C O N T E N T S

Consonant Regularities
Phonological Structure of the English Writing System
Tips for Better Spelling
 

 

Consonant Regularities in the Traditional Writing System

Single Consonant Spelling Alternatives  (idea from McGuinness, p. 103)
Different ways the consonant sound is spelled at the beginning and end of words.
These are not all the options. Unlike the traditional orthography, Truespel always spells the same sound the same way
magic e endings usually indicate a long vowel:  exceptions have, give, ...

sound	key word	word beginning	word ending	Ref
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, sh/ch/s]  y  [semi-vowel] z	boot, bib, tribe  dog, did, mode  fun, fife, enough  got, gig, guage hot, who, casbah  job, judge, gem  kick, cold, arctic  log, till, little  man, comb, column  not, knot, gnome  sing  pig, pip, pipe  red, write, rare  sat, fence [confess] show, hush,  tot, tote, debt  van, valve  win, when,  tax, xerox, Xena yell, yacht zip, size, fizz	b  d  f  ph g  gu  gh gu h  wh (hw)  j  g c  k  ch l  m  n  kn  gn --  p  r  wr ur 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   ll  el  le m  mb  mn n  gn foreign ne ng p pe r er re ce  se  ss  s  sh  [c in Saxon] t  bt ght te v  ve -- [ ow is a vowel] x  -no consonant endings s se  ze  zz  z	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
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, breathe	ch  -- [Eng, Ing] qu  sh ch x  sch, sk --  th  th  d	ch  tch ng  --  sh  -  sion, cion, tion  th  th the dth	22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
silent h  silent w,  w as vowel	honor, Allah  who, write, wren  - /u/ short u sound	h  silent w  silent - Welsh w [bwk]	h   silent marker low [silo] snow  wow, cow,	30 31 32

The most likely spelling alternative listed first above.  More on silent letters
The options eliminated by most reform notations are in bold face. 
4. guage should be spelled gage or gaje.  [gaej].  the gu in guilty is to keep it from going soft but this does not apply to guage:  gage would still be hard.  The ge ending does two things, it softens [unvoices] the g and modifies the a-vowel. 

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.  up about = /^p 'baut/ = up ubbout.  Spanglish [upp about] or [ap abaut].  [upp] is stressed as in upper.

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 Truespel
25 consonants	44 symbols	200+ spellings	23 consonants	23 spellings
21 vowels	60 symbols	300+ spellings	17 vowels	17 spellings
46 phonemes	104 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:]

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   o'     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
 

TIPS FOR BETTER SPELLING
>
>A website devoted to finding clearer paths through the
>morass of traditional English spelling [TS].
>
>TS is about 50% regular which suggests that you have a
>50 / 50 chance of spelling a word in a way that will
>match dictionary spelling.  I am not sure that the
>odds are that good. 
>
>One study of 70,000 words indicated that there was an
>85% chance that one of four orthographic options would
>match the dictionary. 
>
>------
>
>Does anyone have an explanation for why [believe] and
>[receive] are spelled the way they are.  According to
>the Saxon alphabet, these words would be pronounced
>beh-leev and reh-save.  The first is correct except
>for the superfluous e; the second is off the mark.
>
>According to the pronunciation guide they are
>pronounced r@si:v and b@li:v
>
>Contributions of additional rules and tips are
>welcomed.
...
>> I added a cuppel of lines tu the  after <e> rule
>> belo.  --  Pete B]
...
>>  > > >> ><< "When i-e, e-i both say 'e'
>>  > > >> > How can we guess which it should be?
>>  > > >> > After  c  an  e  apply --
>>  > > >> > after other letters, i.
>>  >[ Unless, of corse, it sownds like "ay"
>>    [ as it duz in "neighbor" and "weigh"
>>  > > >> > Two more exceptions we must note
>>  > > >> > which all scholars learn by rote.
>>  > > >> > Leisure is the first of these.
>>  > > >> > For the second we have seize." >>
>>  >
...

A MOR COMPLETE RULE:
After 'c',  'e i'  says  'e'
elsewhere use for this  'i e'
'Weir, weird, leisure' break the rule;
'seize' we likewise learn at school.
('Eider, either, neither' though
sound like 'eye' -- or rightly so).
Some 'e'i' says 'a' we say
as in 'rein' and 'reign' and 'weigh'.
    --    DOUG EVERINGHAM,
 

>XU BYQTIFL PRINSeS STORE
>WUNS UPoN U TiM XU BYQTIFL DoTR UV U GRAT MUJIsN WoNTID MOR PRLZ TQ PuT UMUNG 
>HR TRejRZ . 
>" LuK xRQ XU SeNTR UV XU MQN WeN ITS BLQ ,"
>SeD HR MUXR IN aNSR TQ HR KWeSCN, " YQ MiT FiND YOR HoRTS DEZiR 
 

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