English Orthography Reform

[qwed117]

don't change words where there's no reason too. Maintain the basic spellings known where possible, and where they don't conflict grately with the currint language.

[Xonen]

Wel, u can wate until sum peeple "in the frunt" start using mor logical spellings to start using it, or u can be one of those peeple in the frunt who start using it. I'm one of those peeple...

The problem here is that using letters, such as c and u, as words originated text speak and will, very likely, never gain wider acceptance in any fashion. I, for one, find it repulsive and consider you very lucky to have earned this response from me.

C'mon, if the Middle English pronoun "ich", still used in the 15th century, managed to replace its spelling to modern "I", it can happen to "you" as well.

Compare, also, with how the -n of Middle English verbal infinitives and plurals was dropped (to doon, they writen > to do, they write), much unlike a very similar change in nearby French (Old French parles, parlent [ˈparləs ˈparlə(n)θ], which are nowadays still spelled [tu] parles, [ils] parlent but pronounced [tyˈpaʁl i(l)ˈpaʁl]).

True about "ich." But, that's a bit different because "ich" may've been a holdover from German, where it's survived to this day.

To me, Occam's razor would seem to suggest the explanation that it was spelled ich simply because it was originally pronounced /ɪtʃ/, and <ch> happens to be the normal way of spelling /tʃ/ in English (and was already in Middle English). In Old English, where /tʃ/ was spelled <c>, the word was spelled ic. The fact that German happens to use the same digraph for /x ~ ç/ is largely a coincidence; Old High German used <h>, so this word was ih.

The primary difference between I for the first person singular and u for the second is that the former was included in the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, while the latter is a much later innovation. And knowing human nature, I'm fairly sure some people back then considered Chancery spellings to be utterly repulsive and quite certain to never gain any wider acceptance... Although to be fair, things were different back then, in that there were multiple competing spellings before the standard was established. By contrast, these days we already have a firmly established standard which people are used to seeing, so there's also a firmly established basis for considering any new, alternative spellings to be substandard.

---

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

[qwed117]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately" Good sign of which one is a better replacement.

[Xonen]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately"

Did I? I just thought I understood the reason why that was changed; "great" does conflict with normal English spelling rules, whereas "current", AFAICT, doesn't. But I guess I'm missing some of your logic here?

[Salmoneus]

don't change words where there's no reason too

currint

and you missed "grately"

Did I? I just thought I understood the reason why that was changed; "great" does conflict with normal English spelling rules, whereas "current", AFAICT, doesn't. But I guess I'm missing some of your logic here?

Indeed, while "current" is entirely predictable, "currint" completely conflicts with normal English spelling rules, as not only is it not the correct spelling, it's an actively misleading spelling, since it suggests /I/ rather than /@/.

I assume therefore that qwed has the weak vowel merger, but then again, that's kind of the point...

[Mecejide]

My english spelling reform: recrouæntiprïzmatousnab dïshekatänäikousacoøän

[Evni Öpiu-sä]

Uy disuydod teu mayk o njeu aurthaagrofee aun muy oan. Uy jeuzd Wikipedia oz xelp. Dhis iz faur Dzhenorol Omerokon Iqglish. Jeuz xuyfonz teu distiqgwish odzhaysont vao-olz in diforont siloblz fraam eetsh udho.

/m/ ”m”
/p/ ”p”
/b/ ”b”
/f/ ”f”
/v/ ”v”
/θ/ ”th”
/ð/ ”dh”
/n/ ”n”
/t/ ”t”
/d/ ”d”
/s/ ”s”
/z/ ”z”
/l/ ”l”
/tʃ/ ”tsh”
/dʒ/ ”dzh”
/ʃ/ ”sh”
/ʒ/ ”zh”
/ɹ/ ”r”
/j/ ”j”
/ŋ/ ”q”
/k/ ”k”
/ɡ/ ”g”
/w/ ”w”
/h/ ”x”

/ɪ/ "i"
/i/ "ee"
/ɛ/ "e"
/eɪ/ "ay"
/æ/ "a"
/ə/ "o"
/ʌ/ "u"
/ɑ/ "aa"
/ʊ/ "oo"
/u/ "eu"
/oʊ/ "oa"
/ɔ/ "au"
/aɪ/ "uy"
/ɔɪ/ "oy"
/aʊ/ "ao"

[Creyeditor]

The o-schwa makes it look really unique.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, it's definitely unusual. <o> is literally the least intuitive vowel possible for that sound! [I also find <eu> for /u:/ to be really counterintuitive, because it's so associated in English with /j/... and speaking of which, using <j> for /j/ when you're not using <y> would be very odd for English speakers.]

In general, it's not awful, but I'm not sure of the design ideas: on the one hand, some choices make no sense except for speakers of English (that is, you use combinations that only make sense because they're already used in English), but other choices would make it very counterintuitive for English speakers, so it's sort of in the middle, neither using an intuitive system built on current spelling, nor using a maximally simple system built on non-English spelling... but, maybe that's intentional.

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" or "dosuyded" and "Omerokon").

[Zé do Rock]

Yes, it's definitely unusual. <o> is literally the least intuitive vowel possible for that sound! [I also find <eu> for /u:/ to be really counterintuitive, because it's so associated in English with /j/... and speaking of which, using <j> for /j/ when you're not using <y> would be very odd for English speakers.]

In general, it's not awful, but I'm not sure of the design ideas: on the one hand, some choices make no sense except for speakers of English (that is, you use combinations that only make sense because they're already used in English), but other choices would make it very counterintuitive for English speakers, so it's sort of in the middle, neither using an intuitive system built on current spelling, nor using a maximally simple system built on non-English spelling... but, maybe that's intentional.

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" or "dosuyded" and "Omerokon").

Thats the problem with trying to represent shwas: invite 100 peeple to replace shwa say with @ in a text, and u'l get 100 difrent versions... not eeven dictionarys agree... shwa is calld "the obscure vowel", and trying to solv the problem is like trying to say the cullor of sum peeple in a dark room... i gave it up a long time ago.

[Nortaneous]

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" or "dosuyded" and "Omerokon").

this isn't necessarily a mistake - between full contrast and full merger there's a lot of room for confusion, conditional and positional mergers, etc., and any phonetic orthography for GA will have a lot of disagreement about the weak vowels

actual mistakes include /frɑm/ for "from" and /ʌðə/ for "other"

[Salmoneus]

Yes, it's definitely unusual. <o> is literally the least intuitive vowel possible for that sound! [I also find <eu> for /u:/ to be really counterintuitive, because it's so associated in English with /j/... and speaking of which, using <j> for /j/ when you're not using <y> would be very odd for English speakers.]

In general, it's not awful, but I'm not sure of the design ideas: on the one hand, some choices make no sense except for speakers of English (that is, you use combinations that only make sense because they're already used in English), but other choices would make it very counterintuitive for English speakers, so it's sort of in the middle, neither using an intuitive system built on current spelling, nor using a maximally simple system built on non-English spelling... but, maybe that's intentional.

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" or "dosuyded" and "Omerokon").

Thats the problem with trying to represent shwas: invite 100 peeple to replace shwa say with @ in a text, and u'l get 100 difrent versions... not eeven dictionarys agree... shwa is calld "the obscure vowel", and trying to solv the problem is like trying to say the cullor of sum peeple in a dark room... i gave it up a long time ago.

But if you don't mark schwas, then you can't have a meaningful spelling reform. Schwa-mispellings are one of the two most common forms of spelling mistake in English, and are connected to the other big problem (whether a consonant should be single or double after schwa - though I guess it doesn't actually matter whether it's schwa or just destressed).

[I recently found a survey of the top 20 most difficult words to spell, as self-reported (ie the words people had most trouble with). Of the 20, at least 7 and arguably 8 of them are at least in part difficult because of schwas (whether 'liquefy' has a confusing schwa or is outright irregular varies from person to person). Around 9 of them have possible double letters after unstressed vowels (some words have both problems). The other big difficulties are S/C confusion and rare letter sequences (that may not be ambiguous to read, but are hard to remember to write). Only between 1 and 3 of them were due to outright irregularities, which is the problem that most reformers focus on solving...]

[Salmoneus]

Small mistake, though: you have the weak vowel merger in words like "Omerokon" (tangent: why mark schwa before /n/, but not before /l/?), but you don't have it in words like "disuyded" or "distiqgwish"... (should be either "disuyded" and "Omerikon" or "dosuyded" and "Omerokon").

this isn't necessarily a mistake - between full contrast and full merger there's a lot of room for confusion, conditional and positional mergers, etc., and any phonetic orthography for GA will have a lot of disagreement about the weak vowels

I guess. To me, the /I/ in 'American' is as far as possible from schwa, whereas the /I/ in 'destroy' is very close to it. But I'm not an American. Are there Americans who have this the other way around? I guess they might, since there's a good reason to 'strengthen' the latter in theory (initial syllables are often less reduced).

actual mistakes include /frɑm/ for "from"

Damnit. Yeah, that's one that's caught me out before. It's part of a general "randomly change /Q/ to /V/ in short function words" rule, right? Is there are list of which words Americans warp like this?

(a good demonstration of the problems of pandialectical reforms - despite grammarians and their notions of regularity, you can always rely on Americans to just arbitrarily change some random words for no particular reason!)

and /ʌðə/ for "other"

This is just because the final schwa should be rhoticised, right? Or do some Americans change the quality of the first vowel too?

[Nortaneous]

I guess. To me, the /I/ in 'American' is as far as possible from schwa, whereas the /I/ in 'destroy' is very close to it. But I'm not an American. Are there Americans who have this the other way around? I guess they might, since there's a good reason to 'strengthen' the latter in theory (initial syllables are often less reduced).

I'd write /əmerɨkən/, /dɨstroj/, /dɨstiŋgwɨʃ/ (although Deseret unfortunately has no way of distinguishing /ɨ i/, and mostly didn't represent vowel reduction except before resonants, in accord with dictionary practice at the time)

It's part of a general "randomly change /Q/ to /V/ in short function words" rule, right? Is there are list of which words Americans warp like this?

from, of, what, because; for some speakers also somebody, anybody, nobody

There might be others, but the spelling doesn't help - something that looks like it represents /ɒ/ could just as well be /ʌ/ (usually due to the minim rule but also "other" - do "one" and "once" have /ɒ/ in RP?)

This is just because the final schwa should be rhoticised, right?

yes

[Salmoneus]

from, of, what, because; for some speakers also somebody, anybody, nobody

Oh, thanks - I knew those (though I'd forgotten 'because'), but I assumed there were more.

Wait, apparently also "was"?

There might be others, but the spelling doesn't help - something that looks like it represents /ɒ/ could just as well be /ʌ/ (usually due to the minim rule but also "other" - do "one" and "once" have /ɒ/ in RP?)

(minim rule?)
No, 'one' has /V/ in it, but nobody knows what the hell has gone on there (it should obviously be the same as in 'alone'...) and there's a whole /w/ for no reason, so I don't know how the unexpected vowel factors in. Not also that the original vowel is preserved in 'no', but not in 'none'...

'Other' is weird too. It must have shifted earlier, before the foot/strut split, because in the North it's still with /U/.

[Flavia]

Mai iŋgliš oaþografi beisd on RP:

ɪ <i>
ʊ <u>
e <e>
ə <a>
ɒ <o>
æ <æ>
ʌ <ȧ>

i: <ī>
u: <ū>
ɔ: <ō>
eə (ɛː) <ea>
ɜ: <ē>
ɑ: <ā>

eɪ <ei>
aɪ <æi>
ɔɪ <oi>
əʊ <au>
aʊ <æu>

ɪə (ɪ:) <ia>
ʊə (ɔ:) <ua>
ɔə (ɔ:) <oa>

m <m>
p <p>
b <b>
f <f>
v <v>
θ <þ>
ð <ð>
n <n>
t <t>
d <d>
s <s>
z <z>
l <l>
tʃ <č>
dʒ <đ>
ʃ <š>
ʒ <ž>
ɹ <r>
j <j>
ŋ <ŋ>
k <k>
g <g>
w <w>
ʍ <ƕ>
EDIT: omitted h <h>
Ænd, dū jū læik it?

[Nortaneous]

from, of, what, because; for some speakers also somebody, anybody, nobody

Oh, thanks - I knew those (though I'd forgotten 'because'), but I assumed there were more.

Wait, apparently also "was"?

Also "was". I think "because" isn't universal. (Spelling pronunciation?)

(minim rule?)

<o> for <u> adjacent to <m n> as in "come", "tongue" etc. (which might not be entirely about minims)

Other irregular sound shifts that exist in some dialects:
- /ɔ/ in 'God'
- /ɔ/ in 'on'
- /ɛ/ in 'can', 'catch', 'am'
- /ɒ.r/ splits into /ɑr or/ (completely irregularly - for example, I have /ɑr/ in 'borrow', 'sorrow', 'morrow', and 'horror' (and all derivations of each), and 'orange' can have either /ɑr/ or /or/, although I think the fruit always has /or/)
- something like the TRAP-BATH split in the upper Mid-Atlantic (where BATH is /eə/), but the set of words affected is slightly different
- confusion of /æwl/ and /æwəl/ without full merger
- intrusive /l/ in 'both'
- occasional tensing of /ɪ/ (e.g. /iːm/ for 'him', /dɚivətiːv/ for 'derivative') - my grandfather and calculus teacher both had this, although it's probably dying out and I don't know what conditions it

probıbli xı best wā tı nōtis suc x̠iqz iz fır mw̄r pēpıl tı üz fınetik w̄rx̠ogrıfēz - in xis kās ı rōmınizāšın ıv x mw̄rmın rūnz bāst w̄n x kēbw̄rd lāæt ī üz, but wix makronz insted ıv numbırz ınd wutnot. x akšūıl lāæt haz nō ded kēz but just t8piq it w0d b3 t7 hord t; r3d

[Salmoneus]

(minim rule?)

<o> for <u> adjacent to <m n> as in "come", "tongue" etc. (which might not be entirely about minims)

Oh right, that. Sorry, don't remember hearing that (or any!) term for it.

Other irregular sound shifts that exist in some dialects:
- /ɔ/ in 'God'

Oh, I didn't know that!

- /ɛ/ in 'can', 'catch', 'am'

"Catch" is presumably its own thing. Raising of /{/ before nasals - with varying outcomes - is a whole giant thing across the US... (although usually resulting in a diphthong)

- something like the TRAP-BATH split in the upper Mid-Atlantic (where BATH is /eə/), but the set of words affected is slightly different

...and as I've said, I think it's connected to this.

British, American and Australian dialects all show tensing of /{/ in some contexts, and in extremely similar contexts. It seems as though the same shifts were taking place in the parent dialect, but the shifts were interrupted by emigration, and so concluded differently in the three different areas - but they're so similar they can't really be regarded as coincidental.

We can probably assume at least four tensings:
(A): before coda /f s T/
(B): before /n/ before a consonant
(C): before coda /m n/ not before a consonant, and before the words 'bad', 'mad' and 'glad' (and possibly 'sad')
(D): before some coda /g/

(A) also occured to /Q/ (the lot-cloth split); likewise (C) only in the word 'gone' (and for parts of the US also 'on'); and partially (D) in the US ('dog').

All of these changes were considered lower-class and urban (Cockney, basically).

In the US, the dialects of the big cities - New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore - immediately adopted all of (A), (B) and (C); New York went further and adopted (D). These areas would have been more in contact with the British developments, and probably - cities being cities - poorer, so the covert prestige of the London poor was more persuasive there. These developments also spread rapidly to the big city New Orleans once it was annexed. [The oddity here is Charleston, the other city at the time - did this later lose these features, or was it always too posh to adopt them?] Notably, New York, Charleston and Boston (and maybe at one point Philadelphia?) also adopted another southern English feature, r-dropping.

Outside of the cities, however, adoption of these stigmatised urban mannerisms was less wholehearted. (A) was rejected, and a regularised version of (B)/(C) was adopted - minus the irregular 'mad bad glad' trio, and in all positions (not just codas, and not distinguishing whether another consonant followed). I suspect this regularisation indicates a secondary spread from the urban centres into the US countryside - the 'true', more complicated shift remaining in the cities, and the rubes overapplying it in their attempt to sound fashionable. Similarly, (D) was adopted in parts of Canada and parts of the US near Canada, but outside of New York it was regularised to non-coda positions as well, and it must have taken hold later, because the outcomes (outside New York) are different. Many US dialects also do a thing with /N/, which could be by analogy either to /m n/ or to /g/ - the US also extends this to LOT-CLOTH. In New York, (C)/(D) was regularised differently, by spreading to other words with coda voiced stops.


Meanwhile, in England, (A) and (B) were adopted relatively quickly, and disrupted by a further change - the backing of the new tense phoneme. This again was a London feature, and it never reached some more rural areas of the South. This change also spread to Boston, the most connected part of the US. However, (C) was not yet adopted, so it escaped this backing. This, and partial (D), rose to become arguably phonemic in some Southern dialects, but during the 20th century faded away again, becoming subphonemic or absent (in the same way that LOT-CLOTH was eventually entirely rejected).

In Australia, (A) and (B) were adopted more slowly at first, and therefore when backing spread there, it interrupted the shifts (the details of where the interruption happened vary with dialect). The shift continued, together with (C) and partial (D), and in Australia, unlike the US, it remained phonemic.

The US (outside Boston) therefore only has the unbacked version; the UK (outside old-fashioned speakers in the West Country) now only has the backed version (with the unbacked version subphonemic for some); Australia has both versions. All three countries have extended to split to new words, sometimes irregularly.

- confusion of /æwl/ and /æwəl/ without full merger

This is a common feature of many dialects, and not just with /{/. Coda /l/ often triggers a split into two syllables after a diphthong - c.f. 'file' and 'goal' with two syllables. [for me, it's strongest after /j/, rather than /w/]

- intrusive /l/ in 'both'

Weird!

[Nortaneous]

More sound changes:
- syncope of unstressed vowels ('cabinet' with two syllables) or spelling-driven hypercorrection ('Everest' with three syllables)
- ktʃ > kʃ (in e.g. 'picture' - I can't think of any words with /gdʒ/, so don't know if it happens there)

- /ɛ/ in 'can', 'catch', 'am'

"Catch" is presumably its own thing. Raising of /{/ before nasals - with varying outcomes - is a whole giant thing across the US... (although usually resulting in a diphthong)

No, all three words. I have the usual GenAm æ > eə / _m _n, but those three words have [ɛ], not [æ] (from /æw/) or [eə] (from /æ/). I read the pun about the canner - "I eat what I can and I can what I can't" - when I was young and couldn't make any sense of it - the two "can"s aren't homophonous!

As for tensing before /g ŋ/, the common outcome of /æg æŋ/ around here is [æj] rather than [eə] - this leads to some surface contrasts, e.g. 'banker' [bæjŋkəɹ] vs. 'panko' [peəŋkəw], which creates some difficulties for analysis. The options are:
- phonemicization of æ/eə - /bænkəɹ/, /peənkəw/
- underlying pre-velar n/ŋ contrast - /bæŋkəɹ/, /pænkəw/
- contrastive syllabification - /bænk.əɹ/, /pæn.kəw/
This last option is probably the least bad one.

This is a common feature of many dialects, and not just with /{/. Coda /l/ often triggers a split into two syllables after a diphthong - c.f. 'file' and 'goal' with two syllables. [for me, it's strongest after /j/, rather than /w/]

For me (and most people around here), /jl/ is prohibited, so 'fail', 'feel', 'file', and 'foil' have two syllables. Some people also have breaking for /uwl/, but breaking for /ʌwl/ is not something I can remember ever hearing - instead it's monophthongized to [oˤːlˤ]. This is probably where intrusive l in 'both' comes from - and some people also have [oˤː] as the product of long-distance assimilation, e.g. 'social' [soˤːʃəˤlˤ].

[Xonen]

But if you don't mark schwas, then you can't have a meaningful spelling reform. Schwa-mispellings are one of the two most common forms of spelling mistake in English, and are connected to the other big problem (whether a consonant should be single or double after schwa - though I guess it doesn't actually matter whether it's schwa or just destressed).

[I recently found a survey of the top 20 most difficult words to spell, as self-reported (ie the words people had most trouble with). Of the 20, at least 7 and arguably 8 of them are at least in part difficult because of schwas (whether 'liquefy' has a confusing schwa or is outright irregular varies from person to person). Around 9 of them have possible double letters after unstressed vowels (some words have both problems). The other big difficulties are S/C confusion and rare letter sequences (that may not be ambiguous to read, but are hard to remember to write). Only between 1 and 3 of them were due to outright irregularities, which is the problem that most reformers focus on solving...]

This is a good point – and one that at least I myself have probably never really considered. It does make a lot of sense, though; many of the irregularities occur in fairly common words, so they're relatively easy to memorize. Although I'm guessing they can still be a bit of an extra hassle for children when they're first learning to spell, at least (I'm assuming this was a survey of adults?).

In any case, removing irregularity would still have the benefit of making learning the pronunciation easier for non-native speakers. And considering the importance of English as a lingua franca, non-native speakers are a pretty important demographic... Perhaps I should start lobbying for the EU to adopt my spelling reform as its official version of written English.