How many ways should a sound be spelled?  Why not one as in Spanish?
How many ways does the Traditional Orthography spell the sound in RULE?  
Would you believe 29? [18 of the most frequent spellings are shown above]

How much easier is Spanish orthography compared to the orthography used for English?  One might guess that it would be about 20 times easier but this has been difficult to prove.  Task analysis suggests that with and average of 14 spellings per sound compared to 1.1, Spanish should be ten times easier:  40 paired associates instead of 400.  This may be a slight overstatement since many orthographic options are relatively rare.  In other words, one can correctly spell a vowel sound in 75% of the cases by using one of the four most frequent spellings.

The chart above illustrates 18 of the 29 different ways that the /u:/ sound is spelled in TO. The frequencies are dictionary frequencies not the frequency found in writing samples from books and newspapers. 

The alphabetic ideal is to have a one to one correspondence between symbol and sound.  Since English has more vowel sounds than vowel letters, the next best option would be to have one symbol for two sounds.  Spanglish uses u for both hook (huk) and hoop (hup).  A marker can be used to make a distinction between the two phonemes (h'uk, hup) or (huk, huup). 

The conventions for English were established around 1750 to meet the needs of commercial printers are chaotic.  Not only are 29 different symbol combinations used for the /u:/ sound, most of the same combinations are reused for /u/, the short u sound, doubling the confusion.  English was standardized at the word level before it was regularized (i.e., before standardized phoneme-grapheme correspondences were established).

Phonemic systems such as WES, NS, and NF reduce the number of different ways to spell a sound to 1. See Dewey, 1971, for a complete list of the different possible TO spellings for every sound.

Since all phonemic solutions change the spelling of at least 60% of the words in English, the spellings often look odd. New Spelling spells canoe cunoo. Spanglish spells it canu.

In an effort to mimic English, some reform orthographies have adopted positional spelling strategies. Such systems are still predictable.  Spelling depends on whether the sound comes at the beginning, middle, or end of a word [e.g., gooru].

Systematic spelling solutions such as RES can have up to four ways to spell a particular sound.  In the case of /u:/ there are only 2  [uu & u]. RES reduces the number of spellings from 18 to 2.

RES  rool, flu, froot, ma'nuvr, groop, gru, moov, canu, moon, rooby, troop, thru, wooed, ooz, roomatism, broos, tu, du.  The short u /u/ guid, wuid, shuid, cuid, wuil, puil, puit  as in fluid 

OGD, a related system, also reduces the number of spellings from 18 to 2.  OGD spells /u:/ ruol, flu, fruot, manuovr, gruop, gru, muov, canu, muon, ruoby, truop, thru, wuod, ooz, ruomatism, bruoz, tu, du. The sound in hook, /u/ is spelled oo as in wool, cood, shood, pool (pull), poot (put).

Unigraf uses all 52 upper and lower case letters as unique sound signs.  C can be recycled as a lazy U or turned U.  Alternatively, /u/ can be represented by J (a diminished u:)  /u:/ becomes V.

Spelling can be improved unsystematically.  For instance, one can simply remove the silent or redundant letters. Cut Spelling reduces the number from 18 to 7: [ u, oo, o-e, ew, o, ooe, u-e ]. 

CS eliminates most cases of the magic e, considered to be one of the major problems with English spelling.  It is retained above in "wooed" but eliminated in "canoe" and "flue"

The  magic e or leapfrog rule refers to the practice of marking vowel length with a non contiguous letter [dim dime].  This lengthening of a vowel that has another following separated by only one consonantal glyf (ache, bathe, ocean) or in a non-digrafic relationship with the first vowel.

Quiz: 

1. How many ways can you spell RULE?
2. How many ways can you spel it in Spanish?
3. How much easier would it be to memorize 1 spelling per sound than 18?
4. What is the average number of ways to spell a sound in English [TES]? 
5. Spanish orthography is about __ times easier than traditional English spelling [TES]?
6. How much more difficult is TES than is an alphabetical orthography - one symbol per sound?
7. Would the elimination of silent letters make words easier to spell?
8. If we adopted a simpler spelling system, would this increase literacy?
9. What do you call a spelling system that is predictable?
10. What do you call a spelling system that eliminates redundant letters?
11. Answers below

                RHYMING DICTIONARY    http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/dougb/rhyme-doc.html

Rhymes with True:

   1 syllable: beu, bleu, blew, blue, boo, breaux, brew, brue, chew, chiu, choo, chou, chu, clue, coo, cou, coup, coups,
      crew, crewe, cue, deux, dew, do, doo, douwe, drew, dru, du, due, ewe, few, flew, flue, foo, frew, frueh, fu, glew, glue,
      gnu, goo, graue, grew, grewe, gu, gue, hew, hewe, hoo, hou, houx, hsu, hu, hue, hugh, jew, joo, ju, jue, kew, khoo,
      khuu, knew, koo, ku, kyu, leu, lew, lieu, liu, loo, lou, louw, loux, lu, lue, mew, mu, new, nu, ooh, oooh, ou, peugh, pew,
      phew, phu, plew, plue, poo, pooh, pou, prew, pru, prue, prugh, pu, pugh, q, q., qu, que, queue, rew, rhew, rhue, rioux,
      roux, ru, rue, schewe, schoo, schou, schue, schuh, screw, shew, shiu, shoe, shoo, shu, shue, siew, sioux, skew, slew,
      soo, spew, stew, strew, stu, stuewe, su, sue, tew, thew, threw, through, thru,  to, too, treu, trew, trieu, true, tu, tue,
      two, u, u., uwe, view, vu, vue, whew, who, woo, wu, xu, xue, yew, yoo, you, yu, yue, zhou, zhu, zoo, zue 

Answers to quiz:  1-29,  2-1,  3-18,  4-14,  5-10, 6-10,  7-yes,  8-yes,  9-systematic, 10-cut spelling
à  è  ì  ò  ù

                FINNISH LANGUAGE
                http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/animals/finnish.html

SAMPA John Wells notation for all European languages:  http://

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