Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

(Sample in RES)  English is spoken in meny difrent cuntries and even within won cuntry in meny difrent ways.  This woodnt hav tu complicait a' speling sistem, if oanly all variants had the saim foneem sistem, but reelysed the saim foneems with difrent sounds.  Unfortuena'tly, alltho the difrenses ar not tu meny, this is not the cais.  Difrent foneems in won styl ov pronunsiation fall tugether in anuther.

(same passage in CKS) Inglish iz spokn in meni difra'nt ku'ntriz, 'n ivn within w'n kuntri in meni difra'nt weiz. Xis wu.dnt hav tu kamplikeit a' speling sistm, if onli ol variants ha.d x seim fo'nim sistm, but rialyzd x seim fonimz with difra'nt saundz. U'nforchanatli, oltho x difransiz ar not tu meni, xis iz not x keis. Difra'nt fonimz in w'n styl 'v pranunsie5n fol tugethr in a'nu'thr.

1. Greater Phonemic Consistency
2. Predictable Spelling
3. No code overlaps
4. Similarity to TO where possible
5. Based on educated British pronunciation (RP)
6. Morphology
7. The history and etymology of words are not considerations

1. Phonemic consistency

A phoneme may be defined as a group of related sounds, the common characteristics of which can distinguish words from each other. For example the l-sound in look, like, leave, full are all different, due to influence from adjacent sounds, or due to the position of the sound in the word. Yet we consider /l/ to be one phoneme. It can distinguish otherwise identical words, for example the pair light/right. or abbot/abut.  [ ab-b^t / a'-b^t ]

The ideal spelling system consistently uses one letter for each phoneme, but most languages, including English, have more phonemes than letters. This can be overcome by using diacritics, which is not done in the traditional English spelling system, and is not proposed here either, because in despite standardisation, it often leads to heated debates when texts are used on computers and exchanged via Internet or otherwise. One other approach is to use letter combinations, digraphs, to stand for phonemes. The disadvantage is that the phonemes represented by a combination take more space that those written as one letter. Diaphonic: A compromise is to use combinations sparingly, but also make some single letters stand for more than one phoneme, but then dictated by unambiguous, or nearly unambiguous, rules.

The effect of theoretical ambiguity will be limited by practical language facts; for example the new spelling pazes [pa'zes in CCS] for "possess") is ambiguous in theory, but the incorrect reading (taking a to mean /eI/ and e to be mute and only indicate the length of the preceding vowel) leads to the pronunciation /peIzs/, which is so unlikely that it isn't a reasonable candidate.

Retain existing consistency

Although somewhat chaotic, the existing English spelling does have rules, which make it possible to guess the right pronunciation of an unknown word at a glance, with at least some chance of success. The well-known example ghoti, which is said to read as fish (as in enough, women, nation), illustrates this, for no one would spontaneously read it as fish, because the letters can mean the sounds, but not in this situation.

The new system proposed here uses as much as possible of the existing rules, which makes it possible that, although it is drastically different, the new spelling is readable to a certain extent for anyone familiar with the traditional spelling. (Try it yourself by reading the Sample Text ). This also means the new system is not made unnecessarily "un-English": That in most other languages the letter a sounds something like the a in father, and the sound in make is often written with an e or a digraph containing it, doesn't mean this has to be the case in English too. Thus, make and take stay the same in the newly proposed system.

The historic difference between long and short sounds, like in licking and liking, tacking and taking, etc., shown in spelling by following them with a single or double consonant, is retained in the new system, together with the sound quality to which they developed. All five letters have such originally short and long forms. Some letters also have other meaning independent of this scheme, and they do not need doubling, but they are often governed by stress (like the a in ago), or they are implicit, meaning the new system is not completely unambiguous, though much more so than the old.

To avoid some ugly new spellings, some letter combinations are supposed to be single for the purpose of deciding whether the vowel before them is "short" or "long" (short and long in the historic sense, not corresponding to present-day sounds). Thus in taste (new and old spelling alike), the st is counted as one letter, which the a "long". Now, if a word tass-ting existed (luckily it does not), in the new system it would have to look like tassting, to distinguish it from the gerund form of taste: tasting (again, old and new spelling the same). So to double a single letter, it is doubled (k becomes kk, never ck), but to double a double letter which is counted as single (for example sh in smash), double its first letter, so it becomes ssh: smasshing, so it doesn't sound like smay-shing.

This doubling of the first letter is admittedly very un-English, and is borrowed from Hungarian (where it denotes the letter itself, and does not influence the preceding sound, by the way).

One other very un-English trick is to use the letter w (which can be a consonant too), as a vowel. This a taken from Welsh.

At the end of a word, a single letter is enough to get the "short" sound, but if another vowel follows, doubling is required. We follow the Dutch (and to a large extent, English) system here, not the German system, which uses doubling even at the end of a word (sometimes English does that too, as in off and inn and sick). Examples of this are let and letting, get and getting (new and old system alike). A typically English feature in addition to this is, that a mute e (as in mute, where the e makes the u is "long", but is not itself heard) lengthens the preceding vowel. This is retained in the new system too. Thus, the new spelling kahezhen (cohesion) suggests that the last syllable does not have a vowel, but that the e is mute and serves only to make the previous e "long", and the last syllable has a syllabic n. The new spelling kahezhan would mean that the last syllable has a schwa vowel (as a in ago), followed by an n.

Consistency for all speakers

English is spoken in many different countries, and even within one country in many different ways. This wouldn't have to complicate a spelling system, if only all variants had the same phoneme system, but realised the same phonemes with different sounds. Unfortunately, although the differences are not too many, this is not the case. Different phonemes in one style of pronunciation fall together in another. A phoneme in one word may defect to another. What is conveniently seen as one phoneme in one style is better considered two in another.

All this makes compromises inevitable. In many cases, my basis has been British English (RP - Received Pronunciation), while trying to arrive at solutions also reasonably acceptable in North America. (Perhaps that's why the dollar becomes doller, but the pound stays pound; the euro becomes uro, though). One reason is that RP in many cases coincides (not regarding actual sounds, but rather the phoneme structure) with usage in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and Scotland. Another is that showing distinctions that some do not hear may make writing more difficult, but reading easy. It also keeps the new spelling closer to the old, which again eases reading. And finally a practical but utterly invalid reason: I am more familiar with British than with American pronunciation.

Some cases in detail:

Some Americans do not distinguish caught and cot. The new spelling (like the old) does: kaut and kot.

Some Americans pronounce bother and father with the same vowel. The new spelling (like the old) distinguished them: boddher and fahdher.

Father and rather in North-America have different vowels, whereas most everywhere else, they're the same. Here alternative spelling are possible to reflect this: fahdher (everywhere), rather (North-America, Scotland, Ireland), rahdher (England, Australia, New-Zealand)

Dear sounds the same as the last part of idea in the pronunciation of many (not all) in North-America, many (not all) in England, and most in Australia and New-Zealand. Yet, the spelling does always show the difference: idea and dere.

Many Americans don't distinguish merry, marry and Mary, but many other speakers do. The spelling does too, and there's no difference between new and old.

Many say missin for missing. The new spelling, like the old, insists that it's missing.

In Scotland some distinguish (or distinguished?) fur/fir/fern, and morning/mourning, for/four. The spelling does not show the difference: fer, fer, fern, morning. However special spellings in direct speech might be considered: fur/fir/fern, and morning/morening, for/fore.

It seems in some parts of the USA, get and just have the same vowel. The spelling keeps showing the difference, identically in new and old system.

A decreasing number of people distinguish ware and where, which and witch. The new spelling does not reflect this: ware and wich, although variant spellings may be considered: ware, hware and hwich, wich.

For most Americans the two vowels in abut are the same, in Britain they're usually distinct. For both there's an stress difference. The spelling, new as well as old, reflects the distinction: abut.

There is an American tendency to flap intervocalic t's, to such an extent that madder and matter become almost indistinguishable. The spelling will not reflect this, and write madder and matter as before.

The phoneme written "long u" (and in the old spelling, often ew), when after dentals (t, d, n), sounds like the phoneme written oo in America. After s, l this is nearly always, and after r always (except in Wales) the case in non-American forms of English. Yet, instead of writing it oo in those cases, we always write u. Examples: nu (new, knew), flu (flew, flu), super (super), tune (tune), ku (cue, queue).

Morphology

In some cases the principle of morphology is used, like in daylite instead of dalite, hier (higher) instead of hire, dayz (plural of day), not daze (as in "dazed and kanfuzed"), star and starry.

Where compounds could lead to ambiguity, a hyphen may be used: gras-hopper (grashopper would sound like gray-shopper).

Many frequent words have strong forms (when said in isolation) and weak forms (in connected speech). In some cases there even more forms than two. Although the weak form occur more often, the spelling for the sake of clarity shows strong forms. So for is always written like that, even though is more often sounds like fa or fer, as is written as as, at as at (the strong and weak forms have the same spelling here, and this is a feature, not a bug), and is always and, has, had and have are always that. That stays dhat and than stays dhan (again the weak forms would be spelled the same).

The principle of writing strong forms applies even to compounds: twmorro, not tamorro. In "He came to" and "he came to his senses", to is always spelt tw (he kame tw; he kame tw hiz sensiz), although is the first case, it may sounds rather like too. The spelling too is reserved for the meanings "also" and "a number one higher than one).

The special meaning of the letter e, as in be, we, she etc. is a special case of the same principle. Thus be and bee are identical in new and old, and distinct in both.

Etymology

An etymological principle is hardly applied at all except perhaps when writing you as yoo, not u.

This document was derived from a similar page found at Ruud Harmsen's  homepage. Ingglish

Spelriet  http://www.meritadvisors.com/spelriet.htm

Sounds and Spelling of Dutch

Copyright © 1996, 1997 by R.Harmsen.     email: rharmsen@knoware.nl