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PV7 An Alphabet for English	History of Spelling The Goals of Spelling Reform Cut Spelling Multiple spellings of one phoneme /u:/
Table of Contents Use the back arrow on your browser to return here	The problem with traditional spelling Options for orthographers Merging phonemes in Nu Folik
Options for  Orthographers	Evaluating New Alphabets for English -  Defining the goals of a writing system Ranking Nine Notational Systems

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Evaluating New Alphabets: Defining the Goals

My personal view is that the ideal writing system for English is an elusive multidimensional goal. There are several dimensions to be considered and it is logically impossible to optimize or maximize on every dimension. All proposals are necessarily compromises. Some of the important considerations for a better writing system are itemized below:

Important Considerations

1. Phonemic regularity: More alphabetic than TO (the traditional English orthography)

• More consistent and systematic than TO.
• Closer correspondence between graphemes and phonemes.
• Closer correspondence between pronunciation and spelling.

• A consistent sound sign or grapheme for every significant sound category (phoneme)
2. Economical: More space efficient than TO - no redundancies.
• No double letters except to specifically mark a feature (see Orm)
• No silent letters other than markers
3. Practical and User Friendly:
• Simpler than TO. Fewer rules. (Elegant solutions to problems or sound representation)
• Easier to teach and learn Teach a simple code and you get early success
• Significantly easier to teach to beginners and 2nd language learners
• Easy transition for TO readers (some phonics instruction may be required).
• Not difficult or confusing for those familiar with TO. Retains many familiar word patterns to ease transition.
• Decipherable and readable without training.
• Can be learned about three times as fast as TO

(No WS should take more than 40 hours for basic mastery)
• Requires less space to write or print. Can be typed faster than TO.
• Has a certain status or appeal that leads to its adoption
4. Convergent sign design:
    Each sound sign should be as close as possible to a letter pattern found in TO & to IPA notation.
• Similar to TO where possible [o'] substituted for IPA [ou]
• Similar to IPA but without special fonts, integral diacrticis, or special characters not included in the ASCII character set.
5. Guide to pronunciation: Sound signs should show pronunciation almost as well as IPA.
• As similar to IPA as possible. /u/ = u' /u:/ = u: /^/ = u /schwa/= ' or a' /a:/=a, />:/= o:
• Avoid arbitrary substitutions. Strive for iconicity and visual closeness or similarity.
Beyond a certain point, improving the performance rating for a notational system on one dimension will reduce it on another. All proposed new spellings are therefore compromises. Selecting the best compromise means coming to some agreement on how one should weight the performance of the script or notational system on different dimensions. In other words, what is the relative importance of each dimension? There can there be no agreement on the best writing system for English if there is no agreement on the relative importance of different features.

Without first assigning a weight to each of the comparative dimensions, it is impossible to select the "best" writing system. The table below neither assigns weights nor lists all of the possible dimensions. It does include all of the dimensions that have been mentioned in earlier SSS Personal Views.

At this point in time, the ordinal rankings shown below are mostly subjective since only NS (New Spelling) as ITA has been empirically tested and found easier to teach to beginners than TO. Since there is less than 25% as much to learn with a phonemic system, one would have expected a 400% improvement but the empirical results were more along the lines of a 25% improvement.

Rankings of nine scripts: scale:5 = highest rating --- 1 = lowest rating (poor performance on dimension)
NF=NuFolik or Chekt Spl.  TO=Traditional Orthography.   MF=Pictographic Monofon.  MS=MenuSpl./ TrueSpl.   NS=Nue Speling.  PS=Positional Spelling/ Cut Spelling
This table is based on the evaluations of only 5 respondents who were familiar with TO. A broader sample would be required to establish its validity.

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