|
|
The Nature of and Alternatives to Standard English Orthography
Abstract:Most people are not fully aware of all the problems with English spelling. They confuse the language with its traditional orthography and have a misplaced reverence for the antiquated spellings preserved in the dictionary.
This article reveals some of the absurdities of the spelling system used in English speaking countries since 1800, explains the difference between a language, a script, and a spelling system, and chronicles some of the attempts to "break the spell"* advanced by advocates of simplified and regularized spelling.
How English came to be written the way it is
The heart of the trouble is with our foolish alphabet,
it doesn't know how to spell and can't be taught.- Mark Twain, 1899
To represent the 40 or so sounds (or phonemes) of English requires 40 to 50 sound signs (or graphemes): at least 18 more than what is available in the 26 character Roman alphabet which has 3 redundant characters. (See Fig. 3)SolutionsFrom 1000 AD to 1600 AD, English scribes came up with a wide variety of individualistic solutions to cope with this graphemic deficiency. The most common solution was to augment or expand the Roman alphabet with digraphs, letter combinations used to represent the missing phonemes.
The problem was that they created too many digraphs and letter combinations. Instead of one digraph for each unrepresented sound, they created a surplus of 5 to 20. Even the sounds that were represented, such as "s", were spelled six different ways. (s, ps, sw, c, sc, sch). Although the problem began as one of graphemic deficiency, the problem with today's traditional orthography (TO) is one of graphemic overabundance and diversity.
In the 14th Century, Chaucer lamented the "grete dyversite in English and in writyng of our tongue." Over the centuries, one type of diversity has been effectively abolished but the diversity of ways to spell a particular sound has remained. We can no longer use a [y] for the /long I/ in "diversity" but we can still use this letter to represent the /long I/ in other words such as "fly".
The property of a written sign to have more than one value is called polyvalence (Coulmas, 1996, p. 413). The typical goal of a spelling reform is to reduce the degree or level of polyvalence. There have been reforms in the way that English is written but most of them increased polyvalence.
While writing tends to remain the same, pronunciation changes over time. The 15th century was a period of rapid change referred to as "the great English vowel shift." This was followed by a rise in the affordability and popularity of the printed word. In the 16th century, the demand for reading material was largely met by foreign (e.g., Dutch) printers. The printers not only dropped 4 of the old English characters, such as the thorn (þ) , but also failed to keep pace with the sound changes that were affecting the language.
With the publication of the King James Bible in 1611, a standard or authority for some uniformity and consistency in spelling was established. After the publication of Johnson's Dictionary in 1755, only one of the 50 or more ways that a short word could be spelled was deemed correct. Unfortunately, this standardization came about before regularization. Strict adherence to the alphabetic principle would not have permitted one to spell fish "G-H-O-T-I".
In the abstract, the solution to irregular spelling is simple. Just make it regular: Assign one and only one sound sign to each of the 40 or so significant sounds or phonemes of the spoken English and allow the younger generations to use it in place of TO.While such spelling reforms have been successful in other countries and while Ben Franklin, Noah Webster, and others believed the benefits would clearly outweigh the temporary inconvenience, support for a major reform has never enjoyed widespread political support. It is as if tampering with the spelling system was tantamount to tampering with the Constitution.
Webster, due to the popularity of his dictionaries, was able to drop the silent [u] in colour and implement a few other piece-meal reforms. However, Teddy Roosevelt's support of *thru for *through wasn't enough to sway public opinion. [Why thru is correct spelling]People are more likely to change their religion
than change their writing system.
--Charles Hockett, 1952From a practical standpoint, resistance to change, even change for the better, is almost insurmountable. Most scholars agree that having a spelling system similar to the one enjoyed by the Finns would increase literacy and speed the attainment of a 5th grade reading level by more than 25%. Due to the lack of awareness and a variety of mostly invalid reasons, few people beyond those who have studied the topic are ready to advance or endorse any proposal for a spelling reform.
The convergence among the proposals that have been advanced in the last 50 years can be seen in the following table. Note the close similarity of the three digraphic scripts, NS, WES, and ITA (The Initial Teaching Alphabet).6
Several of these systems,e.g., SpellRight, Fanetic, Truespel, saxon-spanglic, and Inglish, are well described on the Web.1. Cut Spelng - Streamlined Spelling
Streamlining by removing redundant letters disrupts the pattern of traditional spelling the least. It is also the least phonemic but still considerably more phonemic than traditional spelling. The Simplified Spelling Society calls this proposal Cut Spelling, Cut Spelng, or simply CS. Cut spelling is illustrated in Figure 3. When the redundant characters are cut, *knot becomes *not, *debt becomes *det, and *spelling becomes *spelng. Cut spelling also includes three substitutions which results in a minor change in the pattern TO: garage= garaj, gin= jin, graph= graf, sigh= sy ( y = /ie/ ).
Cut spelng achevs a hyr levl of fonemicity
without being basd on a fonetic or alfabetic principl.2. Digraphic Solutions
A few of the digraphic Spelling solutions (ITA, New Spelling, WES, Anglic) were shown above in columns 3-5. A related writing system is called SpellRight. Most of the digraphic Roman scripts that were developed during the last 50 years are quite similar. Digraphic solutions select one spelling pattern (for each phoneme) found in TO and make it universal. In addition to the pattern identified by New Spelling and its variants there is the pattern referred to as IPA YuroSpell which are based on continental sound values rather than the most frequent sound values found in TO.
New Spelling, ITA, and WES are systematic but not phonemically perfect. They don't have to be. A phonetic transcription of language captures dialects. A phonemic transcription is a communication tool: It can be shared by those who pronounce words in slightly different ways.
I.T.A. (Initial Teaching Alphabet) 5th column above
ITA is actually a unigraphic solution but it looks very traditional because the ligatures resemble traditional digraphs. The /long e/ sound is ee just as with SpellRight, but the e's are connected or ligatured in order to be perceived as a distinct grapheme rather than a combination of letters.
Except for 5 graphemes (oo, uu, aa, ng, zh) and the use of a special font, ITA is the same as WES (World English Spelling) which is almost the same as SpellRight.. The greatest difference is in the way that digraphs (two letter sound signs) are connected. ITA uses a special font that converts the digraphs into ligatures (connected letters) that can be accessed with one keystroke.
If the Arpabet keyboard was used, shift A would produce the æ ligature for the /long a/ rather than a capital letter A. The point of using the ligatures such as æ th, sh, ch, etc. rather than the digraphs [ae, th, sh, ch...] is to encourage students to think of combinations as a single unique sound sign rather than something that can be broken down into component parts. One could probably make this point without having the graphic reminder.
The utility of the ITA as a way to introduce reading and writing is well documented (Downing, 1964). Those who start with ITA achieve ITA literacy very quickly. Many similar phonetic scripts have been used in the past and almost all have been reported to be four times as effective as TO. The reason for this is obvious, there is less to learn before students experience success. It is far easier to learn 40 consistent sound signs than to learn three variations of 26 inconsistent sound signs (print, caps, script) with over 500 different interpretations.
Alphabetic systems are easier to learn than logographic (or word sign) systems. Once learned, however, logographic systems are often quicker and easier to read. Once 4000 signs are mastered, Chinese, which is about 80% logographic, can be read quicker than English, which is about 25% logographic. Speed readers are not reading individual phonemes, they are not lip reading, they are reading whole word patterns.
Pitman is accused of believing that TO can be tolerated if we are exposed in stages. An increasing number of educators realize that this is only a half measure and that the problem of our bad spelling still remains and is only postponed, not solved by learning ITA first.
"It haz bin proovd aulso by the experiments ov thouzandz ov children with the perfect alphabet cauld ITA. Children studying ITA lern it not only twies as rapidly az children lerning convenshunul iregular speling, but severul timz as rapidly." --Laubach
According to Laubach (1966), "Children studying ITA not only learn twice as rapidly as children learning conventional irregular spelling but several times as rapidly." Laubach says that it is not enough to remove half the load from students, so they will progress 3/4's as rapid as the children in countries with more phonemic scripts. Laubach wants a reform now. Not to change the past but to provide for a better future. For this to happen, Laubach says, adults must tolerate new spelling and not demand that children learn the old spelling habits. They still have to learn to read TO, but they do not have to learn to write it.
3. Unigraphic Solutions
Unigraf uses all 52 of the available upper and lower case letters plus a symbol as unique phonograms.A digraphic solution is not an optimal solution to the problem of making the English script more phonemic. An elegant script should be optimized across several dimensions. Economy of writing and printing is one of those dimensions. A unigraphic solution would be 10 to 20% more space efficient than TO or any digraphic system.
Unigraf (1999) shown above, Pitman's phonotypy (1845), Goudy's SSA fonetic alphabet (1962), and Pictographic Monofon (1995) are examples of readable unigraphic solutions that use the shifted characters as another 26 sound signs or employ an augmented alphabet with new character shapes. All unigraphic solutions require more than 26 letters, but they do not require an upper case. The following solution introduces no unfamiliar characters but it does make A and a refer to different sounds.
Most proposals for regularizing English try to stay as close to TO as possible. This includes using a dual redundant character set, the upper and lower case letters. Arpabets (or ASCIIbets) do not use capital letters in the traditional way, they use them as unique sound signs. With 52 characaters instead of 26 to represent the 40 some phonemes of English, there is no need to use digraphs. Each phoneme has its own grapheme.
One such script, the askEbet, establishes unigraphic keyboard positions for 18 new characters. It can also be used to quickly identify the 18 special characters. When TO is transcribed into Arpabet characters, the missing sounds that require digraphs in WES show up as capital letters. Since there is a logic to each of the Arpabet keyboard positions, they can be memorized very quickly. Transcribing the last line:
·sins TAr iz u lojik tU EC uv Du ARPAbet kEbOrd pOsiSuns, TA can bE memOrIzd verE kwiklE
This example illustrates both the utility of the Arpabet as an analytical tool and the problems it initially introduces by deviating so far from traditional orthography. In NF and WES, the same passage would read:
Sins ther iz a' lojik tu i,ch uv th ARPAbet ki,bo'rd p'zish'nz, thei kan be mem'ri,zd veri kwikli,.
Sins thaer is a lojik to eech of the ARPAbet keeboerd poesishuns, they kan bee memoeriezd veri kwiklee.
The askEbet is not the only writing system that limits itself to the 52 characters found on a standard typewriter: A character set is often referred to as QWERTY or ASCII. IPA ASCII also uses upper and lower case letters as indicating distinct sound signs. One of the most ambitions ASCII based proposals is for a world language based on 39 unigraphic sound signs. This script, known as ANJeL, is quite similar to the askEbet except it uses the upper case letters as the default or standard and represents the sounds that other scripts represent with digraphs as lower case letters. A sentence in ANJeL is illustrated on the right::
A digraphic solution is not an optimal solution to the problem of making the English script more phonemic. An elegant script should be optimized across several dimensions. Economy of writing and printing is one of those dimensions. A unigraphic solution would be 10 to 20% more space efficient than TO or any digraphic system.
Sound Signs in Cardinal Vowel Position
starting top-left with the high front vowel /I/ANJeL Notation
in
ieel
Easia
iaup
uuse
Uooze
Xhook
xegg
eace
AAir
ARacute
' uoil
Qcow
C
downowe
Oat
aIce
I. alm
o aaurn
xRawe
oox
oANJeL In this writing system, the new sound signs
and the short vowels appear as lower case letters.
eVRE tiG eLS iZ uP'R KAS.
15 vowels (shown above) + 24 consonants
evrE TiG els iz upR kAs (Unigr@f)
see map-IPA.htmlAlong with ANJeL, Pitman's phonotypy (1845), Goudy's SSA fonetic alphabet (1962), and Pictographic Monofon (1995) are examples of readable unigraphic solutions.
Monofon, a minimalist design, was illustrated in Figure 5. Like Kingsley Read's Shavian script, Monofon is space efficient and optimized for rapid writing. All characters can be formed with one quick continuous stroke. Monofon is also pictographic which means that most of the characters represent objects which begin with the same sound. Relating the shape to the sound through the letter name is a mnemonic technique used with the very first alphabets. It made ancient alphabets (e.g., Phoenician) easy to teach to illiterates in a few weeks.
The dBLspel Solution
DoubleSpell (dBLspel) is a systematic notational scheme that achieves a closer approximation of TO by utilizing more than one spelling pattern or grapheme per sound. It is a positional solution where the letter used to represent a sound depends on its position in a word (initial, medial, or terminal). In the first two positions, for instance, the spelling of the sound /ou/ or *owe is [ou] but in the terminal position /ou/ is spelled *o. *Although can therefore be spelled *oltho. The word *highly can be spelled *hyly because the sound associated with y depends on its position in the word: | y-consonant | /ai/ | /i:/ unstressed |.
Here is a sample of this spelling:
Wot we hav crEAtd in th nu speling iz a toutaly congrw'nt simb'l set wich inclwds spesificaly 18 vau'l simb'lz and 23 conson'nt simb'lz; wun les than 42, bico,z we ulau sum letrs tu serv a dw'l roul. Ther iz litl ridund'nsy, and o'nly th lo,ng vau'lz ar reprisented byy tw letrz. This set ov 41 distinct simb'lz that unambigiu'sly reprisents eech ov th 42 saundz ov 'English' speech o'penz the dorz tu funcsh'nl lit'rasy for ev'rywun, thouz ov us Ab'l tu coup with 'English's' inconsistenseez and thouz ov us hu cu'd not, az wel az for fiuch'r jen'reish'ns.Cut New Follick uses a very mild form of positional spelling. With this system, redundant markers are removed. Thus tu, /tu:/ is clipped to tu. Tu is interpreted as *to or *two because there are no known examples of an alternative interpretation of this sound sign in the terminal position. *To has three different pronunciations: t', tu' and tu,: so there is little point in being specific. In NF, *Santa Claus would be spelled *Sa,nta' Klo,z. There is another terminal U sound here but the letter *u is not used to represent it.
Conclusion
School teachers charged with teaching reading, writing, and spelling can make a significant contribution to students' understanding of writing systems. One of the roles of teachers is to pass on tradition but this does not have to be done uncritically. Teachers are in an ideal position to correct misconceptions and clear out some of the intellectual debris that can inhibit progressive social reforms.
The primary obstacle to the adoption of any simplified spelling proposal is ignorance or lack of awareness. While teaching the traditional orthography, teachers can point out its deficiencies and illustrate the benefits enjoyed by other countries with regular spelling systems.
Teachers will continue to teach the irrational code, but they should do it with the full knowledge of its faults. Teachers can help break the spell by not covering up the problems, by not confusing language with orthography, and by not promoting a misplaced reverence for the antiquated spellings preserved in the dictionary.
Standard English orthography (TO) is much more difficult and complicated than it needs to be. Using a regularized script such as ITA or WES will simplify the teaching / learning process and lighten the load on beginning readers. It is far easier to master 40 consistent sound signs or phonograms than it is to learn three varieties of the 26 Roman letters, 18 irregular digraphs, and over 550 different ways to map sounds to shapes. When one counts case distinctions and different fonts, the learning burden for today's child approaches that experienced by those trying to learn 1,000 Egyptian hieroglyphics or 4,000 Chinese logograms.
When the task is simplified, beginning readers will experience the motivating effect of success much sooner. They achieve mastery quicker simply because there is less to learn and memorize. Numerous studies in the mid 1960's showed that ITA was learned much faster than TO. Since ITA cuts the amount of material a child needs to master by a factor of ten, it seems reasonable that there should be a corresponding reduction in training time. As might be expected, much of that gain was lost when the student's had to transition to the traditional orthography. After learning one spelling pattern, students now had to learn at least four others.
First grade reading books are far behind the child's speaking ability primarily because the books have eliminated most of the irregular spellings and postponed the introduction of "crazy words" (i.e., words that do not fit the most common spelling patterns). Since half of the most frequently used words are irregular, around 40 have to be introduced very early. Some of the proponents of practical phonemic writing systems advocate retaining the frequently used irregular words. Memorizing 40 "crazy words" is certainly better than memorizing 4,000.
The benefits of a more phonemic written code are many but most are primarily benefits to the new learner. By limiting the number of orthographic options, a regularized script becomes much easier to spell and pronounce. In countries with more phonemic writing systems, all 5th graders can spell any word they can pronounce and pronounce any word they can spell. By adding new characters for digraphs in addition to the regularizing the orthography, a new alphabet for English could also be easier to type and quicker to write.
A spelling reform is not a panacea. Phonemic spelling will not help speed readers who are attending to word patterns rather than individual sound signs. In general, logograms or whole word signs, can be read faster than phonograms but the development of this skill requires more time.
A dictionary would still have to be used to determine the correct pronunciation of words with regional variations
(e.g., *sky is pronounced /skie/ rather than /skah/). New dictionaries might have to be created to determine the correct spelling for blended vowels and words that could still be written more than one way (e.g., yooz - uez, yuur - yoour, air - aer).The consequence of using a written code with a higher level phonemicity or consistency with the alphabetic principle is limited to saving a few 100 million man hours and a few billion dollars a year. A regularized English spelling system would provide a quicker avenue to full literacy and would increase our literacy rates by 25%. In addition, adopting a new spelling system for English would make the teaching learning process about 25% more efficient and make the teaching of "phonics" practical.
The way we spell is a cultural convention and an accident of history. TO has been in place since 1700 due to the weight of tradition, not because it makes sense. The first step in breaking the hold that conventional spelling has on public opinion is to extend the student's horizons of awareness.
We teach traditional English spelling because it is regarded as a mark of an educated person and because it unlocks some of the treasures of the past. We do not teach it because it is right or in any way superior to other spelling schemes. There are plenty of good models for superior orthographies. Unfortunately, none that are in wide use, such as the Finnish or Portuguese scripts, are sufficiently consistent with the most common spelling patterns found in English.
Three of the scripts introduced in this paper, cut spelng and two digraphic scripts, are generally consistent with the most common spelling patterns and have a much more phonemic orthography than TO. They are all good candidates for an alternative or auxiliary scripts.
So what is the trouble with TO? Its irregular and largely inconsistent with the alphabetic principle. This makes it difficult to sound out words from their spelling and to spell words based on how they are pronounced. The traditional spelling system makes English difficult to learn and inhibits its diffusion as a world language.
Noah Webster summed it up as follows in the introduction to his 1806 dictionary: A living language must necessarily suffer gradual changes...The unavoidable consequence of fixing the orthography of a living language is to destroy the use of the alphabet. This effect has already taken place in our own language: letters, the most useful invention that ever blessed mankind, have lost and continue to lose a part of their value, by no longer being the representatives of the sounds originally annext to them. The doctrine of no change is destroying the benefits of the alphabet...
Notes
1. Zachrisson (1970)
2. Laubach, 1966. (Crystal, 1993, charts various spelling systems in more detail than shown below)
Phonemic <--..Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, .....Icelandic.....French.....English .........Chinese --> logographic.3. For more nonsense spellings, see Bennet Cerf's Out on a Limerick .
to top of page
4. A phonemic transcription is not as precise as a phonetic transcription. The latter includes a variety of markers that can clearly indicate dialects and regional patterns. For an optimized writing tool, all one needs is a consistent orthography that provides a useful guide to pronunciation and spelling.
5. According to Beech (1992) Jour. of Gen. Psych. 119(2), p. 169f. subjects were able to regain normal reading speeds after they read about 6,000 words of regularized text. Regularizing orthography involves changing 30% of the words. Research indicates that adults regain normal reading speed after they have read 6,000 words or regularized text. 30% were spelling accurately in the new orthography by the end of the session. Writing speed improved but was still slower than with unregularized TO. Orthographic change has more impact on writing speed than on reading speed. Reading is unaffected. Writing requires several weeks to adjust.
6. Figure 5. lists the number of different ways that 18 sounds can be spelled and the different ways that the same letter can be pronounced. Complete charts are available in the books by Dewey and Pitman. This one is limited to the 18 sounds for which there is no single Roman letter. The sounds are typically signified by a digraph or letter combination. Unfortunately, in TO they are signified by multiple digraphs.
7. IPA (The International Phonetic Alphabet, 1890) uses the same convention, /sh/=S, /ch/=TS
8. Soffietti (1955) full reference below
9. Hanna (1971)
10. Phonemes refer to the significant sound categories used by native speakers. A category refers to a collection or group of dissimilar things that are treated as the same. Typically there is a range of sounds that will be mutuallyintelligible and interpretable as a particular phoneme. Pronunciations within this region are called allophones.
11. 25% is a number that many educators use which is based on an estimated average improvement in reading test scores and the difference in time to mastery between countries with phonemic scripts compared to countries trying to teach TO. The difference between learning 40 sound signs and over 400 spelling patterns is over 100%. By this estimate, teaching an alphabetic orthography would be 100 times as efficient as teaching TO.
References Extended Bibliography Beech, John R. "Adaption of writing to orthographic change." J. of General Psychology. 199(2),
169-179, 1992
Bett, Steve T. The Alphabet: Its Origins and Early Development, (unpublished) 1996
Coulmas, Florian. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems.Oxford:
Alphabets for English. Bridge Spelling Proposals
published as a personal view by the Simplified Spelling Socieity, 1996Crystal, David (editor) Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge
Dewey, Godfrey. English Spelling: Roadblock to reading. Teachers College Press, N.Y., 1971
Downing, John A. The ITA Reading Experiment. Scott Foresman & Co. Chicago. 1964.
Ellis, Henry (ca. 1900) referenced by Dewey and Pitman.
Hanna, Paul, et al. Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondence as Cues to Spelling
Improvement. Doc. OE-32008, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971Laubach, Frank C. Let's Reform Spelling--Why and How. New Readers Press.
Pitman, James. and John St. John. Alphabets and Reading: The ITA.. Pitman.
Soffietti, James P. "Why Children Fail to Read: A Linguistic Analysis."
The SSA (Simpler Spelling Association) Fonetic Alfabet. SSA, Lake Placid, N.Y., 1959
Twain, Mark. A Simplified Alphabet. What's Man. Essay No. XI, 1899 Illustrated version
Upward, Chrisopher. Cut Spelling Handbook. Simplified Spelling Society, 1996
Yule, Valerie. Spelling as a Social Invention. 1994. full text on the Web.
Zachrisson, R.E.. Anglic: An International Language. McGrath, College Pk. Md., 1970
Pictographic Monofon Vowels 7 primary vowels, 7 derived blends of the primaries
Dr. Bett [pic] [homepage] encourages and welcomes critiques of this paper, the underlying speculations and theories, as well as comments on the general topic of phonology and references to related works.
Previous page <<< SiteMap
