Yet Another English Spelling Reform Thread

[Aurora Rossa]

If ever I take part in a successful revolution, I will make spelling reform one of my goals. Now perhaps I should write one of my novels set in a future where spelling reform has taken place and as a result the whole thing is written in the reformed spelling.

[roninbodhisattva]

If ever I take part in a successful revolution, I will make spelling reform one of my goals. Now perhaps I should write one of my novels set in a future where spelling reform has taken place and as a result the whole thing is written in the reformed spelling.

Good luck getting anyone to read that.

[Aurora Rossa]

Wail wi wer bizzi daying and kutting fabrik intu red flags, aur uther kamrads wer essembling floots, inkluding a rufli hyuun effejji uv the dred akter Ronald Reegen tu set ebleez at the end uv the perreed.

[Nortaneous]

HȺ, HU WEDNT WONT TE RID E FYU HENJRID PȺJIS EF ŦIS? FECN LITRÁRI JINYES RÍT ŦÁR! ITL BI MUR POPYELER ŦEN HÁRI POTR!! ISPEŚELI IF ŦERS SEM COMYENIST PROPEGANDE MICST IN ŦER OLSU!!!!! FEC YA MEŦRFECRSSSS~~`

[roninbodhisattva]

I like Nort's better.

[thePrince]

If ever I take part in a successful revolution, I will make spelling reform one of my goals. Now perhaps I should write one of my novels set in a future where spelling reform has taken place and as a result the whole thing is written in the reformed spelling.

English spelling reform will only ever be truly successful in a novel but I think you would have to write the novel in current English and have your hero navigate the future world by trying to figure out what the signs mean.

I have in mind a similar idea for introducing my IAL proposal (which is basically a ruthlessly purged version of English) via a novel or a short story.

[Jipí]

No, if only one person uses it in one novel, it's called a "private orthography", and it's kind of pretentious unless it's justified by the work itself, e.g. like that one post-apocalyptic novel that's entirely written in a deliberately degraded form of English as a kind of local color. If all major newspapers willingly (unlike in Germany with its cursèd spelling reform) switch to the new system, though, I guess acceptance might be greater. From personal experience, people are very conservative about things like spelling, which makes radical spelling reforms difficult. It's probably only successful if the majority of people demands and accepts it. Or you'll have a situation where the spelling dictated to a younger generation – and reluctantly implemented by publishers – will gradually replace the old spelling simply due to the fact that people who've grown up with the old spelling will retire and die, to put it bluntly.

[Bedelato]

HȺ GÍZ LEȾ RÍT IṈLIŚ WIŦ EN ECSTENĆEN EV ŦE SENĆOŦEN URŦAGREFI

W̲ET E FECIṈ GRȺT ÍDIYE

U GOD W̲ET HEV Í DEN

It even has the lower-case s for the third-person singular ending. It's genius!

Yeah! Gratuitous diacritics rule!

[thePrince]

No, if only one person uses it in one novel, it's called a "private orthography", and it's kind of pretentious unless it's justified by the work itself, e.g. like that one post-apocalyptic novel that's entirely written in a deliberately degraded form of English as a kind of local color. If all major newspapers willingly (unlike in Germany with its cursèd spelling reform) switch to the new system, though, I guess acceptance might be greater. From personal experience, people are very conservative about things like spelling, which makes radical spelling reforms difficult. It's probably only successful if the majority of people demands and accepts it. Or you'll have a situation where the spelling dictated to a younger generation – and reluctantly implemented by publishers – will gradually replace the old spelling simply due to the fact that people who've grown up with the old spelling will retire and die, to put it bluntly.

Well, OK, but Newspeak got a fair start from being in 1984. I was thinking of doing something similar in my literary project. In the novel, the spelling reform would appear as an IAL used by robots to communicate with humans. A bit of future colour as it were. (Artistically justified IMHO.)

I have zero optimism of getting an English spelling reform up in the real world. There is simply not enough political demand for English spelling reform. I used to write speeches for a Federal Politician in Australia. His mailbox was not filled with complaints about English spelling, let me tell you. When politicians' mailboxes do get filled with such complaints in all the Anglophone nations something may happen.

Until then, I won't be holding my breath

As far as I know, historically the major changes to national charactersets and languages, have been driven by governments (e.g. Vietnam, Korea, China, Indonesia). I am not sure about the politics in these nations but I imagine the government in each case was driven by lobby groups of some sort (e.g. teacher's unions, nationalists or whatever).

[lctrgzmn]

In my opinion, it would kind of take away from English to reform its spelling and make it regular. Apart from that, there are too many English speakers for there to be one uniform, reformed spelling system.

Not gonna lie, though. It'd be pretty neat if we re-adapted þ and ð.

[Nortaneous]

I support yogh for /ŋ/. Mostly because my handwriting already collapses <ng> into something that looks a lot like yogh.

[Jipí]

In my opinion, it would kind of take away from English to reform its spelling and make it regular.

It has rules, as Zompist proved.

I support yogh for /ŋ/. Mostly because my handwriting already collapses <ng> into something that looks a lot like yogh.

That's because it's a chicken's scrawl : '

[lctrgzmn]

In my opinion, it would kind of take away from English to reform its spelling and make it regular.

It has rules, as Zompist proved.

Maybe I should have worded that. A great deal of English spelling has rules, but due to the borrowing of many words, the rules might as well be invalidated. Apart from that, those rules of Latinate words are much different than rules of native English words (consider the "hard" and "soft" g, a rule brought from French -- and is commonly seen in all Romance languages -- as said letter, along with c, becomes soft before e an i; generally, a g before an i and/or e would merit a [d͡ʒ], while in words such as give or get it doesn't change at all.

English's spelling rules aren't nonexistent, but they tend to split up according to etymology and follow the borrowed language's rules, rather than its own, at times.

[Curan Roshac]

In my opinion, it would kind of take away from English to reform its spelling and make it regular.

It has rules, as Zompist proved.

Maybe I should have worded that. A great deal of English spelling has rules, but due to the borrowing of many words, the rules might as well be invalidated. Apart from that, those rules of Latinate words are much different than rules of native English words (consider the "hard" and "soft" g, a rule brought from French -- and is commonly seen in all Romance languages -- as said letter, along with c, becomes soft before e an i; generally, a g before an i and/or e would merit a [d͡ʒ], while in words such as give or get it doesn't change at all.

English's spelling rules aren't nonexistent, but they tend to split up according to etymology and follow the borrowed language's rules, rather than its own, at times.

Indeed. The 26 character alphabet is quite simply inadequete: <th> is the prime example of an ambiguous diagraph (I support the motion to re-instate <þ> and <ð> for the voiced and unvoiced "th"), <c> and <g> too are ambiguous graphemes and <x> is nearly useless. In the same vein, semivowels like <y> are obvious oddities. That is all without mentioning the "-tion" word ending or the digraphs <gh>, <gn> and <ph>. Silent letters are not terribly problematic, but the paupacy of graphemes for vowels is definately troubling. Marking stress orthographically is not important, but would be massively helpful.

Having stated my position, I must also state that it is my conviction that "True Americans (TM)" will never accept any changes to spelling or any dictation of the same regardless whether it is instigated in the US or not, because it will be rejected as "foreign, against the traditon, etc." and thus "unAmerican". I suspect that is will be similarly rejected throughout the Anglosphere, but perhaps for reasons relating to convienience and similar concerns.

[Aurora Rossa]

I have actually sketched some ideas for a reformed spelling that almost satisfies me. The main problems lie in how to handle that pesky schwa. I have not yet found a way of writing it that really clicks for me. One the one hand, I have tried assigning the sound to an existing vowel letter (either "e" or "u") but that results in some very ambiguous and unæsthetic spellings. On the other I have considered adding diacritics to one of the vowel letters to indicate the schwa, although given how frequently it occurs, that gets rather taxing. I am also debating whether to use digraphs or single letters (perhaps with diacritics) for certain sounds. For instance, should I retain the spelling of /tS/ as <ch> when I've eliminated all other instances of <c> in the orthography?

[Curan Roshac]

I have actually sketched some ideas for a reformed spelling that almost satisfies me. The main problems lie in how to handle that pesky schwa. I have not yet found a way of writing it that really clicks for me. One the one hand, I have tried assigning the sound to an existing vowel letter (either "e" or "u") but that results in some very ambiguous and unæsthetic spellings. On the other I have considered adding diacritics to one of the vowel letters to indicate the schwa, although given how frequently it occurs, that gets rather taxing. I am also debating whether to use digraphs or single letters (perhaps with diacritics) for certain sounds. For instance, should I retain the spelling of /tS/ as <ch> when I've eliminated all other instances of <c> in the orthography?

I'd retain <c>, but eliminate <k> (which will fuck my given name, but I can deal). If you are using digraphs for schwa, then you should use them for diphthongs as well. Diacritics should be used sparingly and reflect stress and where applicable to distinguish front vowels from back (vowels which are neither should not be so marked). And so long as a silent letter- especially if it is a consonant- occurs in the middle of a word, count it as a syllable break; silent letters at the end of words should be eliminated.

One cannot get rid of all ambiguity in spelling; naturalism in speech and writing will not allow it (see Esperanto for proof of this), but the bulk of the anomalies can and should be removed.

[Jipí]

Why is everyone so keen on replacing <th> with <þ> and <ð>? I think what's more confusing is the pronunciation of <g>. Also, <-ough> should be replaced with something less ambiguous. And pseudo-Latin spellings.

[Thomas Winwood]

Why is everyone so keen on replacing <th> with <þ> and <ð>?

Because the two sounds are almost phonemic, and (more so for þorn than eð) they were discarded from the language for reasons which are no longer relevant.

[Grunnen]

Yes, this thread is dead, but I have a respelling for English, so why not post it here?

I read the very interesting blogpost by Geoff Lindsey where he reanalysed the British vowel inventory. So I had to make a spelling system based on that analysis.

The vowels:

/ɪj/ <iy> miyt (meat and meet)
/ɛj/ <ey> keyk (cake)
/ɑj/ <ay> taym (time)
/ɔj/ <oy> toy (toy)

/əː/ <yr> thyrst (thirst)
/ɑː/ <ar> kar (car), farst (fast)
/ɔː/ <or> mor (more)
/ɛː/ <er> ster (stair)

/aw/ <aw> mawth (mouth)
/əw/ <yw> gryw (grow)
/ɵw/ <uw> duw (do)

/ɪ/ <i> fit (fit)
/ɛ/ <e> pet (pet)
/a/ <a> pat (pat)
/ə/ <y> lyk (luck)
/ɵ/ <u> buk (book)
/ɔ/ <o> bot (bot)

The consonants

As is, but:
/ʃ/ <c> cip (ship)
/ʒ/ <j> mejy (measure)
/tʃ/ <tc> tcip (chip)
/dʒ/ <dj> Djon (John)

The North Wind and the Sun:

Thy North Wind and thy syn wyr dispyuwting witc woz thy strongy, wen y travly keym ylong in y worm klywk.
They ygriyd that thy wyn huw fyrst syksiydid in meyking thy travly teyk hiz klywk of cud (=should) biy kynsidyd strongy than thiy othy.
Then thy North Wind bluw az hard az hiy kud, byt thy mor hiy bluw thy mor klywzliy did thy travly fywld his klywk yrawnd him;
and at larst thy North Wind geyv yp thiy ytempt. Then thy Syn cajnd awt wormliy, and imiydiyytliy thy travly tuk of his klywk.
And syw the North Wind woz ywblaydjd ty kynfes that thy Syn woz the stronger ov thy tuw.

[finlay]

The problem with spelling reforms that tie a letter to schwa is that it's never used consistently (perhaps because phonologically, unstressed schwa in English varies with stressed full vowels, usually) – so you've got a few places there like 'as' or 'was' that I think should be spelt with a schwa rather than a full vowel.

This particular one also suffers because you use y for two or three different things: you've got the offglide in the diphthongs, as well as schwa, and /ʌ/, which at least for me is not a schwa. And is certainly nothing like [j].

also i guess it doesn't help when I really don't have a diphthong for /i/ or /u/ and I find renditions that group them with diphthongs hard to read. or really anything that groups rhotics and non-rhotics together. RP, not British.

[Jipí]

As a non-native I kind of merge /ʌ/ and /a/, since to my ears, /ʌ/ has an a-like quality to it (German /a/ is low-central). In a tonuge-in-cheek-ish spelling reform I made once based on my own pronunciation of English, I ended up using <a> for /ə/, which was mostly no problem for unstressed syllables. So, in my opinion, much ugliness might could* be avoided by taking unstressed syllables into account, since those will rather likely be much more restricted in terms of population size phontactics.

--
*) Formal English really has a gap there.

[Grunnen]

The problem with spelling reforms that tie a letter to schwa is that it's never used consistently (perhaps because phonologically, unstressed schwa in English varies with stressed full vowels, usually) – so you've got a few places there like 'as' or 'was' that I think should be spelt with a schwa rather than a full vowel.

Yes, it's sometimes a bit arbitrary. Using schwa or not. I'm aware of that, and of the pronounciations of as and was. But if ever people decide to change English spelling, they will have to make such arbitrary dicisions, or decide that both spellings are considered to be right.

This particular one also suffers because you use y for two or three different things: you've got the offglide in the diphthongs, as well as schwa, and /ʌ/, which at least for me is not a schwa. And is certainly nothing like [j].

True, even I myself, as a foreign speaker, don't pronounce /@/ and /V/ identically. But as I indicate, I based this spelling on the analysis of Geoff Lindsay, and he analyses the two as one phoneme (well, he's a bit ambiguous on that point). As for using <y> for both the [j]-offglide and for schwa, that doesn't bother me personally, as it won't result in ambiguous situations. But I can see why you would object to it.

also i guess it doesn't help when I really don't have a diphthong for /i/ or /u/ and I find renditions that group them with diphthongs hard to read. or really anything that groups rhotics and non-rhotics together. RP, not British.

Well, the analysis that I based this spelling on has this grouping, and that's an important reason I made this spelling. I'm not proposing this should be used in any real context. It's just an exercise to develop a spelling for a specific (variant of a) language.

Thanks for your response!

[finlay]

As a non-native I kind of merge /ʌ/ and /a/, since to my ears, /ʌ/ has an a-like quality to it (German /a/ is low-central). In a tonuge-in-cheek-ish spelling reform I made once based on my own pronunciation of English, I ended up using <a> for /ə/, which was mostly no problem for unstressed syllables. So, in my opinion, much ugliness might could* be avoided by taking unstressed syllables into account, since those will rather likely be much more restricted in terms of population size phontactics.

--
*) Formal English really has a gap there.

Does it? I genuinely don't know what "might could" could possibly mean that isn't covered by "could". I mean I know it exists in some dialects but for me it's like nonsense talk.

[Jipí]

Hm OK, I maybe had a bit of a big mouth about unstressed vowels in English. The stressed ones are bad enough already. Finlay will probably say that this proposal is untenable anyway because dialects.

Code: Select all

KIT     iCC/iC  kitt, shipp, ripp, dimm, spirrit
DRESS   eCC     dress, stepp, ebb, hemm, terrer
TRAP    ä       träp, bäd, käb, häm, äro
LOT     oCC/a   lott, stopp, robb, swonn; stap, rab, swan
STRUT   aCC     stratt, kabb, rabb, hamm
FOOT    uCC/uC  futt, full, luck, kud
BATH    aC/ä    bath, staf, klasp, dans; bäth, stäf, kläsp, däns
CLOTH   oCC     kloth, koff, long, lorrel, orrijin
NURSE   er      nerse, hert, term, werk
FLEECE  i       flis, sid, ki, sise
FACE    ee      fees, weet, reen, steek
PALM    a       pam, kam, bra, father
THOUGHT oo      thoot, toot, hook, brood
GOAT    o       got, sop, sol, hom
GOOSE   u       guse, hu, grup, fiu
PRICE   ai      prais, raip, traib, ail, quaier
CHOICE  oi      chois, boi, void, koin
MOUTH   au      mauth, pauch, naun, kraud, flauer
NEAR    i       nir, bir, pir, firs, siries
SQUARE  er      squer, ker, er, wer, Meri
START   ar      start, far, sharp, farm, sefari
NORTH   or      north, wor, storm, for, orel
FORCE   or      fors, flor, korse, or, orrel
CURE    ur      kiur, pur, tur, fiuri
LETTER  er      letter
COMMA   e/a     komma, the

The North Wind änd the Sann wer dispiuting wich wase the stronger, wenn e träveler keem along räped in a worm klok. Thee agrid thät the wann hu ferst seksided in meeking the träveler teek his klok off shud bi konsiderd stronger thän thi ather. Thenn the North Wind blu as hard as hi kud, batt the mor hi blu the mor kloseli didd the träveler fold his klok araund him; änd at läst the North Wind geev app thi attemt. Thenn the Sann shaind aut wormli, änd immidiatli the träveler tuck af his klok. Änd so the North Wind wase oblaijd tu konfess thät the Sann wase the stronger off the tu.

The North Wind and the Sann wer dispiuting wich wase the stronger, wenn e traveler keem along raped in a worm klok. Thee agrid that the wann hu ferst seksided in meeking the traveler teek his klok off shud bi konsiderd stronger than thi ather. Thenn the North Wind blu as hard as hi kud, batt the mor hi blu the mor kloseli didd the traveler fold his klok araund him; and at last the North Wind geev app thi attemt. Thenn the Sann shaind aut wormli, and immidiatli the traveler tuck af his klok. And so the North Wind wase oblaijd tu konfess that the Sann wase the stronger off the tu.

The North Wind and the Sann wer dispiuting wich wase the stronger, wenn e traveler ceem along raped in a worm clok. Thee agrid that the wann hu ferst secsided in meeking the traveler teek his clok off shud bi considerd stronger than thi ather. Thenn the North Wind blu as hard as hi cud, batt the mor hi blu the mor closeli didd the traveler fold his clok araund him; and at last the North Wind geev app thi attemt. Thenn the Sann shaind aut wormli, and immidiatli the traveler tuck af his clok. And so the North Wind wase oblaijd tu confess that the Sann wase the stronger off the tu.

If you merge the TRAP~BATH vowel in BrE, you can even go completely without <ä>. Also, if you prefer <c> over <k>, use that. I was just adding <k> for Germanicness. Also, I kept <se> for /z#/, because I find <z> an ugly letter. I also see no reason in distinguishing /θ/ and /ð/, since /ð/ is very limited anyway. Where it matters word-finally (e.g. in breath : breathe), you could make an analogy from <se> and write <the>, breth : brithe. However, as Vlad points out on IRC, the pair either : ether is problematic, since both would become ither, provided you pronounce either as /ˈiːðər/, not /ˈaɪðər/.

[Jipí]

I genuinely don't know what "might could" could possibly mean that isn't covered by "could".

*might be able to be avoided That is, uncertain possibility of accomplishment, but passivized.