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What are the significant speech sounds in English?
plus 9 diphthongs or vowel combinations: Total 21 in RP (British BBC English) What is unessential for RP (received pronunciation) may be essential for another dialect . 6 checked, 6 unchecked, 6 diphthongs, and 6 R-combinations or shwa combinations. There is no agreement on the total number of combinations. It depends on the dialect and the number of combinations that the orthographer thinks are not self evident. If the sound of a combination is not obvious, there may be a need to make it explicit. The following table lists 13 bringing the total number of vowel phonemes to 25. Vowel Phoneme Table for British English (RP) with key words Three notations for the 21 essential sounds for RP English - 4x6 table (Jones was searching for the minimum number of phonemes and did not include 3 listed below (with peach background)) 6 checked + 6 unchecked + 5 diphthongs + 4 ending with schwa = 21 essential vowels
An adequate orthography for English should have a unique character assigned to 10 of the 12 pure vowels and a unique graf, digraf or trigraf for 24 of the 25 sound categories (or phonemes) listed above. Ideally, the letters assigned to the pure vowels in the first two columns can be reused in the diphthongs and other vowel blends. Notice that most of the variants of New Spelling below do not always reuse the pure vowels (ai=ie)
Ian Ascott has spent over 30 years perfecting this particular IPA ASCII notation. Originally it was an augmented alphabet that used Greek letters, eg, alpha for /æ/. to provide a unique unigraph for all of the 34 pure vowels. The ASCII version (below) has one Latin-1 character, the rest of the Greek characters has been converted to a digraph or marked character. The notation includes a letter for schwa [c] but it is rarely used: eg, Dont puz hR araund. or Dont puz h3 araund. Ian's SaundSpel is one of the few orthographies that clearly distinguishes between the 3 pronunciations of R (r, R /3/, c). The notation adds an extra sound segment for the [long e] between [e] and [ei]. It is always possible to distinguish sounds between any two phonemes in a minimalist phoneme inventory such as the one created for broad romic. Thus [barely] is transcribed as [beeli] instead of [be@li]. The based pronunciation for
SaundSpel is RP. For a discussion of the differences beween RP and the
more traditional base pronunciations, see David Kelley's page.
[IA] I wud now write 'air' as 'ee'. [SB] I would write it as ea’ or er (which amounts to the same thing) the r can be the same. As /e:/ so er = eh-uh. I see little justification for ee except for the fact that you say that many people can hear the difference between ehh and eh-uh. I am going to follow Jones on this one. SaundSpel leaves out the R when it is not pronounced in RP [IA] I kno that Americans sound the 'r' in 'air', but I go for the simplest skjm posibl. John wants tu leav the r's in tu be ignored by the non-rhotic community, whereas I ljv it out, putiq the onus on the Scots and Americanos tu add the 'r' when impelled.something close to ei - ee (SS) e: (NF) I sj no prob here: ei as in keik(cake), and ee as in beeli(barely)eat - iit (SS) i:t (NF) jt (SS) For me 'j' is the simplest option. 'ii' is fiddly and 'i: ' hq tu put in colons hinders the flow of writiqice - ais (SS) ys (NF) We both understand my use of IFA 'ai'ire - air (SS) yr (NF) - aic (SS) ya' or aia' (NF) I spoze I wht (will have tu) stei with aic or aia, tho I'd prefer abolishiq the word 'ire' altugether!oat - out (SS) o't (NF) oo for awe and or, ee for air. My IFA use of ou / dxou (though) yuu'l understand.or - our? ooc? (SS) or (NF) (could be o:r) Followiq my use of 'ee' for 'air', I must use 'oo' for 'or'. My com- ments abov re Scots/American 'r' apply here tuu.use - iuz or juuz (SS) iuz (NF) yuuz (verb) / yuus (noun) loot - luut lu:tlook - luk lu'kluck - lxk luk luck - lak ...I agrj that my doubl yuus of 'a' is a bit haad tu teik... there is no-one in NZ with whom tu argu it thruu with. PS duu yuu equate ei and e: ? Let mj kno...with examples.Ian I have experimented with equating ei with e: This is simply a prescription e: = ei and has nothing to do with the way you may now pronounced an extended e. This is based on the fact that many languages pronounce their E’s two ways - eh and ei. [comments by Ian Ascott, Jan, 1999] Numbers as phonograms Following the modest use of phononumerals
in CKS, Ian has come up with this extension
2 = TO z, as
in 2uu, niu2 (zoo, news)
tz = TO ch, - tch:
tzip, itzi, butza (chip, itchy, butcher)
The problem with numeric
phonograms is their inability to handle new fonts [e.g., shavian]
[A]
VAULS (Vowels) ------ 12 simple vowels, saundspel notation, key words
There have been various attempts to update this approach beginning in 1910 when it was circulated by Ellis under the name of Simplied Spelling. After 1930 the most common title was New Spelling. Walter Ripman and Walter Archer updated the notation in 1955 and published a book on the topic. New Spelling is the basis for Anglic (1930), WES (World English Spelling), and ALC Fonetik. The basic difference between these notational systems is in the number and type of concessions to TO (tradtional orthography). New Spelling used to have 11 word signs (including the, to, a, I, be, he, we, me, she) which are used over 8,000 times in 100,000 running words. In Anglic the number of word signs was extended to 42. It could be extended to the 200 most frequent words since the point is to have a way to spell unfamiliar words. Another option is to find a system where the, me, and be are not irregular exceptions but this requires positional spelling. The latest New Spelling 90 brochure from the Simplified Spelling Society substitutes y for /ai/. Most versions use [ie] to index this phoneme (see SpelRiet). The goal of New Spelling was to take one frequently used TO spelling pattern and use it consistently. The system of orthography is easy to read for those familiar with TO. It should be relatively easy to learn and spell. ITA (augmented roman) was essentially New Spelling with a special font that changed digrafs into joined letters or ligatures [ ae became æ ]. The chief failing of NS is
space efficiency. A passage in NS tends to be longer than the same
passage in TO. In
NS, letter combinations are considered to be new symbols. It would be more
elegant if they were blends of the sounds of component letters (ae
is not ah+eh).
List of all New Spelling phonemes including consonants
Fonetic is closely related to WES (World English Spelling) which was based on Anglic and New Spelling. Fonetic is very well documented. The BTRSPL conversion dictionary contains nearly 40,000 words and the Dictionary of American Spelling contains 43,000 words in this notation. The Fonetik table is almost identical to the one for New Spelling. However, Fonetik translations may be quite different. This is because Fonetik is less phonemic than New Spelling. Fonetik tries to minimize the differences between fonetik spelling and TO by using various devices such as logograms (sight words) and positional spelling. These compromises make the spelling less systematic and predictable but reduce the liklihood that the spelling will be unfamiliar and disturbing for those used to TO. Positional spelling can be systematic and predictable. For example, [your highly..] can be spelled [yur hyly..]. In positional spelling, the sound of Y depends on its position in the word. In the initial position itis a consonant, in the medial position it indicates the /ai/ vowel sound, and in the terminal position it represents the /i:/ sound. Fonetic does not have a separate
symbol for the schwa and does not show stress. [ago] is spelled as if it
were pronounced ah-goh (see chart). [more] is spelled as if it were pronounced
/mour/.
In tabular form, Truespel looks like ALC Fonetic. The unique aspect of TS is the use of double consonants to mark stress: dubool kaansunint leed u stresd silubool. Fer instints thu TO werdz "desert" and "dessert". In truespel theez wood bee speld dezert and dizzert. [CKS: desrt, dizert]. Thair iz noe reezin naat tue maek good yues uv dubool kaansunints. Stres shood bee indikaetid in enee nue speleeng. -Taam 5/99 Although based on the same
principles, passages written in TS and Fonetic look quite different.
Truespel is the most space inefficient of all the notations displayed on
this page. To mark stress, a passage written in Truespel will be
10% longer than one written in ALC fonetic. See: Automated
Spelling Converter:
This nu noataytion is wun
ov the beter sceems a'round. Thair ar stil a fiu ambigiuities tu be werked
out. Moast ov the problems are relayted tu incorporayting morfemic speling:
plurals=s [munky-munkees] past=ed [cairy-caireed]
Since TO is a grafo-morfeemic sistem of speling, so is OGD positional speling. The notaytion dus not employ
the majic-e or dubl consonants as short vowel (voul) markers.
The foloweeng is an atempt to condenss all the rools for positional speling into a singl chart. John Reilly is of the opinion that tu charts ar required, won for singl silabl werds and won for multisilaabic werds. Letrs such as Y and W cuud
posibly mark silabl boundarees as in OYster.
Stress is normaly falls on the penultimat silabl. Not every combyned voul
operayts exactly the saim way.
The schwa sound could be marked with a schwapostrophe to reduce ambiguity. a'go, u'nder, u-nity The shwaa sound cwd be marked with a' shwapostrofe tu re'dooss ambigiuity. X 5wa saund cu.d bi markt with a' 5wapostrofi tu ridus ambigiuiti.
Sample 8: SPeLn REFXRMrZ TiPiKLE
WxNT Tk RIT Wih U DiKsUNerE PRUNUNSIAsUN GID Rahr haN TRUDisUNUL EnGLis
SPeLin. hA WxNT U SPeLin SiSTUM Tk BE NiRLE 100% aLFUBeTiK iNSTeD UV 40%.
EnGLis SPeLin iZ HarD BEKxZ her xR Tk MeNE XRhXGRaFiK xPsUNZ.
9. Mapping of Unigraf onto IPA (under construction) Sample Text 9 Unigraf means one mark and implies
one
symbol per sound. Unigraf
sounds
There is a good case for
eliminating digraphs for non-combinations but a much weaker case for
Unigraf has several variations.
The one below is optimized for Keyboard
Shavian. The original keyboard Shavian is shown in gray brackets.
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2. Broad Romic IPA notation
More alternate notations and transcriptions: I say nu boy go out (RES)
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see
