Toward an Introductory Web Course in
Grapho-Phonology and Applied Linguistics
Draft - A project of the Saundspel egroup  contact

Whether you are for or against a specific spelling reform, a certain amount of background is required for an informed opinion.  This short course is designed to provide that background. 

This course was developed as a collaborative project of the Saundspel and Simplified Spelling on-line discussion groups.  It is still a work in progress so if you have any expertise and talent in this area, please join the saundspel egroup and send us your ideas and opinions.

When finished, this Web course on phonology and orthography could be used as an entry requirement for participation on this discussion board.  It will never come to that but there probably are cases where people would like to have more of a background in order to be more than a lurker.

Your ideas on what should be included in the course are welcomed.  These could be in the form of a test
question.  Some of the proposed test questions are listed below:

• http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices-java.html  type in a  word, hear it spoken

Speech synthesis
• please read 2000 - will read any text or rtf file
• still need and audio editor - something that will record audio files - have an ibm product
• try the voice mail
• cons-tabl.htm 
• contradictions.htm  homofonz.html 
• ae-digraph.htm 
• books-phonology.html 
• global-English.htm
• freqpatrn.htm
• cors-eval.htm

Key concepts

alphabet definition

sound sign - phonogram

pronuciation and spelling

phoneme  see spanglish        phonemes discussion

broad and narrow transcriptions -  phonemic and phonetic notations

writing system [orthography, spelling system]

history of spelling  [old english (saxon), middle english, modern english]

Recommended Readings:

Bett, S. and Kelley, D.  Alphabets, Codes, Spelling, & Pronunciation [in preparation]
Pitman, J. Alphabets and Reading [out of print but can be found in libraries]
Crystal, D. Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge
Crystal, D. An encyclopedic dictionary of language and linsguistics
Coulmas, F.   Blackwell

[bibliography] [Yule bibliography] [books on..]

Skip the test for now

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE of Grapho-Phonology and Applied Lingistics  quiz
These are difficult questions to formulate because the numbers often depends on the dialect and the how one determines the minimum. 

 1.  How many letters are there in the [English] alphabet?    20   24    26    28    30  [answr]
.
 2.  How many distinctive sounds [phonemes] are there in English speech    < 30    35    40    42    42 >

 3.  How many ways are the letters of the alphabet associated with the sounds of speech?
      In an ideal system, there would be a one-to-one correspondence:  35 sounds - 35 symbols.
      In the traditional English writing system, how many orthographic options are there?
      24  26  30  40  50  72  100  200 400  500 over 500

 4.  How many ways can you spell the vowel /u:/ in RULE?     9    14    18    24    over 25      [answr]

 5.  How many symbols [sound signs] are there in the traditional English orthography - counting digraphs?
      26  30  50  72  106  200  300 

 6.  How can you represent all the sounds in the alphabet with a limited character set?
      a. by letting each letter to represent more than one sound.  [e.g., a = ae, ah, uh / at, are, ago ]
      b. by using a marker:  letter markers [digrafs-Ch]  or  with accents and diacritics [Š] =Sh
      c. by using the upper case to extend the numbe of sound signs [e.g., S=sh, C=ch, R=er, L=el]
      d. by augmenting the alpabet with about 18 new characters  [see Avinor's new fonts]
      e. any of the above

 7.  How many pure (uncombined) vowels are there in General American speech?

 8.  How many pure (uncombined) vowels are there in educated british speech [RP]?

 9.  Describe three pronunciations that are different in GA and RP.

10.  Describe how these would be handled [or ignored] in your preferred orthographic system.

11.  Does spelling reform imply a pronunciation reform?  (yes, no, explain)

12.  What was the impact of the "Great vowel shift"?  When did this pronunciation change take place?

[please send in your suggestions for additions or for rewrites]

Related Web pages  [index page]

• Writing systems of the world
• badarguments.htm
• visible speech
• vowel shift
• number of phonemes
• glos-spel.html
• ei-9ways.html
• nu-saxn.htm
• saunds-eng.html

DIAGRAMS

• Vowel Diagram [Jones]
• Vowel Chart

AN ALPHABET FOR ENGLISH

• saxon alphabet
• Kelley's augmented alphabet - 5 A symbols before going on to B
• Unifon Alphabet [40 character]

SPELLING PRONUNCIATION

• Orton's Phonograms

HISTORY OF SPELLING

• The Great Vowel Shift

Writing samples
 

IPA notation highly modified without the turned c or S or tS. /ae/ becomes  ä  and /'i:/ becomes ee Sweet's version of the Int'l Phonetic Alphabet	Spanglish assigns up to two sounds per letter which results in some ambiguity which can be avoided only through the use of diacritics.
' dispyoot wüns 'roaz bitween dh' wind 'nd dh' sün, wich w'z dh' strongg'r 'v dh' too, 'nd dhai 'greed t' put dh' point on dhis ishoo, dh't wichev' soonist maid ' trävl' taik of hiz kloak, shud bee ''kountid dh' mau pou'ful. dh' wind bigän, 'nd bloo widh aul hiz meit 'nd main' blast, koald 'nd fi's'z ' thraish'n staum; b't dh' strongg' hee bloo dh' kloas' dh' trävl' räpt hiz kloak 'round him, 'nd  dh' teit' hee graspt it widh hiz händz. dhen broak out dh' sün: widh hiz welk'm beemz hee dispoest  dh' vaip'r 'nd dh' koald; dh' trävl' felt dh' jeeny'l waumth, 'nd 'z dh' sün shon breit'r 'nd breit', hee sät doun, oav'küm widh dh' heet, 'nd kast hiz kloak on dh' ground.	A dispiut wans arowz bitwin the wind and the sun, which was the stronger ov the tu, and they agrid tu put the point on this ishu, that whichever sunist meid the travler teik of hiz cloak, shud bi acounted the mor paurful.  The wind bigan, and blu with ol hiz mait and meid a blast, coald and fiers as a threishen storm; but the stronger hi blu, the clowsr the travler rapt hiz clowk araund him, and the taiter hi graspt it with hiz handz.  Then browk aut the sun: with hiz welcam bimz hi dispoazd the vapor and the cowld; the travler felt the jinyal warmth and az the sun shown braiter and braiter, hi sat daun, overcam with the hit, and kast hiz cloak on the graund.
Sweet experimented with a wide variety of notations, I do not think that this was his best. He was trying to get as close to TES as possible.	Which notation is easier to read? Which is easier to pronounce aloud?

DIALECTS OF ENGLISH

One of the problems encountered by those trying to improve the connection between speech and
spelling (symbol and sound), is how to deal with the various dialects of English.

David Kelly has created a useful set of diagrams contrasting two speech patterns sometimes called
rhotic and non rhotic accents or R and R-drop dialects.  The contrast words in the diagram are
burr and rubber which in RP is / b' / and / r^b' /.

In North American, there is no distinction between the vowel in alms and pot. [aalmz, paat] 
In RP there is.  Pot is pronounced very close to the pronciation of paw + t.  It is a short and snappy /aw/ not a drawn out one as in paw.  Sweet used [ao] to reference this sound.  World English uses [oo]
 

General American compared to educated british [RP]

GA RP far fa ore  /our/  oh-r or  /o:'/  aw-uh fire  /fair/  fah-ee-r fire  /fa /  fah...

GA RP far fa ore  /our/  oh-r or  /o:'/  aw-uh fire  /fair/  fah-ee-r fire  /fa /  fah...

TES  GA RP burr b'r b' rubber r'b-'r r'b-' pot pa:t po:t pot paaht pawt

TES  GA RP father fa:th'r fa:th' bother ba:th'r  bah-th'r botha  bawth' fire fa:ir  fah-ee-r fa:' fah-uh

[I need some more good examples] 
 

.. 
 writing-systems.htm
 romanji-tabl.htm
 

David Kelley wrote: 
Well, even though I have been involved with RP-speaking people for 
years, and know a little about how that variety of English differs from 
my own, it still isn't easy to pinpoint all the differences with such 
kinds of tables (or show such things as vowel raising, etc.).  But I 
think I managed to show some of the major ones on the attached table.  I 
hope it will be of some small use to you. 

10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

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