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Phonemic Spelling is quick to learn and easy to use for the unschooled
Since the 40 sounds of English speech are associated with just 40 spellings rather than over 400,  it should be possible to learn Truespel 10 times faster than the traditional writing system.  The research program is just getting underway.  [more]

Adults can achieve Truespel literacy in two weeks or less.  In one study,  grad students in linguistics learned the system in less than 10 minutes.  Learning speed was enhanced by truespel's use of the most frequent spellings found in the traditional writing system.  If you are familiar with the English vowel spelling found in the words [ sundae, eel, pie, toe, due, paar, auto, air, her, oil, out, or, hook, up, due ]  you are already familiar with 80% of the truespel vowel conventions.  The difference is that truespel uses these spellings for any rhyming word.  [pie, tie, frie, skie, mie] [herder, merder, serfer] [due, fyue, nue]

Where did this Spelling System come from?

The traditional spelling system dates from about 1755.  Before that, people spelled as they pleased.  The basic ideas behind Truespel were developed in the 1890's mostly by Henry Ellis.  Henry Sweet, the Oxford philogist, wrote a critique of Ellis's approach in 1900.  In the early 1900's, the system became known as New Spelling and was endorsed by the Simplified Spelling Society.  A modified version, called American Spelling, was endorsed by the American Literacy Council.  None of the variants of New Spelling showed stress and most contained a number of phonemic compromises.  The stress marking feature was added by Tom Zirinkas, the inventor of Truespel.   While truespel was based on familiar spellings, beyond this no attempt was made to make Truespeld words to look like the traditionally spelled words.  There were to be no phonemic compromises.   Thus, while the truespel alphabet looks almost identical to the New Spelling and the American Spelling alphabet, there is a significant difference in the look of transcribed text.

Phonemic Truespel can be read without a key

Most forms of regularized or phonemic English can be read without a key.  This is not necessarily true for most dictionary pronunciation guides including I.P.A.  Like a pronunciation guide, readable truespelling shows stress.  Since nearly 40% of the words in English have irregular stress, this is important: eg, upllie [apply] -  aplikaeshun [application] 

The difficulty comes in learning to write.  Truespel simplifies this part of the learning process with [1] a simple correspondene chart [above] and [2] a phonemic converter.  After writing a sentence in Truespel, you can check its accuracy by pasting the original sentence in the converter's window.  Up to 500 words can be converted at one time. 

Since the truespel alphabet closely resembles Pitman's i.t.a., its success with children should be comparable.  i.t.a. was extensively studied in the late 1960's. Children could learn i.t.a. over twice as fast as the traditional code.  Since there is only 1/10th as much to learn, the potential advantage of a phonemic code is much greater than i.t.a. research revealed.  In countries with phonemic writing systems, children can learn 40 phonograms or sound-symbol correspondences  in 40 days.  [more research]

One of the problems with i.t.a was the lack of reading materials in this notation.  Since truespel has an automatic on-line converter, this would not be a problem in truespel.  Anything available in the traditional notation can be instantly converted into truespel.  There are already over 10,000 digital books available on line.  Any of these can be readily converted to consistent truespel notation. 

Truespel is very simple compared to the traditional writing system which spells each  long vowel over 20 ways.  Truespel spells each [yellow] longvowel one way by adding an e to the short vowel.

An alphabet represents to the eye the sounds of a language by means of written symbols.   It follows that in the most rational alphabet - 

1. Every simple sound will be associated with 

a single distinct symbol, and
2. There will be a consistent relationship 

between each sound and its symbol

If we exclude new letters and diacritics as impractical, we are obliged either 

1. to fall back on digraphs  [two-letter combinations, such as ch, sh and th] or 
2. to merge phonemes.  . [Let ng = /n/and /g/ or /ng/. Let th = /dh/ and /th/

At first glance, the Truespel alfubet  looks more complex than the traditional one.  This is because the traditional alphabet misrepresents the complexity of the English sound system.  There are not just one or two [A] sounds but three or more depending on the number of combinations of the pure vowels that are included.  With all the combinations there are as many as 35 vowel sounds in English.  The Truespel alphabet includes 19 of them [17 vowel phonograms, + 3 unstressed variations [er, u, ee]]. The traditional alphabet stops at 5. 

Linguists consider 20 vowels to be the minimum number needed to represent the sounds of American speech [21 for RP]. The Truespel alphabet does not isolate you [yue] and  lists only the problematic R-combinations:  The self evident combinations are left out:  are [aar], ear [eer], our, and your [yuer].  [er] has to be listed because it is not a simple blend of the [e] and [r] sounds. The same is true for [air] and [or]. 

Since Truespel phonograms are based on familiar English spelling patterns, they can be read immediately without using a key. A major difference between the traditional writing system and Truespel is the consistent representation of five long vowels.  The following table lists 20 vowels -22 counting stress variations.  17 are listed in the Truespel alphabet.  With 17 phonograms and a stress marker, Truespel can represent 20 vowel sounds plus combinations with y and r.

 

Most of the spellings will appear quite familiar, the difference is the absence of code overlap.  If [ou] is to represent the the vowel in [out], it is also used for the vowel in all words that rhyme including 'brown brow' [broun brou] .

These representations of the vowels is not new.  The basic system of English phonograms or sound signs was developed by Pitman and Ellis before 1900.  There are dozens of reform notations based on them.   New Spelling was promoted by the London based Simplified Spelling Society for 50 years.  One version known as i. t. a. was extensively studied in British schools in the  1960's. A variant of New Spelling, called ALC fonetic or American Spelling is currently being promoted by the American Literacy Council in New York. 

There are three key differences between Truespel and all the variants of New Spelling:

1. Truespel always indicates stress:  above = ubbuv, abut = ubbut
2. Truespel includes the obscure vowels: IPA ' and 3: herder, ubbuv, uther
3. Truespel includes schwi - the unstressed /i:/  veree
4. Truespel marks 43  phonemes instead of 40 as in New Spelling.
5. Truespel does not sacrifice consistency to look more like traditional spelling

thu is spelled thu [not the], the plurals of dog and boy are [daugz & boiz]

Tom Zurinskas, founder  Truespel Foundation PO Box 71 Cologne, NJ 08213 www.truespel.com

truespel@hotmail.com next page