The
English writing system is only 40% phonemic (i.e., only 40%
alphabetic and consistent). This is an affront to logic and makes
learning unnecessarily difficult and frustrating. The consistency of English
spelling can be easily improved.  RITE
There are three popular approaches
to the problem of the restoring the alphabet. We say restore because
Old English (prior to 1200 AD)
was over 85% alphabetic and [at that time] comparable to other European
languages.
-
Eliminate
redundant
letters - almost every letter is redundant and
silent in some word
-
Eliminate
code
overlaps - no letter or digraph should have more
than one pronunciation.
-
Eliminate
all inconsistencies - 1-to-1 correspondence
between graphemes & phonemes.
The initial teaching alphabet
( i.t.a.)
eliminated redundant letters and most code overlaps. i.t.a.
was a medium not a method and although it worked with any approach to the
teaching of reading and writing, it could have worked better (and been
easier to study) if it had been associated with a method. Task analysis
indicated that ITA was over 100 times [or 1000%] easier than the
traditional orthography but when used with a mix of teaching methods it
proved to be only 90% better over a three year period. The early
achievement of i.t.a. was remarkable, students picked up the transparent
code as fast as an italian child picks up italian orthography and over
twice as fast as the children in the tradtional classes.
However, most of those early
gains were lost in the third year when students had to transition to the
traditional writing system. In many studies [Downing],
the children taught by i.t.a. retained their lead in reading achievement
and writing performance. In a few studies, there no significant difference
could be detected.
The transition to TO was
never specifically taught until the end of the ITA era (early 1970's).
Explicit training in moving from 1 spelling per sound to five spellings
proved to be beneficial.
Some who were taught using
i.t.a. blame the medium on their continuing problems in matching dictionary
spellings. Such claims have never been proved. It does appear
that some children were moved to traditional spelling before they had mastered
i.t.a. When tested years later, they could not spell in either system.
What was proved was that
young children could learn to express themselves in i.t.a. up to four times
as fast as a control group could in TO. This early gain effectively postponed
the frustration of having to deal with an overly complex traditional writing
system until a certain level of phonemic awareness was achieved.
The simpler task also allowed children to experience early success instead
of repeated failure.
Educational fads, particularly
those that add cost and administrative inconvenience, are usually short
lived. Such was the case with ITA. No major publisher currently
supports this approach to the teaching of reading, writing, and spelling.
I.t.a. was based on New Spelling
(Ellis,
1832}, a notational scheme that
always represented "long" vowels as ae, ee, ie, oe,
ue.
"Ie sae
nue
boi
goe
tel mee
whaat
yue see."
This is consistent and readable but doesn't look much like TO. Like all
phonemic transcriptions of English, New Spelling matched traditional spelling
less than 40% of the time. In some later proposals such as Anglic,
40 frequently used sight words [I, me, the,..] were
allowed. This practice greatly improved the matches in running text since
80% of the words we use are drawn from a corpus of only 1000 words [Thorndike].
The number of matches to the spellings found in the dictionary, however,
remained low.
POATAYTO
(RES spelling) POTEITO
(spanglish citation spelling)
Restored spelling (RES
or Spanglish)
is more complicated than ITA but closer to TO. It could be argued that
restored spelling is more traditional than the present day orthography
which dates from 1755. The difference is that restored spelling spells
current pronunciation the way it would have been spelled in Old
English [800-1160] or Middle English [1200-1400]. Traditional orthography
[TO] contains many silent letters because the spelling reflects an earlier
pronunciation. TIME and KNIGHT were once pronounced exactly the way they
are spelled today. In the "days of yore" there were no silent letters.
Using the same spelling system but with todays pronunciation, the words
would be spelled [nait] and [enuff].
"TIME" used to be pronounced
team-uh.
"GIVE" used to be pronounced giv-uh (Cf:
given). At one time prior to 1500, the Latin based spelling of these words
corresponded to the way they were pronounced.
spelling
1000 A.D.
to the present
|
Old / Middle
English pronunciation
|
present day English
pronunciation
|
| time |
team-uh /'ti:m@/ tiema |
tiem /taim/ taim |
| knife |
knif-uh /'knif@/ niffa |
nief /naif/ naif |
| give |
giv-uh /'giv@/ givva |
giv /giv/ giv |
Three phonemic or pronunciation
guide spellings are provided above. The one in brackets is an ASCII
version of the IPA
[International
Phonetic Alphabet]. Another ASCII-IPA
is shown in small letters. This one, called Spanglish, replaces the 
with an a as in ago. The IPA extends
the alphabet through the use of special characters and diacritics. The
two phonemic alphabets below use standard characters and no diacritics.
Both notations also show primary stress.
Two
Phonemic Alphabets: Truespel and
Spanglish
As shown above, the traditional
26 letter alphabet fails to show the true complexity of the English writing
system. A true alphabet would have one and only one symbol per sound.
There are at least 40 distinct
sound categories or phonemes in English speech. In an ideal alphabetical
system there would be at least 40 phonograms, a symbol for each sound.
The small letters are another
The "long" or free vowels in RES would be represented as ai, ee,
y,
oa,
ue
in situations where they need to be distinguished from checked vowels,
i.e., when followed by a consonant. Otherwise they would be represented
as ay, e, I/y, o,
u as in say,
me, I/my, silo, guru. Hence: "I say nu boy
go tel me wot u se." RES looks mor lyk English becaus it employs
positiona'l speling, just lyk TO.
Our corvett iz mai
feivrit caar.
RES is not phonemic since
there is more than one way to spell a sound. It is systematic and
predictable: There is only one way to spell a sound in a particular
position in a word. The key posistions for a vowel are before or
after a consonant and in or not in a stressed syillable.
The absence of confusing
code overlaps make restored alphabet spelling a viable candidate for a
new ITM (initial teaching medium) in the schools. It is a great place
to start learning to read and write. No new rules are needed to transition
to TO since RES identifies all of the consistent rules in traditional English
spelling. The transition is one of adding exceptions to the rules.
(see heterographs).
Teachers interested in using
RES as a new initial teaching medium in the classroom or for a research
study may contact Dr. Steve Bett for details.
A dictionary for RES has
yet to be completed but there is one for several variants of new spelling
[ALC Fonetik] [truespel].
An automated converter is available to convert
any passage in the traditional orthography to ALC Fonetik or truespel.
 potato
/paw-tuh-tow/ (Saxon Pronunciation)
pateito
/puh-'tay-tow/ (Spanglish Spelling)
pctAtO /puh-tay-tow/
( Unifon II )
Spanglish is one way to restore
the Saxon alphabet. This augmented Latin alphabet was devised by
scribes trained in church Latin. The sounds associated with the letters
are based on Latin. The symbol sound relationships were essentially
the same throughout Europe including England until the great
vowel shift [14th c]. Spanglish only respells words whose pronunciation
is so far removed from today's pronunciation that the word is unintelligible.
pawtahtow and tawmahtow do not have to be respelled.
If we transcribed today's GA pronunciation in phonemic Spanglish, the spelling
would be pateito. The two letter long vowel spelling indicates primary
stress.
The pronunciation guide spelling
[above] uses MENUspel, a widely used notation based on unambiguous traditional
two and three letter combinations. These spellings are only unambiguous
to experienced readers of written English. They would make little
sense in an ESL class. MENUspel has trouble with some phonemes such
as /ei/ and /ai/ since there is no unambiguous way to spell these sounds
in English. As endings, ay and ie work. But as
initial syllable spelling, ays and ies might not be recognized
as ace and ice.
|
Contact Steve Bett [sbett@lycos.com]
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