An Attempt to Fix English Spelling (AKA Mission: Impossible)

[rr]

We all know that spelling in English is confusing. What if there was a spelling reform?

Let's list all of the sounds from English and assign each one two possible way to spell the sound.
You can choose any dialect of English, such as British or American, but please indicate which one it is.

I would add an example, but I have to leave the computer. I'll add an example tomorrow.

[Dewrad]

For. The. Love. Of. God.

Is this like a thing that all noobs go through?

[Abi]

For. The. Love. Of. God.

Is this like a thing that all noobs go through?

Yes.

[Nortaneous]

bad progressive, bad, read burke and accept that you are not smarter than a good few centuries worth of people

[ol bofosh]

I call this "Radical Vair".

Based on RP:

/m n N/ <m n ng>
/p b t d k g ?/ <p b t d k g q>
/f v T D s z S Z x h/ <f v th dh s z sh zh x h>
/tS dZ/ <c j>
/w r l j/ <w r l j>

TRAP <a>
DRESS <e>
KIT-rosEs <i>
LOT-CLOTH <o>
FOOT <uC>
STRUT <uCC> (digraphs can count as C or CC)
STRUT <uh>
BATH-PALM <aa>
THOUGHT <au>
GOOSE <oo>, or <u> in long position
FLEECE <ee>, or <e> in long position
MOUTH <ou>
PRICE <y>, or <i> in long position
FACE <ai>, or <a> pre-vocalic position. <ay> word final.
GOAT <oa>, or <o> in long position
CHOICE <oi> or
START <ar>
SQUARE <air>
NEAR eer>
NORTH-FORCE <or>
CURE <oor>
NURSE <ur-er-ir>

Unstressed vowels
commA <a e o u>
lettER <ar er or ur>

Long pozishon: bifor voul, or wurd fynal (except <a>; see above).

Stress: Stres faulz on dhe furst voul. If not dhen stres is markt widh an akyóot aksent.

Dipthongz and hiatus: hiaitus iz distingwisht from dipthongz bi yoos ov diareesis, e.g. boing vs. goïng, coöprativ.

Rhotic: dubble the <r> in order for the voul tu retain its short valyu.

[rr]

For. The. Love. Of. God.

Is this like a thing that all noobs go through?

I find that quite insulting.

I'm not sure what to call this. It's based on RP:
/m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
/p b t d k g ʔ/ <p b t d k g h>
/f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ x h/ <f v th dh s z sh zh x h> <ph bh th dh s z sh zh kh h>
/tʃ dʒ/ <ch j> <tsh g>
/w r l j/ <w r l y>
/i: ɪ e æ ɜ: ə/ <ee i e a u uh> <ie i e a eu u>
/u: ʊ ɔː ʌ ɑː ɒ/ <ou ui o oe aw ao>
/eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ/ <ei ai oi ow>
/aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/ <au ei ae uu>

[Nortaneous]

Here is my speleng reform. It are good reform . , fix isiossyntratic difeckult speleng of wierd bad englosh laneutgag.

/m n ŋ/ <m n DEATH TO AMERICA>
/p b t d k g ʔ/ <p b f d shit g h>
/f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ x h/ <the v AAAA FUCK ! ? sh zh x h>
/tʃ dʒ/ <aaaaaa AAAAAAA>
/w r l j/ <ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT>
/i: ɪ e æ ɜ: ə/ <ü é â ä à å>
/u: ʊ ɔː ʌ ɑː ɒ/ <ç ê ë è ï î>
/eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ/ <ì Ä Å É>
/aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/ <Æ ô ö ò>

ëTHISTHIS hSHITçmèn büéDEATH TO AMERICA? ïOF bëOFn theOFü änd üshitENOUGHèTHIS én dégnéfé änd OFÄf! FUCKâ ïOF éndÉd ENOUGHéFUCK theèshit SHITç theèshit SHITç theèshit SHITç

[----]

I made an ASCII friendly version for those who aren't so technologically proficient

/m n ŋ/ <a B c>
/p b t d k g ʔ/ <D e F g H i J>
/f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ x h/ <k L m N o P q R s>
/tʃ dʒ/ <T u>
/w r l j/ <V w X y>
/i: ɪ e æ ɜ: ə/ <Z ! @ # $ % ^>
/u: ʊ ɔː ʌ ɑː ɒ/ <& * ( ) + ~>
/eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ/ <[ ] \ ;>
/aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/ << > " '>

No spaces are necessary in between words in this reform, to save paper in future texts.
Example sentence:

X*H!ck(w^s)ca)oHy*X^wF+D///V]Fo(BxZdxZP\\\

Note: /// is comma, \\\ is period.

[Vuvuzela]

There's two kinds of English spelling reform that you'll find. Both of them are generally terrible.
Kind 1 is people half-seriously (or seriously) suggesting that we reform English spelling. These tend to be just generalizations of already existing conventions, like treegod's reforms. These are terrible because English will not reform her spelling any time soon. If people mistakenly think you've actually deluded yourself into thinking you're the Great Reformer who Brought and End to the Scourge of Irregular Spelling, they're going to try to knock you off you high horse. The reason English hasn't had a major spelling reform in the past four-hundred years is not that it's waiting on a good orthography.
Kind 2 is people asking "if some linguist, completely ignorant of the existence of English, were to run across a tribe in New Guinea speaking a language they called [ɑ:pʰi:], with an identical phonology to English's, how might they choose to romanize it? People who do Kind 1 and people who don't like English spelling reforms will point out that there's no way that orthography would ever be adopted, even in the unlikely event that English does have a spelling reform. Aside from that, English is by far the most overdone romanization challenge, and not because of any particular linguistic property. Swedish, for instance, has more vowels. Both Greek and Spanish have a pair of dental fricatives. Chinese has rhotic vowels. Yet the language you see re-romanized more than any of these is English. Which means that, if you're trying to do an English spelling reform, most of your ideas have probably already been implemented, and been implemented better, by somebody else.
Just a word of warning.

[Buran]

I think that English spelling is not going to be reformed until British, Australian, and American English are mutually unintelligible both in speech and in writing. At that point the language may be distorted enough that the whole "morpheme-spelling" idea breaks down too, which would help with reform. However, this is dozens, if not hundreds, of years away, so for now, English spelling reform is not really practical. I personally would like to see it reformed, and I once even wrote an essay advocating reform, but I've come to believe that it's just not feasible right now. Maybe in a century or two, but not now.

[Yaali Annar]

Dis is refom bilong me:

/m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
/p b t d k g ʔ/ <p b t d kg>
/f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ x h/ <v v t d s s s s h h>
/tʃ dʒ/ <s s>
/w r l j/ <w r l y>
/i: ɪ e æ ɜ: ə/ <i i e e e a>
/u: ʊ ɔː ʌ ɑː ɒ/ <u u o a a aî>
/eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ/ <e e oi o>
/aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/ <o i e u>

Dis speling veri gut bikos nau olgeta pipel ken toktok Inglis mo isi wantaim dis speling.

[Dewrad]

For. The. Love. Of. God.

Is this like a thing that all noobs go through?

I find that quite insulting.

Excellent. It's supposed to be.

(If you hadn't worked it out, it is oblique commentary on how frequently this (unbearably dull) topic is brought up. Particularly by noobs like yourself. I mean, the last fucking topic on English spelling reform only died less than a month ago. If noobs (i.e. you) weren't so hopelessly inadequate at looking beyond the front page for topics, you might have noticed.)

[clawgrip]

2. Don't eat the newcomers. One of the purposes of the board is to help people who are new to conlanging. Don't make them feel unwelcome. It's possible to be helpful without jumping all over them for their mistakes.

[Dewrad]

Shove it, clawgrip.

[Pthagnar]

claw grip more like claw grip on your cock amirite

[clawgrip]

Why should I shove it, exactly?

[Jipí]

I suggest that the gentlemen divert their attention to this on-going thread on the same topic of discussion as per Mr Dewrad's notification and refrain from bickering over white-knighting obvious foolishness by overly righteously trying to enforce the forum rules.

[clawgrip]

It wasn't my intention to be overly righteous. I just found his reaction out of proportion to and frankly more annoying than the thing he was complaining about.

[Jipí]

Well, Dewrad said that his harsh reaction was from generally being annoyed by pointing out the same things over and over again because noobs all too often bring up the same stupid topics again and again and don't even try to look up whether something has already been discussed recently. The OP's reaction seemed a little thin-skinned to me as well. It seems like he was offended by being called yet another noob, which he factually is. I'm no mod, but I thought it a little excessive, too, to immediately quote the forum rules at Dewrad.

[clawgrip]

Okay, well, it was if that's how the two of you perceived it then perhaps I was excessive as well. Everyone is bad except Jipi.

[Nortaneous]

don't eat the newcomers but do eat the noobs. if the noob population is allowed to grow unchecked, e t e r n a l s e p t e m b e r

[Drydic]

Everyone is bad except Jipi.

This is actually utterly and completely true.

I think that English spelling is not going to be reformed until British, Australian, and American English are mutually unintelligible both in speech and in writing. At that point the language may be distorted enough that the whole "morpheme-spelling" idea breaks down too, which would help with reform. However, this is dozens, if not hundreds, of years away, so for now, English spelling reform is not really practical. I personally would like to see it reformed, and I once even wrote an essay advocating reform, but I've come to believe that it's just not feasible right now. Maybe in a century or two, but not now.

They're unintelligible right now (as I said in the other thread), except their high prestige disglossic varieties are still intelligible, so the basilectal forms can just shift into those to be understood.

[Melteor]

What I noticed in previous attempts is how schwa heavy it is, and how this skews the attempts. You could make like Macedonian and just use a punctuation mark for it, e.g. apostrophe, and then it looks a bit like Scots with the apologetic apostrophe everywhere. Drop it for the syllabic consonants and it looks a bit more like Yiddish. Also schwa is implied between voiced and unvoiced clusters, e.g. magts. Use several different digraphs for the same vowels for homophones. Maybe use a hyphen for contractions.

Th' ridl 'v th' sfinx 'z 'a veri triki thing. Thi onvelœp fit intu th' nærœ crac.

[Jipí]

German historically just went and spelled all schwa-ized unstressed vowels <e>, except in the southwest, where they kept spelling things with full vowels in the late 13th century either because the sound change that turned unstressed vowels into /ə/ hadn't yet fully taken place, or because of tradition (there's regions where you can see both).

[Melteor]

Seeing schwa everywhere as <e> would be unappealing.

I think it should definitely be possible to serve local dialects as well as the international standard. We could represent mergers in relation to whichever pattern has overcome the others. That would serve people's local needs while allowing for many of the same benefits in reference to an international standard, while still being fairly responsive - and it wouldn't have to be IPA and phonetic. For example, if the STRUT vowel is partly merged and split from FOOT, and the other half of FOOT with GOOSE in Hiberno-English - that should be easy to show. And other people from other countries would be able to appreciate the dialect better. There are only around 40 total, while each dialect has less than 30 vowels.

(I would assume we would want to use diacritics.) Bonus points for including etymology. Phonetic detail as an addition could be made in reference to one another or IPA e.g. ʌ - Canadian, Scottish STRUT ; e - Scottish FACE, Australian DRESS; etc.

I'm using this chart, which I was surprised doesn't reduplicate anything anywhere.