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FUN with FONICS and SPELLING Mark Twain on Speling Reform #2 A Staged Reform Proposal Attributed to Mark Twain Said to be as confusing as the spelling "ghoti" Cadmus tries to reform hieroglyphics  on reform simplified spelling  other notations  links  source

Spelling reform is always difficult because those who have more or less mastered the old conventions don't want to have to learn new phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Reformers have often suggested a series of small changes as a way to deal with the anticipated resistance to any change at all. The proposal below is an example of such a staged reform.

Even supporters of spelling reform sometimes poked fun at the prospect of using simplified spellings for English words. Twain poked fun at the resistance to orthographic reform in his essay on Cadmus, the legendary Phoenician king who introduced the Semitic alphabet to the Greeks. In the essay, a nephew of Cadmus tries to get the Egyptians to replace cumbersome hieroglyphics.

The reform proposal found below has been attributed to Mark Twain and published several times on the Internet but there is no evidence that he wrote it. Twain did deliver several lectures on the topic of simplified spelling. In one speech, Twain expressed a preference for Burnz' shorthand solutions over the minor reforms proposed by the Carnegie funded Simplified Spelling Board and the National Education Association. In his preference for fully phonemic augmented alphabets, he would have been an ally of George Bernard Shaw, the playwright who funded the development of a non Roman script for English.

[Notes by Steve Bett]  Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin proposed to rid the writing system of superfluous and silent letters. It is not a new idea. Almost every letter in the alphabet is superfluous in some word. [partial list]

In 1180, a scribe calling himself Orm proposed that double consonants be used after short (or checked) vowels.  Orm consistently spelled this way which gave 20th century scholars an insight into 12th century pronunciation.  The technique, was never fully adopted for English making it virtually useless. RITE and Spanglish endorse the double consonant marker to indicate short stressed vowels. [ battl baarn, better beit, little ieter, otterz aot owts, such gud fuud ] It may be less obtrusive to mark checked vowels with a mid-dot or under-dot rather than with a double consonant.  li.tl il rather than littl iel.

This is the way that Orm spelling might look today:I bett the fissh bet izz better thaen befor.  [I bet the fish bait is better than before] Spanglish updates the pronunciation and adds a few rules to allow the spelling: Ai bet the fissh beit iz better thann befor. 

Double consonants are typically used to mark checked vowels in short words of germanic origin. They are hardly ever used to mark checked vowels in words of Latin or Greek origin.

It is easier to adjust to the removal of silent letters than it is to adjust to letter substitutions -- even simple substitutions such as e for the e-sound. Almost any change will make speed readers stumble until they adapt to the new spelling. How fast can you read English when transcribed into a German orthography?

Phoneme-grapheme (sound segment to letter) correspondences would be easier to learn from scratch if they were consistent.  The inconsistency of English costs an extra year of schooling. Once learned, however, they are difficult to unlearn.

The amusing staged reform proposal is based on the notion that society would be quick to adapt to the simple changes proposed for year 1 and by the end of the year, most people would be reading and writing this way.  That is a big assumption.

Most likely, it would take ten years for the initial proposal to take effect.  The newspapers could make the change in a week by using a spelling converter.  Dictionaries would be slower to change but this could be accomplished in five years.  Teachers could change as soon as they had materials consistent with the proposed changes.  But even with enthusiastic acceptance by publishers and educators, it would take time for the reforms to trickle down.  On top of this, there would probably be an organized backlash as has happened with the most recent orthographic reform in Germany

One of the arguments for reform is based on the fact that English students of German can spell words in German better than they can spell them in English. (Upward, 1997?) Most countries make periodic adjustments in their official spelling to bring it in line with today's pronunciation and to make it simpler.  English speaking countries have yet to have their first spelling reform and we pay the price.

The language is spelled more as it was pronounced 700 years ago than as it is spoken today.  ride was originally pronounced rih-duh.  Most everyone else pronounces the Latin import  "idea" as ee-deh-uh which is also how it was pronounced in English 700 years ago before the "great vowel shift" of the 15th century.

The Cut Spelling [CS] proposal does include a few substitutions such as j for the /j/ sound in jenrli. [jenra'li]
Which and When are cut to wich and wen. Instead of abolishing "y",CS uses it to substitute for "igh". Chekt Speling goes all the way and substitutes y for /ai/.

There is an actual reform proposal called Checked Spelling (local) that looks very similar to this.
 
 

Other proposed reforms are less readical: e.g. [OGD systematic-positional]  Fynly, then after som 20 yeers of orthhografical reform, wee wudd hav a lojical coheerant speling in ius thhruout the English speeking werld.

 
 

Fainly, then affter sam 20 yirz av orthhograffical reform, wi wudd hav a lojical cohirant spelling in yuus thhruuout the English spieking werld.   Spanglish marks the short vowels with a double consonant and marks the long vowels when they come before a consonant [ei, ie, ai, ow, uu].  See also RITE

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Spelling Link Page       Local Sitemap-Language

• The 21 vowel phonemes of English with a unique grapheme corresonpdent.
• Chart of 48 phonemes with a consistent grapheme correspondents.
• More on Chekt Speling.
• More on Cut Speling.
• Spelling local link page

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»For those who don't already know, proposing that "fish" be spelled g-h-o-t-i was G.B. Shaw's way of ridiculing English spelling -- using the "gh" from  "cough," the "o" from "women," and the "ti" from "motion."  The only problem  with this example is that it ignores the positional nature of traditional  spelling.  [gh] is never represents /F/ in the initial position.  [ti] never  represents /sh/ in the terminal position. However, in Shaw's defense, there  are other equally absurd spellings that can be found in traditional English writing. more

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