaps.

Paul Hanna thinks that the sheer number of orthographic options makes the traditional writing system confusing and overly complex.  The obvious solution is to reduce the number of spelling options and eliminate the code overlaps.  Truespel, Spanglish, and most other reform orthographies do this. RITE states the goal in their name, Reduced Irregularity in Traditional English.

New codes can eliminate the inconsistencies in English spelling and bring spelling in line with pronunciation. 

However, 100% phonemic transcriptions respell over 60% of the words in the dictionary which detracts from their likelihood of being widely accepted as a substitute for the traditional writing system. . 

Since it is based on the alphabet used for Old English, it is part of the code of English spelling.  It could be the basis of a new consistent code for English.  However, it is used here as a pronunciation guide and a meta language - a way of talking about sounds.

This page is not about spelling reform, it is about how to live with the inconsistency. 

24 Consonant Phonemes [the phoneme ng is missing from both the traditional system and Truespel]

13 with one spelling by position b d h l p t v ng qu sh th tth wh

12 with one dominant spelling pattern f g j k m n r s w x z ch

The z phoneme is generally spelled with an s.  z is dominant only in the initial position

26 spelling alternatives for 12 consonants plus 73 consonant clusters - 99 

14 PURE VOWELS AND THEIR FOUR MOST FREQUENT SPELLING

32 spellings for 14 vowel sounds must be taught in TO (but not in a phonemic alphabet)
e.g., /ou/ -  tone, goat,  told,  low, though,  obey,   owe,  oh, owing

Spanglish is positional, terminal long vowels are shortened because the short vowel can never occur in this position.  Single letter vowels are unstressed in Spanglish in multi-syllable words.  This practice makes Spanglish slightly less phonemic and slighlty more complicated than Truespel.

At least 21 code overlaps in TS must be taught, e.g., the spelling  ou is associated with over 7 sounds

Spanglish as an i.t.a. and pronunciation guide vs. Spanglish as a reform proposal
 

The Phonological Structure of English and the Traditional Writing System

Any orthographic system for English should have a unique grapheme [symbol] for most of the 12 pure vowels and the important combinations of vowel phonemes [ei ai au ou...].  The sounds that Daniel Jones considered to be essential for a full description of English speech are listed below. 

According to Harry Lindgren, many proposed reform notations for English fail by not having a unique symbol for schwa.  Schwa [an unstressed mid lax vowel] is one of the most frequent sounds in English speech. Roughly 10% of your utterances are [uhs] or schwas.  Lindgren considered this oversight to be sufficient to eliminate the proposed notation from serious consideration. 

Lindgren's system had both u /^/ and schwa ['].  Many systems will merge these phonemes.  Truespel uses u for both, Spanglish uses a for both. Since Truespel always marks stress, it is easy to determine if the u is stressed or unstressed. Thus,  Truespel does have a way of referencing the schwa [or mid lax vowel] sound.  about = /'baut/ = ubbout

In British English (RP) there are 46 different speech sounds:  21 vowels, 25 consonants (Wijk, p. 13).  According to Longman's Dictionary of American English, General American [GA] has 45 speech sounds [21 v  24 c].  Longman's GA merges [a:] and [o].  [see how many phonemes?]

By showing stress, Truespel is able to eliminate the /^  '/ distinction,  reducing the number to 43.  Truespel does not differentiate between singer and fingger, the vowel in her and other, the long and short /turned c/ -both would be spelled [au].

Sixty symbols are normally used to represent the vowels.  Unfortunately, some are used for more than one sound. Most symbols in TO are polyvalent or multi-valued.  The codes overlap.
For instance, there are 29 ways to represent the sound /u:/ and 18 ways to represent the sound /ei/.

60 V-Markers found in TO: a, e, i, y, o, u, ar, er, ir, yr, or, ur, aa, ae, ai, ay, au, aw, ea, ee, ei, ey, eu, ew, ie, ye, oa, oe, oi, oy, oo, ou, ow, ue, ui, uy, aer, air, ayr, ear, eer, eir, eyr, eur, ew(e)r, iar, ier, yer, oar, oor, our, ow(e)r, uer, igh, aigh, augh, eigh, ough.

In TO, 44 symbols are used to represent 25 consonants:  21 single letters + 23 digraphs and trigraphs.  The 23 combined symbols  are shown below:
 

23 Marked consonants: ch, dg, gh, gn, gu, ng, ph, qu, sc, sch, sh, si, ssi, sci, ti, ci, ce, tch, th, wh, xc, and zi.   (ci, si, and zi are used for /sh/ and /zh/).

To represent 46 phonemes, English traditionally uses 104 different unigraphs, digraphs, and trigraphs.  Some are used more than once.

The most serious problem with the tradtional English orthography is its lack of predictability.  The chances that one can spell an unfamiliar word is 50% OR LESS.  This estimate is based on the fact that no phonemic notation will match TO more than 50% of the time.  The best attempt is about 40%.

Code overlaps are much more serious than using more than one letter or combination to represent a sound. Code overlap refers to the tendency for TO to use the same letter or combination to represent more than one phoneme. Each letter can refer to about 14different sounds.  The letters in TO are multi-valued or polyvalent.  (i.e., chaotic and confusing as opposed to alphabetic) 

Educators intent on teaching spelling and reading generally discard wh as a distinct phoneme, and make a few simplifications. 
 

From Traditional spelling			To
25 consonants	44 symbols	200+ spellings	23 consonants	23 spellings
25 vowels	60 symbols	300+ spellings	17 vowels	17 spellings
50 phonemes	108 symbols	500+ spellings	42* phonemes	40 spellings

*Truespel adds 3 sounds by marking stress: schwa, schwa + R, and schwi [unstressed ee]

Orton phonograms  bibliography
  Truespel and Spanglish  asciibets [askee-bets] are used to indicate sound values below

The basic code:  Each phoneme represented by only one letter or digraph
 From sound to spelling.

25 consonants in English speech - 50 spellings in written English
23 pure consonants, j and ch are combinations

24 Consonant Phonemes [ng missing from both TO and Truespel]

with one spelling by position b d h l p t v ng qu sh th tth

with one dominant spelling pattern f g j k m n r s w x z ch

The z phoneme is generally spelled with an s.  z is dominant only in the initial position

26 spelling alternatives for 12 consonants plus 73 consonant clusters - 99 

Truespel and Phonemic Spanglish notations are used to clarify the following vowel sounds:

18 vowels have over 50 spellings in the traditional writing system - only 18 in Truespel
Truespel recognizes yue as a combination of a consonant and a vowel

18 Vowel Phonemes [two phonemes are merged her/er and o/o:]
click a letter to view a page showing the alternative spellings for these sounds - polyvalence

truespel    a   i   aar   oi	e   aa   u   ee  ae  ie  oe   yue  aw  oo   ue   ou  er  or
spanglish . a.  i.  ar    oy	e   o.   'u    i    ei   ai   oa     yu    o    u.    u    au  'r   or
spanglish.ae  y  aar   oy	e   aa   v    i    ei   ai  ow    yu    o    w    u    ou   r   or

Spanglish requires diacritics or markers to become a phonemic notation.  The alternative of recruiting r y w v as vowels [3rd line] can be visually disruptive  McGuinnes (1997), as above, ignores the schwa sound and most R-combinations.

32 spellings for 14 vowel sounds must be taught in TO (but not in a phonemic alphabet)
e.g., /ou/ -  tone, goat,  told,  low, though,  obey,   owe, oh

---

    Span -   to'n    go't    to'ld   lo'     tho'      o'bey     o'         [o' alternate ow]
 Truespel   toen   goet   toeld  loe   thoe     oebae   oe 

21 code overlaps must be taught for TO, e.g.,  ou is associated with over 7 sounds
<ou> -  out, soup,  touch,  soul,   though,  cough,  thought
OGD -   out,  suep,  tuch,   soel,   thoe,      kawf,    thawt
Span -   aut   sup    tu'ch    so'l      tho'        cof        thot 

According to McGuinnes (1997), most of the confusion in TO (the traditional orthography)  is caused by 26 alt. vowel spellings, 32 alt. consonant spellings, and 21 code overlaps.

Paul Hanna (19--) also thinks that the sheer number of orthographic options makes the traditional writing system confusing and overly complex.  The obvious solution is to reduce the number of spelling options and eliminate the code overlaps.  Both Truespel, Spanglish, and most reform orthographies do this. 

While there are no spelling rules without exceptions, there are probabilities and these can be learned and used to increase the matches with traditional spelling.

Reform rules:  We now have both a g and j in the alphabet.  Archaic historical spellings dating from a time when letter g had to be used for both sounds can now be dropped: guilty=gilty, gaol-jail, guage=gaje, ridge=rij, gem=jem, enough=enuf...

Single Consonant Spelling Alternatives  (idea from McGuinness, p. 103 and Orton)
Different ways the consonant sound is spelled at the beginning and end of words
Unlike the traditional orthography, Truespel always spells the same sound the same way
Letters such as the [u] and [e] in guage are silent markers. 
magic e endings usually indicate a long vowel:  exceptions have, give, ...

sound phoneme	key word     truespel	word beginning	word ending
b  d  f  g  h  [silent in some words] j  k  l    [can be semi-vowel] m  [can be semi-vowel] n   [can be semi-vowel] ng p  r   [can be semi-vowel] s  sh t  v  w hw [semi-vowel] x  [ks, gs, z,  sh/ch/s]  y  [semi-vowel] z	boot, bib, tribe     trieb dog, did, mode     moed fun, fife, enough    ennuf got, gig, ghost,  guage  gaej hot, who hue, casbah cazbaa job  judge  juj, gem  jem kick  cold  chasm  arctic  log, lull,  till,  little  man, comb,  column,  prism  not, knot, gnome, foreign  sing, singer, fing-ger pig, pip, pipe  red, roar, write, rare  sat, sass, fence, confess ship,  hush,  show tot, tote, debt  van, valve, save  win, when,  tax, xerox, Xena yell, yacht zip, xerox, size, fizz, his	b  d  f  ph g  gu  gh h  wh (hw)  j  g c  k  ch l  m  n  kn  gn --  p  r  wr ur er  s  c  sc  sh, ch t  v  w  wh  [foreign names]  y  z, x	b, be d  de f  ff  ph  gh  fe g  gue  gg  ge -silent  terminal ge  dge k  ck  ic ke l  'l  ll  el  le m 'm mb  mn n  gn  ne ng p   pe r  'r er ur ir  re ce se  se  ss  s  sh  [c in Saxon] t  bt ght te v  ve ve -- [ ow is a vowel] x  -no consonant endings s se  ze  zz  z
ch [tsh] [-k]  ng  qu  [kw]  sh  sch  [sk-] [-sh]  S'n  [shun]  th [t, tth]  th [d, dh, d, x]	chin  machine watch  singer/finger, bank quit, queen  shop, lush  school  illusion, suspicion  thin, breath [bretth] then, breadth, breathe	ch  --   [Eng, Ing] qu  sh ch sch  x  sch, sk --  th  th  d	ch  tch  che ng  --  sh  she -  sion, cion, tion  th  th the dth ght
silent h  silent w,  w as vowel marks 3 vowels	honor, herb, Allah  who, write, wren  - /u/ short u sound - Welsh w [bwk] book	h  silent w  silent awl, crawl taut, taught	h   silent marker low [silo] snow  wow, cow, allow woe, low, know
sk yu	skunk, scheme, schism unit, sure, argue, argument	sk sch sc u	sk u ew ue ure

The most likely spelling alternative listed first above.  Magic e endings have to do with vowel
The options eliminated by most reform notations are in bold face. 

Albrow, K.H. 1972. The English Writing System.  London: Longmans
Carney, Edward.  1994. A Survey of English Spelling.  London: Routledge
Coulmas, Florian. 1989. The Writing Systems of the World. Oxford: Basic
Coulmas, Florian. 1996. Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell. 
Crystal, David. 1995. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 
Dewey, Godfrey. 1971. English spelling: Roadblock to reading. NY: Teachers College Press.
Dewey, Godfrey. 1970. Relative Frequency of English Spelling. NY: Teachers College Press. 
Haas, W. 1970. Phonographic Translation. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Hanna, Paul R., Hanna, J.S. Hodges, R.E. & Rudorf, E.H. (1966). PhonemeGrapheme
  Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement, Doc.OE-32008, Washington, D.C.: 
  U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare.USGPO
Hanna, Paul (1992) Spelling: Structure and Strategies. University Press of American
Jones, Daniel. 1950. The Pronunciation of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 
Lindgren, Harry. 1969. Spelling Reform: A New Approach. Alpha Books
McGuinness, Diane 1997. Why Our Children Cant Read. Free Press
Martin, J. H. & Friedberg, A. 1986, Writing to Read. NY, Warner Books 
Pitman, James & St. John. 1970. Alphabets and Reading. London: Pitman
Scragg, D.G. 1974. A History of English Spelling.  Manchester: Manchester University Press

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