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Spelling on the
Net 
March, 2001 Simpl Spel Nuzletr ssn-mar01 News and Dialog about e-Spelling editor: a-h-campbell@clear.net.nz writer: sbett@lycos.com IN THIS ISSUE back issues: ssn-oct00
 ssn-mar01b.html--whowhere-index.htm--1-Index-Spelling--fc-sitemapDictionary
Resources Improve
www.yourdictionary.com http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/esl/dictionary/default.asp http://www.m-w.com http://afen.onelook.com http://www.alldictionaries.com Activity increases on simplified spelling discussion boards 
What started out as one discussion group several years ago has now expanded to three. One of the splinter groups, saundspel, had over 800 messages exchanged in January compared to an average of 80 messages during the previous four months. The eGroup server software, now owned by Yahoo, archives and threads all discussions and provides a simple automatic way to subscribe and unsubscribe [subscribe now]. Subscribers have the option of having the mail sent daily or using webmail. To read webmail, the subscriber has to go to one of the links listed below. Other services including automated polling of members and file storage.
www.egroups.com/group/saundspel 21 921 The RITE reform The RITEspel egroup has completed a set of
45 rules for the STAGE I reform recommendations. Stage I changes
an estimated 38% of T.O. A strictly phonemic reform would respell over
60% of the words. Truespel, for instance, respells over 90%.
Systems such as ALC fonetic and Anglic have fewer respellings because they
accept quite a few irregular high frequency words. RITE also includes a
small set of sight words. The RITE reform will greatly
improve the chances that a person can correctly spell words as they are
pronounced. Ze says, "The user will get it rite in 93% of the cases."
http://www.unifon.org/rite.html
We have been unable to locate a digital font for Goody's SSA and Pitman's i.t.a. or augmented roman. So far the effort to convert these true type files [.ttf] from Windows to a Mac compatible format have not been very successful. John Well's SAMPA page [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/unicodetest.
htm and http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm] tests
a new unicode font which displays IPA characters. The SAMPA notation
was developed years ago to transcribe IPA characters into ASCII or keyboard
compatible characters. Now the technology has caught up with the
need. It is still difficult to use IPA characters in email but they
can now be viewed without downloading fonts by those with browsers 4.0
and above. [unicode font available from MS]
and by speakers of other European languages Promoting the idea that the writing system is not the language
One source of resistance to new spelling is the notion that the writing system is the language and that changing the writing system will change the language. If we stripped out etymological cues, morphological cues, and other irrelevancies from the code it would be much simpler to learn and would have no effect on the spoken language. There are lots of things we learned from our 3rd grade teacher that are hard to dispel such as "Only unschooled people write [through] as [thru]." The hardest myth to unseat is the idea that the traditional writing system deserves the same reverence as the language. Valerie Yule, Steve Bett, and David Kelley are working on a book on writing systems with the underlying theme that a particular writing system is just one of many ways to code speech. One of the pages developed so far is on Hotsuma, an ancient Japanese syllabary/alphabet. To make hotsuma easier to understand and less alien, it is reworked for English.
Similar pages are being constructed for two south american systems Quipu and Maya. The book is aimed at 8 to 14 year olds interested in secret codes and cryptography. TO may be a kind of a cryptographic system but the aim of most of these systems was to make it simple. Explaining
a new notation in one page or less
The chief differences
between phonemic notations for English can be found in their handling of
long vowels and diphthongs. Therefore it should be possible to pack
all the needed information in one 6 x 4 table. Here is the
minimal set of key words.
short long difthongz r-comb ax ah ice are ex her ace air it eel oil ear not taut owe oar hook hoop use tour up ago out our To reduce the time needed for a reader to unpack the information, the table should be standardized. Everyone should have to condense their notation to fit into the standard set of boxes the same way that PV authors are currently asked to respell a series of 50 words. The following is an example of one of the World English proposals. Please write and tell me if you can figure out the notation from such a compact nutshell presentation. Is this all you need to know? sbett@lycos.com
The problem comes when readers try to unpack the information. Another page would have to be developed for those who have trouble reading and making sense out of tabular data. One helpful addition
might be the inclusion of three sample paragraphs in the new spelling.
Here is an example:
VY's BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS
STORY IN FOUR NOTATIONS
The most fonemic notations above is Spanglish followed by ALC and RITE. TO is about 40% fonemic. Compare ALC fonetic with RITE. Both try to approximate the traditional system and allow certain specified irregularities [the, of, a,...] Saxon Spanglish is more phonemic than ALC Fonetic or RITE but this because these partial reforms accept about a dozen sight words such as The, OF, IS, TO, A, Wh, Wa,
in YnifOn EK letcr iz csOsEAtcd wiT wcn and xnlE wcn sqnd.in YnifOn EK letcr iz csOsEAtcd wiT wcn and xnlE wcn sqndThis keyboard Unifon can be deciphered using the table below. Bby installing the Unifon font, this code can be displayed in Unifon making it easier to read.   Over
half of the keyboard locations are unchanged. The caps represent
the "long vowels [ill eel] would be spelled [il El.]. The schwa
is represented by c with C used for the short u in
book.
These can be visualized as LAZY-U's.
. .  Download
the font
UNIFON has the "long" sound symbol incorporated into the characters as a prominent horizontal element in any location, top, middle, or bottom. No matter where the "long" signal appears it is a strong intuitive indication of the proper "long" phoneme. [JK] James H. Kanzelmeyer jimk@forcomm.net uni-fonemic-transkripshcn.htmlunifon-keyboard.htmunifon-malone.htmlunifon-tables.html unifon-toc.html uni-rationale.html
 Is
the IPA good enough? The
font developed just before 1900 by Jones, Passey and the International
Phonetic Association is certainly good enough for a pronounciation guide.
Its appearance in extended text, however, leaves something to be
desired in terms of asethetics, readability and accessability. The
IPA font has the look of a font called "ransome note". It looks as
if the characters were cut from a variety of sources. It does not
have the flow of a coherent design. A good type designer could
improve the font if the IPA gave him some artistic freedom. Goody
made a beautiful IPA equivalent [the SSA font] that was used in Dewey's
books.
Althought it uses all of the Latin
alphabet, IPA sill looks alien and remains a difficult first read
even with the beneift of a key. Compare this with some of the phonemic
alphabets above. What is the best alternative. World English
is isomorphic with IPA and does not have any special [non-ascii] characters.
A few additional characters are needed such as [š] for sh
and [ How Phonemic
or Alphabetic or Predictable is the traditional orthography?
number of phonemes http://www.les.aston.ac.uk/sss/ Numbers from one to ten in many languages - european go to language-rank.html jolly-fonics.htmlhomofonz.html . writing-samples.htm writq-samplz.htm transcription-training.html letter-names.html map-pron.html planned-language.html quayle-spell.html 500words-alc.htm needs a link back to the source rosetta-stonec.html sampson.html saunds-eng2.html uses.html http://linguistsoftware.com/lsrb-cro.htm
particular phonemic transcriptions retains a high number of spellings previously considered to be irregular. Spanglish is an excellent transitional alphabet or i.t.a. By adding additional spelling patterns and principles it can closely approximate traditional spelling. Through abbreviation, it can eliminate the double vowels which distinguish the short and long vowels. Each letter is normally associated with three different sounds. Marker letters rather than diacritics are used to distinguish which is being used. Critiques are welcome. Alternative Notations Compared Du yu havv a problem sieing with yer aneided aiz?
Duu yuu haev a praablam siying widh yor aneidid aaiz?
IPA ðei sei
ai ai s3: |
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 The
Quarterly Simpl Spel Newsletter is mailed to the over 100 dues paying members
of the Simplified Spelling Socieity. The aims of the society can
be summarized as follows.
To reform English spelling for the benefit of learners and users throughout the world . B. To raise awareness of the alphabetic principle, its corruption during the long history of written English, and its more rational application in other languages. . C. To promote research and debate on ways of reforming English spelling and to prepare proposals for improving by stages the predictability of sound syimbol relationships in English . D. To help co-ordinate proposals for English spelling reform across both English speaking and non-English speaking countries. . E. To persuade the public, opinion makers, policy-makers, and relevant agencies on the need for and practical possibilities of reforming English spelling. . See also the six axioms on english spelling page 2 - edited version of what actually made it into print |
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© 2000
BETA
Information Design
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The
Hotsuma page underscores the fact that the phonological structure of English
speech could be transcribed into visible speech in a variety of ways -
all of them better [i.e., more phonemic] than what we use today.
Although David Kelley's Nu Hotsuma Syllabary is compact, analytical, and
ingenious, it is not recommended as a practical reform. The project
is part of an effort to write a new type of book on Writing Systems:
One that builds an analog of historic phonological and semantic codes that
works with English.
Non
phonemic systems such as Cut Spelling and RITEspel [stage I] cannot be
reduced to a 6x4 table. However, broad quasi phonemic systems such
as Spanglish and Fastrspel could be initially explained in a one sound
- one symbol format before being decontructed. i.t.a.'s are deconstructed
by the addition of spelling patterns and competing principles. Rapid
writing systems are constructed by phoneme mergers and abbreviations. 
] for schwa and [d]
for the /dh/.
Even
if the most frequent spelling patterns are used as the pronunciation guide,
the matches are less than 40%.
