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Englisc links Cyber English Cyber [see-brr] English is based on spelling-pronunciation and more accurate representations of English speech. Words spelled according to Traditionally spelled words are not respelled unless they are unpronounceable. That is, when the letters in a word is pronounced according to the Saxon alphabet cannot be recognized, then and only then is it respelled. The Saxon alphabet (see below) is basically a correspondence table where 2-dimensional shapes (or letters) are paired with speech sounds. THOROUGH, THROUGH and ROUGH can be pronounced after learning what sound the GH was supposed to refer to. The words no longer rhyme in modern English so it is unlikely that a historical pronunciation of the traditional spelling will be comprehended. All gh words are respelled in Englisc. [ Thoro thru rof ]. Englisc is the orthography for the cyber age because it is short, alphabetical, based on Latin based international spellings, and more accurately represents today's speech. The Englisc spelling of English is simply the Saxon spelling where c=sh/ch. Englisc does not keep this convention but adopts the more conventional sh for /S/. As a phonemic notation, Englisc
would respell 60% of the words in the dictionary as does any phonemic spelling
system. Englisc however does not start with a base pronunciation
such as RP or General American but rather existing spellings and an alphabet
with no more than two sounds per letter. To render the greatest number
of traditionally spelled words comprehensible when they are pronounced
as they are spelled, Englisc restores the historic English alphabet - the
only true alphabet English ever had. The sounds originally assigned
to the letters are shown below.
Wy mak such big changes?
Restoring the Saxon Alfabet
by
Steve Bett [SB]
In the early 1800's, Noah Webster wrote, "Letters, the most useful invention that ever blessed mankind, lose a part of their value by no longer being representatives of the sounds orignally annexed to them." The effect is, "to destroy the benefits of the alphabet." Is it possible to reclaim the benefits of the alphabet by finding the sounds that were originally annexed to the letters? Is it possible to reclaim the benefits by restoring the Saxon alphabet? In the 10th century, English
had a highly consistant spelling system known as the West Saxon standard.
The sounds that corresponded to the letters A E I O U used to be ah, eh,
ee, awe, oo.
When England adopted the Roman alphabet, they also adopted the sounds associated with the letters. To make a 5 vowel alphabet work with a Germanic language that had 12 vowels, the Latin alphabet was augmented. The West Saxon standard (ca. 900 AD) added several runic letters for the missing sounds. The ash [ae] provided a way to reference the sound that differed from the Italian A. The West Saxon alphabet had 6 vowel letters, each letter had a long and short pronunciation.
An alphabet is an ordered set of sound-signs. The alphabet (or correspondence table) makes it possible for the letters (signs-symbols) to RE-present sounds. The chief benefit of an alphabet is that with a set of just 35 symbols, one can transcribe all the significant sounds in the English (Englisc) langauge. This consistent set of relationships between letters and sounds makes it possible to easily spell any word that you can pronounce and pronounce any word you see spelled. It is the correspondences between symbols and sounds that define an alphabet. The original English alphabet was the augmented Latin alphabet that became known as the West Saxon standard. In the year 900, English (Saxon) words were written and spelled as they were spoken. There was a clear correspondence between letters and sounds (graphemes and phonemes). Bett, following Dewey, estimated that 60% of the functionality of the alphabet has been lost. Most of that loss came after the Great vowel shift (1300-1400) when the pronunciation of many vowels changed without a correponding change in the way words were spelled. [Paul Hanna's statement that 84% of dictionary spellings are in acordance with a regular pattern. This is true but there are a half dozen regular patterns for each vowel sound. For instance, there are 29 ways to spell the vowel in cool and rule. The first four ways account for about 75% of the dictionary spellings. So there is regularity in English, but being able to guess a spelling with a 75% probability after 4 tries doesn't make English spelling any less of a guessing game. The traditional (mid 18th century) English spelling system is based on the notion that the business of spelling is to represent the origin and history of a word instead of its sound and meaning. [GBS (1941)] argued that this reduced the alphabet to absurdity). TES is non-alphabetical. The spelling ice which according to the Saxon corresondence table would be pronounced /eesuh/ comes from the original Saxon spelling: [is] /ees/. The current spelling does show how the word was historically spelled in the 13th century. (To understand how it was pronounced, one would have to consult the Saxon correspondence table) As etymological or historical spellings, most high frequency words go back to Middle English. Few go all the way back to Anglo Saxon. eye-ogle The problem comes from the fact that we no longer pronounce the word /ees/ or /ees-uh/. To maintain the alphabet, when the pronunciation of [ice] changed in the early 14th century, the spelling should have been changed to [ais]. Dr. Johnson, who wrote the first popular dictionary, felt that it was folly to imagine that the dictionary could embalm language and preserve its words and phrases from mutability. He saw no reason to standardize English spelling beyond the word level because he felt that what changed the most was pronunciation. As it turns out, English pronunciation is probably more standardized today than in 1755. Compared to the changes that occured in the 14th century, English pronunciation has hardly changed at all from the way it was spoken in London in 1755. Some words and phrases have dropped out of favor and new words and phrases have been added. Most of Johnson's spellings have survived intact. We have a choice, either we can obscure the etymology or historical spelling of the word or we can obscure the pronunciation of the word. Traditional English Spelling [TES] obscures the spelling. School [skool] is spelled that way because it used to be spelled scul and pronounced shu:l. sc=sh as in Englisc for English. The pronunciation is the same. Old English c = tS so scip makes sense. Or at least as much sense as sh. In either case the second letter is a marker. We are not going to restore the old Saxon consonants because the new consonant digraphs are just as good as the old ones. Knowing the old Saxon consonants, however, makes it possible to understand spellings such as school /sku:l/. As in Italian, the saxon c = ch /tS/. Ship was spelled scip and probably pronounced close to the way that a scottsman would proncounce the word ship today [listen to Sean Connery's speech patterns]. School would be spelled scul and pronounced schul. In Middle English, tS was represented as ch, thus scul became schule. In many English dialects today, School is now pronounced skool /sku:l. Some of the same variance is found in the pronunciation of schedule. Those who pronounce schip as ship also want to pronounce sched and shed. scip --> schip --> ship scedul-->schedule - but never change to shedul. Find some more words from
the list.
Sample
transcriptions: Spanglish
vs.
IPA
and
ALC Fonetik
Word list after
John
Fox
fspel/Eng-restored.htm
Saxon-panglish
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