Comments on: English spelling reform

By: Adrian B

Adrian B — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:59:43 +0000

“English speakers have a lower literacy rate than those whose first language is a Romance language”
Assuming this is true – and that doesn’t mean I doubt it – why should the spelling be the cause?

It could be a distaste for statistics driven facts in the UK, etc., leading to a rejection of teaching leading to statistical success.

Your issues suggest to me that there will be NO simple spelling reform. If there are about 24 letters in the English alphabet (discarding ones like C that could be written with K or S) and hugely more than 24 sounds, any resulting language will be based on arbitrary rules about letter combinations that have no more justification than the current words!

Sorry, but no normal English speaker is going to recognise ANY difference between “r” in those words. There is – but they will NOT recognise it so “simplified” spelling will be just as abitrary to them as the current.

By: Carla

Carla — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:05:41 +0000

In spite of the difficulties presented by varying dialects, it seems to me that spelling reform is so important. English speakers have a lower literacy rate than those whose first language is a Romance language, I recently read (don’t know the source). What is necessary is a change that is simple enough for adults to be content with while making literacy and spelling much simpler for children. It also needs to be easy to type using current technology, which sadly leaves out the wonderful Unifon alphabet.

I have some ideas, but I’m struggling with two sounds:
1. “R” as in her and first as opposed to drink and frank. It’s really not any vowel sound other than a schwa, but it’s closest I think to “u” as in uncle.
2. The second difficulty is that my system involves a way of having any given letter have a modifier to make a second sound, but between the 2 of them, o and u make 6 different sounds.

Ideas, anyone?

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:03:29 +0000

What Allan fails to mention is that he is the author of “Simple Phonetic English Spelling”. Unfortunately, it is completely inadequate as a substitute for the current orthography: he uses only 24 letters – the 26 of the Roman alphabet, minus C, Q, X and Y, but adding ä and ö (the first for /æ/ as in ‘and’ (his example!) and the second for /ə/. He has no vowel symbol for /ɑ/ – ‘a’ is for /ʌ/, but his example word is ‘art’. He claims there is no need for a symbol to represent the vowel sound in ‘odd’ because “it was concluded that using just a or o will greatly simplify the spelling”. Yes, it will, and it will also falsify the representation.

Among the consonants, there is no symbol that I can see for /θ/, and he writes ‘th’ for /ð/, despite claiming that each letter will always have one sound “the same sound wherever it appears”. Surely, in that case, ‘th’ represents /t/ followed by /h/. How can ‘dsh’ be simpler than (e.g.) ‘j’ for the voiced palato-alveolar affricate, or ‘tsh’ simpler than ‘ch’ for the voiceless one?

Allan’s first language was Estonian: perhaps this is why he excluded c, q, x, and y from the alphabet, and added ‘ä’ and ‘ö’. He is an engineer. In this case, an engineering solution is not the answer.

By: Allan Kiisk

Allan Kiisk — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:20 +0000

A recently published book Simple Phonetic English Spelling describes a spelling method that is based on Latin alphabet and the single sound per letter principle. It leaves many English words as they are now.
The alphabet is identical to the International Alphabet (alfa, bravo…) and the International Phonetic Alphabet, except that the few strange IPA letters have been substituted by popular Latin alphabet letters.

The Estonians and Finns use the single-sound-per-letter spelling. In those countries, once the children learn the alphabet, they know how to read and pronounce words. They don’t use dictionaries. That is the idea behind Simpel-Fonetik, the latest and most practical reform proposal.

Nau let’s get going with the nu spelling method.

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:13:23 +0000

As I posted earlier (but on a later post), just fixing the words that are spelled in utterly unpredictable ways would do a great deal to improve English spelling. As for our complex vowel system, if we merge away things like vain/vein (which is no longer distinguished by anyone) but preserve all distinctions that are still made by living speakers, we can create a cross-dialect system that can be read universally, but requires people to memorize which vowel spelling is used in which word for each merger their dialect possesses.

By: Ric Morris

Ric Morris — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:23:04 +0000

Another consideration that rarely comes into the argument is the fact that much of the written language would increase in complexity if we moved closer to phonetic spelling. We would have two plural endings (cats & dogz), three regular past tense endings (liket, loved, wantid). The most common words in English have two pronunciations: ‘the’ would, like ‘a/an’, be spelt two ways (the book, thee owl), ‘been’ & ‘bin’, ‘were’ & ‘wuh’ etc. Many words that we think of as the same would be spelt differently, so ‘photograph’ and ‘photographer’ would look like two very different words with completetly different vowels. Also spelling can reveal the historical connections between words that have been lost in speech: a learner might be baffled by the w in ‘two’, but in the context of ‘twelve’, ‘twin’, ‘twice’, ‘between’ or German ‘zwei’, its presence is actually helpful to vocabulary development. Much may be gained by spelling reform, but it’s easy to overlook what will be lost.

By: Norwegie

Norwegie — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:18:25 +0000

Love the last post When I followed a course in linguistics at uni a few years ago, I was amused by the IPA (Phonetic alphabet). I played with the idea of what would happen if everyone used it for writing. We could abolish the idea of a written standard, everyone could just write in their own dialect. Problematic as this would be (making it harder to read because of multiple spellings, for one thing – also harder to tell where one language ends and another one starts), it’s an alluring thought to me. It would at least make people more conscious of differing dialects within one language, and perhaps notice new (etymological) connections between words. Might also make it easier to read other, related languages.

I just recently joined a course in North Sami, which got its written standard fairly recently. I find it interesting to note how much more standardized the spelling, or rather – the relationship between written word and pronunciation – is, than in, say English. Norwegian bokmål lies somewhere in the middle. Isn’t there a general rule as to how late a language has gotten its written standard and proximity to pronunciation?

By: Æðelstan

Æðelstan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:29:10 +0000

Iivn ðë slaitist oorþëgráfic rifoorm wil bi ëpouzd fër moust ëv ðë piipël. Luc ët ðë riisënt Jhëërmën modificeixën, it traid të regiëlëraiz ðë speliñ böt respectiñ ðë tradixën, ënd ðë risoolt wëz disëpointiñ, insted ëv put ðë loñ vawëlz in ounli wön wei (för instans döbliñ ðem), ðei hëv nau tripël consënënts (laic “Programmmusik”). Ðerfoor, speliñ rifoorm möst të bi toutël böt ounli wön ðët stei loñ taim (ëraund 100 jirz), ënd haf të beis on foormël spiiciñ, ë mics bituiin RP ënd GA.

By: John W

John W — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:29:13 +0000

Hi,

As an ESL tutor, and not as a natice speaker, I have witnessed first hand the execrable obesity of the English language. One of my students learned–by my wrod– with great relief that English was pure BS when it came to spelling. English, I told her in broken English, was rife with random crud, laden with backward applied “rules” that pedants and other “standard bearers” think are connected to some distant sacrosanct etymolgy, which is in reality nothing but a knot of red-herring trails. It was not her fault, I told her, that she coud not apply COMMON SENSE to increase her skill at apprehending these “rules”. And with that I proceeded with her “do’s” and “don’ts” …

IMO, the true problem is pronouncing perversions from standardized spellings. This is true now, it was true “then”. It makes more sense, then, if only in theory, to “reform” pronouncing. Because modeling spelling after pronouncing is futile, unless we are assured, somehow, that many words have found their final fonetic resting place and will not be further perverted, as is with: bin = been. Then maybe we can safely “reform” their spelling to match a current fonetic reality. My own name, John, shoud be pronounced, if only in some alternate universe, as the female name “Joan” is pronounced …

Imagine if Obama, for example, for whatever forces in his upbringing, pronounced “been” properly–rimes with seen. Overnite thousands of “followers” woud imitate him, much as thousands imitate Oprah’s pronouncing of “again”, and “aunt” with the longer and more correctly fonetic vowel sounds. This kind of seminal influence, IMO, is the only possible reform. The bizzare alfabet soup some peeps connoct is the stuff of hobbies. Less is more.

By: david waugh

david waugh — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:24:59 +0000

A truly phonetic spelling of English would probably do more harm than good. Which accent would you choose as the basis? Whichever one you chose, you would alienate all those who didnt speak it. At least the present spelling puts everybody at the same disadvantage. I notice that you chose w and k in wrong and knife as examples obviously needing reform but I would beg to differ – these letters are never ever pronounced and therefore do not constitute a problem. The real problems are caused by digraphs such as ou and ea which have a number of different sounds and which are therefore ambiguous.
One could simplify the spelling of many words by leaving out the redundant letter in such digraphs e.g. duble, esy, lern, rugh, but the outcry from people who are proud of their grasp of the present system is all too easy to imagine.
I think you also have to ask why you are reforming spelling. Who are you trying to help? Is it foreign learners? I’ve never heard any of them complain about English spelling. Is it native speakers learning as children? Unfortunately, no orthography acceptable to the adult world is probably ever going to make their task appreciably easier.
Finally, it is noticeable that no-one has ever actually proposed a rival to the present system which has ever recruited the support of more then a tiny circle of cranks, so that we are not actually discussing a concrete proposal – until we are, the subject is hardly worth discussing.