Thursday, December 22, 2005
The Jangling Piano: On the Necessity for Spelling Reform in English
By
Adam Tod Leverton
“Many know enough to avoid what they believe to be wrong, but few know enough to question what they believe to be right.”
Lao-Tzu.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that I may, perhaps, be the reincarnation of George Bernard Shaw. For those of you who have never heard of him, he was probably the most famous playwright in the English language of the last century. His work combined the driest of wit and satire with an almost biblical desire for social justice. You may also be wondering why I mention my strengthening conviction that I am his spiritual descendent. Besides being a brilliant playwright, George was also known in his lifetime as being something of a 'crank', that is to say, a supporter of ideas which seemed to his contemporaries, ludicrous. He supported non-marxist socialism, and it's a pity that this movement was displaced by marxist socialism. He became a vegetarian. He also advocated spelling reform. None of these ideas seem especially ludicrous to me, in fact, they seem to be the products of a highly developed intelligence. Rich and poor are equally humane under the rags or under the riches. The killing of animals for consumption not only destroys the environment, and causes the animals suffering, but it also destroys our health. So what's the connection to me? I have written a few plays, which admittedly, are decidedly less brilliant than George's. I believe in the equality of all people, and bravely attempt not to eat meat out here in these wilderness lands of barbarian meat-feasts. But the most important connection is our shared passion for spelling reform. I am uniquely qualified to carry out one of George's ambitions. I always loved words, reading and writing. My mother was a librarian and she would bring me back three or four new books every week that I would devour. I began to write poetry. When I arrived at university, I developed something of an obsession with learning languages. To date, I have learned with various degrees of competence, French, Spanish, Latin, Polish, Nishnabe (Ojibway), German, and Korean. I majored in English literature, but many of my courses had a linguistic focus. When I discovered the flaws in English orthography, I immediately set about to rectify them. This was my first attempt at spelling reform. After university, I drifted about from job to job, doing different things, when I decided to go to Korea to teach English as a Second Language. I, surprisingly, enjoyed myself and decided to pursue teaching as a career. I ended up here in Poland, where I have been teaching for over a year. I mention these facts of my biography, because many people who write about the topic of spelling reform, do not have the grasp of phonetics that I possess. Not to say that I am more brilliant than anyone else, just that I have devoted more of my time, because of my interests, education, and profession, to the study of phonetics in foreign languages and in English than most other people have. Also the detractors of spelling reform, sometimes, have very little phonetic knowledge of the language they speak. I am also probably one of the few people who has experience as an English language teacher to think about the topic of spelling reform. I have actually looked into the faces of students who are frustrated that they can't learn the language more rapidly. It is time to tune the jangling piano.
How We Got into this Mess.
Writing seems so natural to us, that it is hard to imagine a time when people couldn't write. In fact, writing is a relatively recent phenomenom in the history of humanity. Scholars estimate that it is about 8000 years old. It is easy to see how some very clever individual came up with the idea. People were already painting animals on caves and on walls. This said clever person, declared to his, or her buddies, 'Hey, horses are fast, why not every time we say fast, draw a horse?' This is, of course, a simplistic version of how hieroglyphics came to be invented. Hieroglyphics were used in Egypt, but also in Meso-America. The draw back to hieroglyphics is that it takes a certain degree of artistic talent to draw a hieroglyphic, which most people lack. Then another clever person had the idea to move away from hieroglyphics to ideograms. Ideograms are small line drawings which represent certain ideas or words. Both Mandrian and Cantonese and many other Sinic (chinese) languages are written using ideograms. Ideograms are useful because groups of people speaking entirely different languages, such as, say, Korean and Mandrian are able to communicate without speaking the same language. The draw back to ideograms is their sheer volume. The Sinic system alone has over five thousand ideograms. The solution came from Egyptians who were in a hurry. They invented a quick way to write hieroglyphics, called demotic. Some very visionary Phoenecian caught a glance of this system and applied it to his own language. Thus the idea of the alphabet was born. Letters which actually represented the idea of sounds, not meanings. Phoenecian, like Hebrew, and Arabic was a Semitic language, and so didn't need to represent vowels. A literate Phoenecian could guess the vowels by the context. This early alphabet was exported to Greece, where it morphed into the Greek Alphabet and provided the basis for the Cyrillic alphabets. It also gave us the word 'alphabet', from its first two letters, 'alpha and beta'. It then ended up in Italy where it morphed into the Latin alphabet. Most languages that were under the domination of the Roman Catholic church ended up with a variant version of the Latin alphabet. These languages include, English, French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Finnish and many others. The Latin Alphabet is not the only alphabet in existence, it is just the most widely diffused. Other alphabets include Hangeol (Korean) and Cree, and these examples are the few that have been consciously invented.
Sometime after the year 500 numerous Germanic tribes left the mainland of Europe and headed for Britian. Sympathetic historians claim that they were invited, other, less sympathetic historians claim that the used the invitation as a pretext for an invasion. The truth probably will never be established for certain. What is certain is that 500 years later, there was a flourishing Germanic culture in England (named Angle-land, after one of the invading tribes). Shortly after the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had settled down, Christian missionaries arrived from both Ireland and Rome to 'civilize' the barbarian heathens. It seems to have worked and the English kings accepted the new faith. The Latin alphabet came along with Christianity, but the Germanic tribes already had their version of the alphabet, runes. And the Latin alphabet proved inadequate to write what would be known as 'Inglisc'. The scribes devised a solution that worked perfectly, they imported runes to write the strange English sounds. These included 'eth', and 'thorn', for the two 'th' sounds, 'winn', which looked something like a y but represented a 'w' sound, familiar from the pseudo-archaic 'ye old tavern', and 'eorgh' which represented the 'gh' sound in 'knight'. Though writing was not wide-spread, it was very intelligible to trained scribes, who would be the only ones with any reason to write.
For reasons which are unimportant here, William the Bastard, the descendent of vikings sailed from Normandy to claim the English crown. He won it at Hastings and although historians are murky about what happened next, my own private theory is that it was something of a blood bath, that all of the native nobility were wiped out, and Norman French became the language of social advancement. English went from being a prestige language, to something that only peasants spoke within a few hundred years. It must have seemed cataclysmic to those who lived through those times. English and Norman French seem to have merged into something like a 'pidjun' a language that both communities could understand. Some scholars believe that this process happened earlier, with the Danish invasion of England. What happens in these languages is that grammar becomes simpler, and pronunciation is changed into something that speakers from many different languages could produce. This usually happens when languages have mutually incompatible grammars. French and 'Old' English both had grammatical genders, as in 'le chapeau' but the problem arose that the genders were different for the same words. So, instead of compromising, the speakers of the 'pidjun' language ditch gender altogether and other things like grammatical cases. All of this would have been an interesting historical mystery if the Normans had managed to keep a hold on France. Their hold was greatly reduced and it became politically expedient for kings to claim to be 'English'. What was a debased peasant tongue, was again restored to the glory of being a national language. Here is where the problems started, at least in terms of orthography. Orthography is how words fit together in a written language. The problem was that the French scribes who began to write and spell in English, were trained in French. So instead of using native spellings of words they used French spellings both for loan words and for native words.
The horrible state of English Orthography is due to many factors, the first of which I have already mentioned. The second tragedy to befall us, and people trying to figure out how to spell ambidextrous, is that printing was invented before English underwent a major change. No one knows why or how it happened, but people began to pronounce all English vowels differently. This is known as the 'Great Vowel Shift'. But people were already learning the versions of words enshrined in print. English as a spoken language is over a thousand years old. Languages change, and now our language is much different from that of Chaucer, and yet we still spell many words as he did. Many of changes were forced upon the written language in an attempt to make it more logical, but they had the opposite effect. For example, many scholars had a thorough knowledge of Latin. They noticed that many English words were similiar to Latin ones and concluded that they were borrowed into English at an earlier date. To mark these 'borrowings', lots of spellings were changed to indicate their supposed Latin origin, letters were added like the silent 'b' in the words 'debt' and 'doubt'. The funny thing is that these words weren't borrowed from Latin at all, but from Norman French, which were pronounced as 'det' and 'dout'. Another example of scholistic stupidity has been 'ph'. It is supposed to represent the 'f'' sound in Greek loan words. But, of course, the 'f' sound in Greek loan words is no different from any other f sound in English. If you spell philosophy, as filosofee, or as fulawsufee, it doesn't make the word any less Greek. Some people claim that the written language should be a museum where the words are as pinned down like exhibits for future generations to gaze at in wonderment. Good scholars will know that the word is Greek and as for the rest of us, we don't need to know that the word is Greek in order to use it. 'Kn' words are another category of absurdity. 'Know', 'knot', 'knee' and 'knight' are a waste of time. It has been suggested that if you make spellings more phonetic, people will be confused. I fail to see why if context is effective enough to prevent confusion in spoken language, it wouldn't be equally as effective in written language. Do people become more stupid when they read, than when they speak? That has yet to be proven. Context will show the difference between, 'It is naet.' and, 'I see a naet riding on a horse. Anyone who thinks that this is unimportant has never had to correct a learner of English after the hundredth time they have pronounced 'knee' and 'k-nee'. Q is not a real letter in English. Real letters can stand on their own, or in combination with any other letter. Q can not. Q must be followed by 'u', except for the word 'Qat' which is just spelled that way in English to distinguish it from the domestic animal. It can easily be represented by 'kw', which is similiar to the Anglo-saxon method of 'cw'. So that would make quiet, 'kwaeut'. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, but lethargy is the mother of stupidity. Any scholar of English historical linguistics can tell you this, but we keep on spelling with attrociously, like lemmings.
English as it Really is.
Many intelligent English speakers have no idea the phonetic structure of their language. It isn't strictly neccessarily to have a good grasp of the phonetic or the grammatical structure of the language, in order to use it well. But some people have appointed themselves experts and put forth their own little theories on phonetics or grammar as the truth. The truth is that the grammar and phonetics of a language are in a constant state of flux, that while there are some things that remain broadly constant, the 'th' sound in English for example, other things varry according to accent, dialect and speaker. But because most of us are ignorant of English phonetics, we have allowed generations of school teachers and academic prisses to con us into believe that there is a right way to spell.
This next section will attempt to give the reader a brief course in English phonetics. We were taught in school that there were five vowels in English, e, o, i, a, u. This is incorrect. There are five vowels in languages like Latin, and Italian, and Spanish, but Germanic languages have more. English, because of its unique position as a Germanic-Romance hybrid has even more. In fact, English is one of the languages with the most amount of vowels in the world. English linguists distinguish these vowel sounds from 'true' vowel sounds by giving them such names as dypthongs and trypthongs, but from a practical point of view they function exactly as true vowels, so should be considered as true vowels. Amateur linguists try to distinguish them by calling them long and short vowels, which is even more confusing, because the short and long vowels often don't correspond to each other. So what are the English vowels? Well, believe it or not, these vowel sounds varry from dialect to dialect, but in my dialect, that of Canadian English, they would be as follows.
a as in bat
i as in bit
u as in but
o as in boat
e as in bet
So far, so good. We have the so called 'short' or 'true' vowels in English. Here's where we start to run into problems.
aw as in saw
ow as in how
oi as in boil, toy
ou as in would, wood,
ai as in rain, play
ee as in bee
ew as in blew, true, blue
So I have proven that Canadian English has not five vowel sounds, or even ten as the short/long system would claim, but twelve. At this point I must stress that other dialects have at least two or three more vowel sounds. Another problem with English phonetics is that English has variable stress. What this means is that the emphasis in a given sentence or even a given word could shift. Other languages such as Spanish or Polish, the stress is constant, if there is an aberation it is marked by accents. In English this abberation is the norm. What it boils down to on a practical level is that although English has somewhere around 12-14 vowel sounds, most vowel sounds in the sentence are of the unstressed vowel, the schwa. The schwa is the sound in mother. An English speaker naturally makes the schwa sound when he or she doesn't stress the syllable. A good example of this is the word, 'the'. It is usually unstressed so it doesn't rhyme with 'heh', but with 'huh', so it sounds like 'thuh'. In a truly phonetic spelling system most of the English vowels would be represented by schwas.
Consonants aren't any easier in English. English isn't the most complicated language in regards to its consonant system, but it isn't the easiest either. It is probably in the mid range of difficulty. It has at least one sound that only a few other Germanic languages share, the 'th' sound. According to conventional thinking there should be around twenty consonants in English. I am again about to disprove conventional thinking.
b as in bat
ch as in church
d as in door
f as in friend
g as in goat
h as in how
j as in judge
k as in king
l as in love
m as in more
n as in now
p as in peace
r as in race
s as in snow
sh as in shoot
t as in teen
th as in that
v as in very
w as in what
y as in yes
z as in zoo
And then we have the consonants that can't begin a word, but must be either at the end or in the middle
ng as in bringing (a nassalized 'n')
zh as in measure (somewhere in between a 'sh' sound and a 'z' sound).
So we have 23 consonant sounds in the English language. You may have noticed that I have failed to include the letters 'c', 'q', and 'x'. What's the reason for this? The reason is that they are not real consonant sounds, as in naturally occuring sounds in the spoken language. School teachers have always taught about a hard 'c' and a soft 'c'. But is this a valid linguistic distinction? No, it isn't, because the rules only affect that particular letter. It is a case of a rule being invented to explain the exception and not the principle. So we can see that in traditional English orthography 'c' does not have a natural sound. It's sounds are quite ably taken care of by 'k' and 's'. The situations of 'q' and 'x' are similiar. Other letters can be used to spell the sounds the letters form. The test is, if the letter can equally occur at the begining or at the end or in the middle of the word. Q must always be coupled with u and be at the begining. 'X' must always be at the end or in the middle of a word. It only starts one word in the English language. Q is an especially ridiculous letter because it can not exist without a 'u'.
The Canadian English dialect has, then, 35 distinct sounds, phonemes as they are known in linguistics. But as I mentioned before, other dialects have something around 44 distinct phonemes. But is it really important to know this? Yes, it is, because these phonemes are the basis of how words are constructed. That is to say, if there is a phonemic variation in a word, there is probably a variation in meaning. These are the permissible sounds in Canadian English. The next thing to consider is the position of these sounds in a word. All of the phonemes above, except the last two and h can occur at the begining, middle or end of a word. To take two examples, the first from the vowel category, and the second from the consonant category-'a' can make the words 'at', bat', 'beta' (although usually it is an unstressed schwa at the end of a word) and 'b' can form the words 'bite', 'abdomen', and 'cob'. The next thing to consider are sound combinations, which sounds English permits to be combined. Most vowels can be combined with most consonants. But not all consonants can be combined. 'S' and 'n' is an acceptable combination, which gives us words like 'snow' and 'sneakers' But 'b' and 'n' is not an acceptable combination, like the combination of 'k' and 'n' is unacceptable in English. This last example is interesting because it is obvious that sometime in the past this combination was possible, and people did pronounce the k in words like 'know' and 'knight'. Every speaker of English knows what is possible and impossible in the language. Just ask them to invent a word that other people can pronounce and they will use the rules for sound combinations in English without thinking about it. They might come up with 'bork', or 'lart' but are probably not 'bni'. Ask a speaker of another language to perform the same task and it is possible that they would come up with 'bni' but not 'lart'.
The next consideration is how the sounds behave in specific environments. The rule for forming the regular plural for nouns in English is to add an 's' after a consonant or '-es' after a vowel. Or at least, this is the rule for written English. But if you actually examine the sound you make in these two words, 'dogs' and 'cats', you will see that there is a slight difference. An 's' sound after 'g' becomes a 'z' sound and after 't' it remains an 's' sound. After n, d, l, r, the 's' sound becomes a 'z' sound and after the other consonants it remains 's'. Similiarly, the plural after vowels isn't pronounced -es at all, but is pronounced '-uz'. English, like has many of these rules which are unnoticed by most of us because we have never been taught them. The interesting thing is that people who learn English as a second language are taught them. Here are a few more examples. The regular past in English, or past simple is verb + 'ed', as in 'walked'. At least in written English, in spoken in English, the pronounciation of the past simple depends on the sound enviroment. It can be -t, -ud, or d. For example, walked, isn't walk + ed at all, but walk + t. 'Blinded', isn't blind + ed, but 'blind + ud'. And finally 'robbed' isn't 'rob + ed' it's rob + d'. There is a rule, it isn't random. After 'k' and 'p' the past simple becomes 't', and after 'd' it becomes '-ud' and after 'b' it becomes 'd'. Another example is the word 'and'. Between two consonant sounds, 'and' doesn't sound like 'and' at all, but like, 'en' as in rock 'n' roll. Before a vowel the word sounds like 'and'. Sounds also behave differently in different dialects. Take the word 'water'. A speaker of a British dialect will pronounce the word something like watur, with a 't' sound. Speakers of North America dialects such as myself will pronounce the word something like wawdur, because in our dialects 't' becomes a 'd' sound in between a vowel and the schwa sound. These rules are apparent to any one to takes the time to carefully examine the language.
This is by no means a thorough examination of all of the rules of English phonetics. The point is to make it clear to the reader that the phonetic structures of written and spoken English have very little to do with each other. Let's say that there will be a linguist thousands of years from now who will have no knowledge of English and he's trying to decipher this sentence. “I was riding on the bus to the store.” And let's say this is the first time our linguist has come across the Latin alphabet and at this point in his investigations he's only interested in the sounds of the language. S/he might do something like this: i(3), w(1), a(1), s(3), r(2), d(1), n(1), g(1), o(2), t(3), h(2), e(2), u(1). Our linguist will probably then focus his or her attention on letters which repeat. In other languages, he could make the assumption that the same letters represent the same sounds, and most probably be right. In English, s/he can not do this. The 'i' represents the same sound in 'I' and 'rid' but not in 'ing'. The 's' is the same sound in 'bus' and 'store', but not 'was'. 'R' is the same in both cases. 'O' is not the same sound in 'on' and 'store'. 'T' is the same sound twice but only with 'h' which our clever linguist may or may not guess. And finally, not only is 'e' not the same sound, in one case it isn't even a sound. As you can see, in English it's the rule that letters represent different sounds, not the exception.
English on the Printed Page
Now that I have established the rules of English phonetics in the spoken language, I would now like to examine the phonetics of written English to determine whether the rules of written English are just as easy to observe as those for spoken English.
b: the 'b' sound can only be represented by 'b' as in boy.
ch: the 'ch' sound can be represented by 'ch', 't' as in church and virtue.
d: the 'd' sound can be represented by 'd' or by 't', as in dog and water.
f: the 'f' sound can be represented by 'f' or by 'ph', or by 'gh' as in 'frog' and philosophy and rough.
g: the so called hard 'g' sound can only be represented by 'g', as in great.
h: the 'h' sound can only be represented by 'h' as in 'horse'.
j the 'j' sound can be represented by 'j', or by '-dge', or by 'g', as in jet, judge, and George.
k the 'k' sound can be represented by 'k' or by 'c' or by 'ch', as in king, cat, and ache.
l the 'l' sound can only be represented by 'l', as in love.
m the 'm' sound can only be represented by 'm' as in moon.
n the 'n' sound can only be represented by 'n', as in nice.
p the 'p' sound can only be represented by 'p', as in pick.
r the 'r' sound can only be represented by 'r' as in race.
s the 's' sound can be represented by 's', or 'c', as in sleep and centre.
sh the 'sh' sound can be represented by 'sh' or 'ch' or 'ti' or 'ci' as in sheep and chateau and nation and vivacious
t the 't' sound can be represented by 't' or '-ed' as in take' and walked
th the 'th' sound can only be represented by 'th' as in that.
v the 'v' sound can only be represented by 'v' as in very.
w the 'w' sound can be represented by 'w' or by 'wh' as in what and wet.
y the 'y' sound can only be represented by 'y' as in yes.
z the 'z' sound can be represented by 'z' or by 's' as in zoo and dogs.
zh the 'zh' sound can be represented by 's' as in vision and pleasure.
ng the 'ng' sound can only be represented by 'ng' as in bring.
We have 23 consonant sounds in English and 38 different ways of spelling them and these are just the ways that immediately come to mind. I'm sure I have omitted some.
ai the 'ai' sound can be written 'ai', 'ay', 'ey', 'a', as in claim, say, they, basic.
ae the 'ae' sound can be written 'i', -igh, -y, ie, as in I, sigh, try, lie
oi the 'oi' sound can be written as 'oi', 'oy', as in boil and toy.
ee the 'ee' sound can be written as 'ee', 'ea', 'e', 'ie', 'y', as in beet, ear, sincere, conciet, and crazy.
aw the 'aw' sound can be written as 'aw', 'a', 'o', as in flaw, all, philosophy,
ow the 'ow' sound can be written as 'ow', 'ou', as in how, out.
o the 'o' sound can be written as 'o', 'oa', 'ow', 'oh', 'ough', as in so, oat, oh, though.
ew The 'ew' sound can be written 'ew', 'ue', 'o', 'oo', 'oe', as in threw, true, who, too, shoe.
ou The 'ou' sound can be written 'oo', 'oul' as in wood, and could.
a The 'a' sound can be written 'a', 'ah', as in bat and ah.
e The 'e' sound can be written 'e' as in bet.
i The 'i' sound can be written 'i', 'y' as in bit and mystery.
As I have proved there are twelve vowel sounds in the Canadian English dialect, but there are 36 ways of spelling them. So in total we have 35 phonemes in Canadian English but 83 different ways of writting them. And that, as I said before, is a conservative estimate. It should be clear by now that English spelling is neither obvious nor practical.
On the Necessity and Desireability of Reform
The are many systems that have been proposed for reforming English spelling. All have their advantages and disadvantages. But any intelligent proposal would be an improvement on the current system. I have been writing this essay from the perspective that spelling reform is necessary, beneficial, and practical, but is it? It is possible for people to continue doing things in a sloppy, inefficient way, but that doesn't mean that this sloppy, inefficient way is the best of all possible worlds. Maybe if people realized how badly English spelling is in need of a renovation, how beneficial it would be for everyone, and how practical it really is, it would catch on. I have already dealt with the flaws in English spelling, but why would reform be beneficial?
The first group of people who would benefit are people who are learning English as a second language, and there are millions of them. Learners of English, often are very bad spellers, in that they spell, at the beginning, very phonetically. Instead of encouraging this natural tendency, most teachers try to nip it in the bud, which results in many students becoming fluent in verbal English, but functionary illiterate in written English. Another problem students encounter is the difficulty of replicating the sounds of English in the absence of a native speaker. This results in many students sticking with (and indeed only being familiar with) the pronunciation of non-native English teachers. And because of a lack of systemization (or rather several competing phonetic systems in English spelling) teachers have to teach pronunciation practically on a word by word basis. This is obviously not an ideal situation. To devise a new system of spelling, for ESL students has many benefits, and a few obvious, draw backs. The first benefit, is that from the begining the teacher can teach the sounds of English, and teach students how to recognize and reproduce these sounds. The drawback, of course, is that students will eventually have to deal with the traditional, flawed system of orthography. A further drawback are the numerous English accents and dialects in the world. This method will be based upon the Canadian accent, as it is my accent and the only one I can write about with any authority. Luckily, the Canadian accent is easily understood around the world, in all English speaking areas.
The essential features of this system are that it should be regular, so that any word can be spelled by the student, and reproduced by the student even if they are unfamiliar with the word. It is a reduction of systems. So the conventional student of English sees the word 'reduction' for example. To pronounce this word correctly the student has to remember on top of the basic phonetic rules for consonents in English, two exceptions and where to put the stress. The exceptions are the 'hard' c, and the 'sh' sound of the '-tion' words. In my first system, the word is spelled, 'redukxun'. In my second system, the word is spelled 'redukśun'. The only rules the student has to remember are word stress and the regularized rules of consonants. Providing they have mastered the rules of the system, they can pronounce this word without the help of a teacher.
The system should be compatable with modern technology and familiar to the students. They should be able to do their homework on a computer with mininum difficulty. While it is tempting to be a revivalist and assign the old Anglo-Saxon letter thorn for the 'th' sound, it would be easily understood by students, but would be quite difficult for them to reproduce on their computers.
But perhaps the arrogant speaker of English doesn't care about those poor little foreigners who are struggling. There are several other reasons that spelling reform is a good idea. Many so called learning disabilities such as dylexia are aggrevated or caused by the attrocious system of spelling in English. A person who is learning to spell, has to learn not one system, but several as I have previously proved, and often these systems are mutual exclusive. If there is one system the errors that a dysklexic student or a normal student make would be reduced. But that is not the only benefit. Children will be able to spell more quickly and more accurately. Adults also will be able to spell more quickly and more accurately. I have devised two systems of reformed spellings, which are both quicker than standard spelling. In the first system, the sentence before the last one would be represented as 'Udults awlso wil bee aibul tu spel mor kwiklee en mor akurutlee'. In the second system, it would be represented as, 'Udults ąlso wyl bi ębul tu spel mor kwykli en mor akurutli.' In the standard spelling, that sentence has fifty-five characters. In my first system, it has fifty-two characters. In my second system it has forty-seven characters. That's a reduction of three and eight characters respectively. It doesn't seem like much, but once someone has mastered the new system, it means a reduction of typing time, or writing time by approximately five percent with the first system and twenty with the second system. And twenty percent less time typing means twenty percent more time thinking. Another reason for the adoption of spelling reform is that reformed spellings more accurately record the language that we actually speak. There are obvious differences between the language I am writing in and the language of Shakespeare, but there are no obvious differences between my language and that of Dickens, although there is a gulf of dialect, geography, and time between us. The great thing about Chaucer is that you can tell that's actually how he spoke. He spoke as he wrote. We owe it to the generations of the future to be able to show how we spoke. There are many traditionalists who would have an apoletic fit if you suggested to them that maybe they should use a revised spelling system, which leads me to my next point. How pratical is this idea, really? Isn't it just the idea of a bunch of crack pots?
There are valid reasons to consider the idea, the most important of which is that written English is drifting farther and farther away from spoken English. Words are symbols for things, and the written word is a further abstraction. Because spelling is a human invention, the product of human choices, it can be improved. There is no 'natural' way to spell in English. In the past hundred years there have been many different attempts to reform spelling. They have all failed. The reasons for their failure have been various, but I would say that any attempt to reform the spelling of English everywhere is going to fail. English is a world language, and no one is in charge. This is a disadvantage, but it is also an incredible advantage. You can write English any way you want, and this is what this essay is an attempt to do, to start to reform English from the grassroots up. The critics say that this attempt at reform will be horribly expensive because we will have to reprint millions of books. We can keep those books and the ability to read them. I think that there should be two systems of spelling, the standard which will remain in place as it is of obvious benefit for international communication, and a series of reformed systems for different national dialects, or regional dialects of English. What I envision is that people outside of schools, outside of governments will start to reform their spelling. Maybe you could try? Here is a system which is easy to master and understand. Send this essay to your friends, start writing with the new systems and let's see if we can make it catch on democratically.
Two Options for the Future
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this essay, I have devised two reformed systems of spelling for English. They are both based on my dialect of English, which is Canadian English, as it is the only one which I can speak about with any authority. Although the two systems are slightly different, they share the same basic philosophy. That philosophy is that one letter or one combination of letters should always represent the same sound. There are no silent letters. There are no variations in spelling. Variation is spelling is only due to variation in pronounication and not idiosyncrcy. The first system, Levertonian Orthography is designed for people who are frightened by the concept of accents, which is probably most monolingual speakers of English. It is slightly less effecient than the second system, but still an improvement over standard. The second system, Kanuk, is more efficient but probably less practical and attractive as it relies heavily on accent. Although they both look like foreign languages, they are English, and the average person can learn to recognize them and use them in a few weeks.
Levertonian Orthography
This chart shows the Levertonian system of orthography, and how it corresponds with standard othography.
Standard Phoneme Levertonian
ax = a = aks
edge = e = ej
it = i = it
fox = aw = fawks
hook = ou = houk
cup = u = kup
eel = ee = eel
ooze = ew = ewz
eye = ae = ae
ache = ai = aik
over = o = ovur
boy = oi = boi
under = u = undur
how = ow = how
boy = b = boi
church = c = curc
door = d = dor
floor = f = flor
good = g = goud
hello = h = helo
juice = j = jews
king = k = king
love = l = luv
money = m = munee
new = n = new
pin = p = pin
rake = r = raik
sleet = s = sleet
shoe = x = xew
tail = t = tail
that = q = qat
very = v = vairee
when = w = wen
yes = y = yes
is = z = iz
pleasure = zh = plezhur
bring = ng = bring
' represents a glottal stop, as in the words, little, and bottle, and uncertainly.
Kanuk
This chart shows the Kanuk system of orthography and how it corresponds to Standard orthography.
ax = a = aks
edge = e = eż
it = y = yt
fox = ą = fąks
hook = ou = houk
cup = u = kup
eel = i = il
ooze = ó = óz
eye = ae = ae
ache = ai = aik
over = o = ovur
boy = oi = boi
under = u = undur
how = ow = how
boy = b = boi
church = c = curc
door = d = dor
floor = f = flor
good = g = goud
hello = h = helo
juice = j = jós
king = k = kyń
love = l = luv
money = m = muni
new = n = nó
pin = p = pyn
rake = r = ręk
sleet = s = slit
shoe = ś = śó
tail = t = tęl
that = q = qat
very = v = vęri
when = w = wen
yes = j = jes
is = z = yz
pleasure = ź = pleźur
bring = ń = bryń
' represents a glottal stop, as in the words, little, and bottle, and uncertainly.
The First Poem (Standard)
the first poem is the hardest
the moment before the plunge
the delicious uncertainty
I have never woken up
beside you sleeping
though god I want to
that the aftermath of these moments
I asked the conquesting stars
how they entice the shy planets to dance
a mute and silent response
so dance with me until the timid light fades away
until the forever night swallows up
the tender sighs of the stumbling day.
Qu Furst Poum (Levertonian)
qu furst poum iz qu hardist
qu momunt bufor qu plunj
qu dulixus unsur'untee
Ae hav nevur wokun up
busaed yew sleeping
qo gawd Ae wawnt tew
qat an qu afdurmaq uv qeez momunts
Ae askt qu kawnkwesding starz
how qai entaes qu xae planuts tu dants
u myewt an saelunt ruspawnts
so dants wiq mee until qu timud laet faidz uwai
until qu furevur naet swawloz up
qu tendur saez uv qu stumbling dai.
Qu Furst Poum (Kanuk)
qu furst poum yz qu hardyst
qu momunt bufor qu plunź
qu dulyśus unsur'unti
Ae hav nevur wokun up
busaed jó slipyń
qo gąd Ae wąnt tó
qat an qu afdurmaq uv qiz momunts
Ae askt qu kąnkwesdyń starz
how qę entaes qu śae planuts tu dants
u mjót en saelunt ruspąnts
so dants wyq mi untyl qu tymud laet fędz uwę
untyl qu furevur naet swąloz up
qu tendur saez uv qu stumblyń dę.
By
Adam Tod Leverton
“Many know enough to avoid what they believe to be wrong, but few know enough to question what they believe to be right.”
Lao-Tzu.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that I may, perhaps, be the reincarnation of George Bernard Shaw. For those of you who have never heard of him, he was probably the most famous playwright in the English language of the last century. His work combined the driest of wit and satire with an almost biblical desire for social justice. You may also be wondering why I mention my strengthening conviction that I am his spiritual descendent. Besides being a brilliant playwright, George was also known in his lifetime as being something of a 'crank', that is to say, a supporter of ideas which seemed to his contemporaries, ludicrous. He supported non-marxist socialism, and it's a pity that this movement was displaced by marxist socialism. He became a vegetarian. He also advocated spelling reform. None of these ideas seem especially ludicrous to me, in fact, they seem to be the products of a highly developed intelligence. Rich and poor are equally humane under the rags or under the riches. The killing of animals for consumption not only destroys the environment, and causes the animals suffering, but it also destroys our health. So what's the connection to me? I have written a few plays, which admittedly, are decidedly less brilliant than George's. I believe in the equality of all people, and bravely attempt not to eat meat out here in these wilderness lands of barbarian meat-feasts. But the most important connection is our shared passion for spelling reform. I am uniquely qualified to carry out one of George's ambitions. I always loved words, reading and writing. My mother was a librarian and she would bring me back three or four new books every week that I would devour. I began to write poetry. When I arrived at university, I developed something of an obsession with learning languages. To date, I have learned with various degrees of competence, French, Spanish, Latin, Polish, Nishnabe (Ojibway), German, and Korean. I majored in English literature, but many of my courses had a linguistic focus. When I discovered the flaws in English orthography, I immediately set about to rectify them. This was my first attempt at spelling reform. After university, I drifted about from job to job, doing different things, when I decided to go to Korea to teach English as a Second Language. I, surprisingly, enjoyed myself and decided to pursue teaching as a career. I ended up here in Poland, where I have been teaching for over a year. I mention these facts of my biography, because many people who write about the topic of spelling reform, do not have the grasp of phonetics that I possess. Not to say that I am more brilliant than anyone else, just that I have devoted more of my time, because of my interests, education, and profession, to the study of phonetics in foreign languages and in English than most other people have. Also the detractors of spelling reform, sometimes, have very little phonetic knowledge of the language they speak. I am also probably one of the few people who has experience as an English language teacher to think about the topic of spelling reform. I have actually looked into the faces of students who are frustrated that they can't learn the language more rapidly. It is time to tune the jangling piano.
How We Got into this Mess.
Writing seems so natural to us, that it is hard to imagine a time when people couldn't write. In fact, writing is a relatively recent phenomenom in the history of humanity. Scholars estimate that it is about 8000 years old. It is easy to see how some very clever individual came up with the idea. People were already painting animals on caves and on walls. This said clever person, declared to his, or her buddies, 'Hey, horses are fast, why not every time we say fast, draw a horse?' This is, of course, a simplistic version of how hieroglyphics came to be invented. Hieroglyphics were used in Egypt, but also in Meso-America. The draw back to hieroglyphics is that it takes a certain degree of artistic talent to draw a hieroglyphic, which most people lack. Then another clever person had the idea to move away from hieroglyphics to ideograms. Ideograms are small line drawings which represent certain ideas or words. Both Mandrian and Cantonese and many other Sinic (chinese) languages are written using ideograms. Ideograms are useful because groups of people speaking entirely different languages, such as, say, Korean and Mandrian are able to communicate without speaking the same language. The draw back to ideograms is their sheer volume. The Sinic system alone has over five thousand ideograms. The solution came from Egyptians who were in a hurry. They invented a quick way to write hieroglyphics, called demotic. Some very visionary Phoenecian caught a glance of this system and applied it to his own language. Thus the idea of the alphabet was born. Letters which actually represented the idea of sounds, not meanings. Phoenecian, like Hebrew, and Arabic was a Semitic language, and so didn't need to represent vowels. A literate Phoenecian could guess the vowels by the context. This early alphabet was exported to Greece, where it morphed into the Greek Alphabet and provided the basis for the Cyrillic alphabets. It also gave us the word 'alphabet', from its first two letters, 'alpha and beta'. It then ended up in Italy where it morphed into the Latin alphabet. Most languages that were under the domination of the Roman Catholic church ended up with a variant version of the Latin alphabet. These languages include, English, French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Finnish and many others. The Latin Alphabet is not the only alphabet in existence, it is just the most widely diffused. Other alphabets include Hangeol (Korean) and Cree, and these examples are the few that have been consciously invented.
Sometime after the year 500 numerous Germanic tribes left the mainland of Europe and headed for Britian. Sympathetic historians claim that they were invited, other, less sympathetic historians claim that the used the invitation as a pretext for an invasion. The truth probably will never be established for certain. What is certain is that 500 years later, there was a flourishing Germanic culture in England (named Angle-land, after one of the invading tribes). Shortly after the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had settled down, Christian missionaries arrived from both Ireland and Rome to 'civilize' the barbarian heathens. It seems to have worked and the English kings accepted the new faith. The Latin alphabet came along with Christianity, but the Germanic tribes already had their version of the alphabet, runes. And the Latin alphabet proved inadequate to write what would be known as 'Inglisc'. The scribes devised a solution that worked perfectly, they imported runes to write the strange English sounds. These included 'eth', and 'thorn', for the two 'th' sounds, 'winn', which looked something like a y but represented a 'w' sound, familiar from the pseudo-archaic 'ye old tavern', and 'eorgh' which represented the 'gh' sound in 'knight'. Though writing was not wide-spread, it was very intelligible to trained scribes, who would be the only ones with any reason to write.
For reasons which are unimportant here, William the Bastard, the descendent of vikings sailed from Normandy to claim the English crown. He won it at Hastings and although historians are murky about what happened next, my own private theory is that it was something of a blood bath, that all of the native nobility were wiped out, and Norman French became the language of social advancement. English went from being a prestige language, to something that only peasants spoke within a few hundred years. It must have seemed cataclysmic to those who lived through those times. English and Norman French seem to have merged into something like a 'pidjun' a language that both communities could understand. Some scholars believe that this process happened earlier, with the Danish invasion of England. What happens in these languages is that grammar becomes simpler, and pronunciation is changed into something that speakers from many different languages could produce. This usually happens when languages have mutually incompatible grammars. French and 'Old' English both had grammatical genders, as in 'le chapeau' but the problem arose that the genders were different for the same words. So, instead of compromising, the speakers of the 'pidjun' language ditch gender altogether and other things like grammatical cases. All of this would have been an interesting historical mystery if the Normans had managed to keep a hold on France. Their hold was greatly reduced and it became politically expedient for kings to claim to be 'English'. What was a debased peasant tongue, was again restored to the glory of being a national language. Here is where the problems started, at least in terms of orthography. Orthography is how words fit together in a written language. The problem was that the French scribes who began to write and spell in English, were trained in French. So instead of using native spellings of words they used French spellings both for loan words and for native words.
The horrible state of English Orthography is due to many factors, the first of which I have already mentioned. The second tragedy to befall us, and people trying to figure out how to spell ambidextrous, is that printing was invented before English underwent a major change. No one knows why or how it happened, but people began to pronounce all English vowels differently. This is known as the 'Great Vowel Shift'. But people were already learning the versions of words enshrined in print. English as a spoken language is over a thousand years old. Languages change, and now our language is much different from that of Chaucer, and yet we still spell many words as he did. Many of changes were forced upon the written language in an attempt to make it more logical, but they had the opposite effect. For example, many scholars had a thorough knowledge of Latin. They noticed that many English words were similiar to Latin ones and concluded that they were borrowed into English at an earlier date. To mark these 'borrowings', lots of spellings were changed to indicate their supposed Latin origin, letters were added like the silent 'b' in the words 'debt' and 'doubt'. The funny thing is that these words weren't borrowed from Latin at all, but from Norman French, which were pronounced as 'det' and 'dout'. Another example of scholistic stupidity has been 'ph'. It is supposed to represent the 'f'' sound in Greek loan words. But, of course, the 'f' sound in Greek loan words is no different from any other f sound in English. If you spell philosophy, as filosofee, or as fulawsufee, it doesn't make the word any less Greek. Some people claim that the written language should be a museum where the words are as pinned down like exhibits for future generations to gaze at in wonderment. Good scholars will know that the word is Greek and as for the rest of us, we don't need to know that the word is Greek in order to use it. 'Kn' words are another category of absurdity. 'Know', 'knot', 'knee' and 'knight' are a waste of time. It has been suggested that if you make spellings more phonetic, people will be confused. I fail to see why if context is effective enough to prevent confusion in spoken language, it wouldn't be equally as effective in written language. Do people become more stupid when they read, than when they speak? That has yet to be proven. Context will show the difference between, 'It is naet.' and, 'I see a naet riding on a horse. Anyone who thinks that this is unimportant has never had to correct a learner of English after the hundredth time they have pronounced 'knee' and 'k-nee'. Q is not a real letter in English. Real letters can stand on their own, or in combination with any other letter. Q can not. Q must be followed by 'u', except for the word 'Qat' which is just spelled that way in English to distinguish it from the domestic animal. It can easily be represented by 'kw', which is similiar to the Anglo-saxon method of 'cw'. So that would make quiet, 'kwaeut'. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, but lethargy is the mother of stupidity. Any scholar of English historical linguistics can tell you this, but we keep on spelling with attrociously, like lemmings.
English as it Really is.
Many intelligent English speakers have no idea the phonetic structure of their language. It isn't strictly neccessarily to have a good grasp of the phonetic or the grammatical structure of the language, in order to use it well. But some people have appointed themselves experts and put forth their own little theories on phonetics or grammar as the truth. The truth is that the grammar and phonetics of a language are in a constant state of flux, that while there are some things that remain broadly constant, the 'th' sound in English for example, other things varry according to accent, dialect and speaker. But because most of us are ignorant of English phonetics, we have allowed generations of school teachers and academic prisses to con us into believe that there is a right way to spell.
This next section will attempt to give the reader a brief course in English phonetics. We were taught in school that there were five vowels in English, e, o, i, a, u. This is incorrect. There are five vowels in languages like Latin, and Italian, and Spanish, but Germanic languages have more. English, because of its unique position as a Germanic-Romance hybrid has even more. In fact, English is one of the languages with the most amount of vowels in the world. English linguists distinguish these vowel sounds from 'true' vowel sounds by giving them such names as dypthongs and trypthongs, but from a practical point of view they function exactly as true vowels, so should be considered as true vowels. Amateur linguists try to distinguish them by calling them long and short vowels, which is even more confusing, because the short and long vowels often don't correspond to each other. So what are the English vowels? Well, believe it or not, these vowel sounds varry from dialect to dialect, but in my dialect, that of Canadian English, they would be as follows.
a as in bat
i as in bit
u as in but
o as in boat
e as in bet
So far, so good. We have the so called 'short' or 'true' vowels in English. Here's where we start to run into problems.
aw as in saw
ow as in how
oi as in boil, toy
ou as in would, wood,
ai as in rain, play
ee as in bee
ew as in blew, true, blue
So I have proven that Canadian English has not five vowel sounds, or even ten as the short/long system would claim, but twelve. At this point I must stress that other dialects have at least two or three more vowel sounds. Another problem with English phonetics is that English has variable stress. What this means is that the emphasis in a given sentence or even a given word could shift. Other languages such as Spanish or Polish, the stress is constant, if there is an aberation it is marked by accents. In English this abberation is the norm. What it boils down to on a practical level is that although English has somewhere around 12-14 vowel sounds, most vowel sounds in the sentence are of the unstressed vowel, the schwa. The schwa is the sound in mother. An English speaker naturally makes the schwa sound when he or she doesn't stress the syllable. A good example of this is the word, 'the'. It is usually unstressed so it doesn't rhyme with 'heh', but with 'huh', so it sounds like 'thuh'. In a truly phonetic spelling system most of the English vowels would be represented by schwas.
Consonants aren't any easier in English. English isn't the most complicated language in regards to its consonant system, but it isn't the easiest either. It is probably in the mid range of difficulty. It has at least one sound that only a few other Germanic languages share, the 'th' sound. According to conventional thinking there should be around twenty consonants in English. I am again about to disprove conventional thinking.
b as in bat
ch as in church
d as in door
f as in friend
g as in goat
h as in how
j as in judge
k as in king
l as in love
m as in more
n as in now
p as in peace
r as in race
s as in snow
sh as in shoot
t as in teen
th as in that
v as in very
w as in what
y as in yes
z as in zoo
And then we have the consonants that can't begin a word, but must be either at the end or in the middle
ng as in bringing (a nassalized 'n')
zh as in measure (somewhere in between a 'sh' sound and a 'z' sound).
So we have 23 consonant sounds in the English language. You may have noticed that I have failed to include the letters 'c', 'q', and 'x'. What's the reason for this? The reason is that they are not real consonant sounds, as in naturally occuring sounds in the spoken language. School teachers have always taught about a hard 'c' and a soft 'c'. But is this a valid linguistic distinction? No, it isn't, because the rules only affect that particular letter. It is a case of a rule being invented to explain the exception and not the principle. So we can see that in traditional English orthography 'c' does not have a natural sound. It's sounds are quite ably taken care of by 'k' and 's'. The situations of 'q' and 'x' are similiar. Other letters can be used to spell the sounds the letters form. The test is, if the letter can equally occur at the begining or at the end or in the middle of the word. Q must always be coupled with u and be at the begining. 'X' must always be at the end or in the middle of a word. It only starts one word in the English language. Q is an especially ridiculous letter because it can not exist without a 'u'.
The Canadian English dialect has, then, 35 distinct sounds, phonemes as they are known in linguistics. But as I mentioned before, other dialects have something around 44 distinct phonemes. But is it really important to know this? Yes, it is, because these phonemes are the basis of how words are constructed. That is to say, if there is a phonemic variation in a word, there is probably a variation in meaning. These are the permissible sounds in Canadian English. The next thing to consider is the position of these sounds in a word. All of the phonemes above, except the last two and h can occur at the begining, middle or end of a word. To take two examples, the first from the vowel category, and the second from the consonant category-'a' can make the words 'at', bat', 'beta' (although usually it is an unstressed schwa at the end of a word) and 'b' can form the words 'bite', 'abdomen', and 'cob'. The next thing to consider are sound combinations, which sounds English permits to be combined. Most vowels can be combined with most consonants. But not all consonants can be combined. 'S' and 'n' is an acceptable combination, which gives us words like 'snow' and 'sneakers' But 'b' and 'n' is not an acceptable combination, like the combination of 'k' and 'n' is unacceptable in English. This last example is interesting because it is obvious that sometime in the past this combination was possible, and people did pronounce the k in words like 'know' and 'knight'. Every speaker of English knows what is possible and impossible in the language. Just ask them to invent a word that other people can pronounce and they will use the rules for sound combinations in English without thinking about it. They might come up with 'bork', or 'lart' but are probably not 'bni'. Ask a speaker of another language to perform the same task and it is possible that they would come up with 'bni' but not 'lart'.
The next consideration is how the sounds behave in specific environments. The rule for forming the regular plural for nouns in English is to add an 's' after a consonant or '-es' after a vowel. Or at least, this is the rule for written English. But if you actually examine the sound you make in these two words, 'dogs' and 'cats', you will see that there is a slight difference. An 's' sound after 'g' becomes a 'z' sound and after 't' it remains an 's' sound. After n, d, l, r, the 's' sound becomes a 'z' sound and after the other consonants it remains 's'. Similiarly, the plural after vowels isn't pronounced -es at all, but is pronounced '-uz'. English, like has many of these rules which are unnoticed by most of us because we have never been taught them. The interesting thing is that people who learn English as a second language are taught them. Here are a few more examples. The regular past in English, or past simple is verb + 'ed', as in 'walked'. At least in written English, in spoken in English, the pronounciation of the past simple depends on the sound enviroment. It can be -t, -ud, or d. For example, walked, isn't walk + ed at all, but walk + t. 'Blinded', isn't blind + ed, but 'blind + ud'. And finally 'robbed' isn't 'rob + ed' it's rob + d'. There is a rule, it isn't random. After 'k' and 'p' the past simple becomes 't', and after 'd' it becomes '-ud' and after 'b' it becomes 'd'. Another example is the word 'and'. Between two consonant sounds, 'and' doesn't sound like 'and' at all, but like, 'en' as in rock 'n' roll. Before a vowel the word sounds like 'and'. Sounds also behave differently in different dialects. Take the word 'water'. A speaker of a British dialect will pronounce the word something like watur, with a 't' sound. Speakers of North America dialects such as myself will pronounce the word something like wawdur, because in our dialects 't' becomes a 'd' sound in between a vowel and the schwa sound. These rules are apparent to any one to takes the time to carefully examine the language.
This is by no means a thorough examination of all of the rules of English phonetics. The point is to make it clear to the reader that the phonetic structures of written and spoken English have very little to do with each other. Let's say that there will be a linguist thousands of years from now who will have no knowledge of English and he's trying to decipher this sentence. “I was riding on the bus to the store.” And let's say this is the first time our linguist has come across the Latin alphabet and at this point in his investigations he's only interested in the sounds of the language. S/he might do something like this: i(3), w(1), a(1), s(3), r(2), d(1), n(1), g(1), o(2), t(3), h(2), e(2), u(1). Our linguist will probably then focus his or her attention on letters which repeat. In other languages, he could make the assumption that the same letters represent the same sounds, and most probably be right. In English, s/he can not do this. The 'i' represents the same sound in 'I' and 'rid' but not in 'ing'. The 's' is the same sound in 'bus' and 'store', but not 'was'. 'R' is the same in both cases. 'O' is not the same sound in 'on' and 'store'. 'T' is the same sound twice but only with 'h' which our clever linguist may or may not guess. And finally, not only is 'e' not the same sound, in one case it isn't even a sound. As you can see, in English it's the rule that letters represent different sounds, not the exception.
English on the Printed Page
Now that I have established the rules of English phonetics in the spoken language, I would now like to examine the phonetics of written English to determine whether the rules of written English are just as easy to observe as those for spoken English.
b: the 'b' sound can only be represented by 'b' as in boy.
ch: the 'ch' sound can be represented by 'ch', 't' as in church and virtue.
d: the 'd' sound can be represented by 'd' or by 't', as in dog and water.
f: the 'f' sound can be represented by 'f' or by 'ph', or by 'gh' as in 'frog' and philosophy and rough.
g: the so called hard 'g' sound can only be represented by 'g', as in great.
h: the 'h' sound can only be represented by 'h' as in 'horse'.
j the 'j' sound can be represented by 'j', or by '-dge', or by 'g', as in jet, judge, and George.
k the 'k' sound can be represented by 'k' or by 'c' or by 'ch', as in king, cat, and ache.
l the 'l' sound can only be represented by 'l', as in love.
m the 'm' sound can only be represented by 'm' as in moon.
n the 'n' sound can only be represented by 'n', as in nice.
p the 'p' sound can only be represented by 'p', as in pick.
r the 'r' sound can only be represented by 'r' as in race.
s the 's' sound can be represented by 's', or 'c', as in sleep and centre.
sh the 'sh' sound can be represented by 'sh' or 'ch' or 'ti' or 'ci' as in sheep and chateau and nation and vivacious
t the 't' sound can be represented by 't' or '-ed' as in take' and walked
th the 'th' sound can only be represented by 'th' as in that.
v the 'v' sound can only be represented by 'v' as in very.
w the 'w' sound can be represented by 'w' or by 'wh' as in what and wet.
y the 'y' sound can only be represented by 'y' as in yes.
z the 'z' sound can be represented by 'z' or by 's' as in zoo and dogs.
zh the 'zh' sound can be represented by 's' as in vision and pleasure.
ng the 'ng' sound can only be represented by 'ng' as in bring.
We have 23 consonant sounds in English and 38 different ways of spelling them and these are just the ways that immediately come to mind. I'm sure I have omitted some.
ai the 'ai' sound can be written 'ai', 'ay', 'ey', 'a', as in claim, say, they, basic.
ae the 'ae' sound can be written 'i', -igh, -y, ie, as in I, sigh, try, lie
oi the 'oi' sound can be written as 'oi', 'oy', as in boil and toy.
ee the 'ee' sound can be written as 'ee', 'ea', 'e', 'ie', 'y', as in beet, ear, sincere, conciet, and crazy.
aw the 'aw' sound can be written as 'aw', 'a', 'o', as in flaw, all, philosophy,
ow the 'ow' sound can be written as 'ow', 'ou', as in how, out.
o the 'o' sound can be written as 'o', 'oa', 'ow', 'oh', 'ough', as in so, oat, oh, though.
ew The 'ew' sound can be written 'ew', 'ue', 'o', 'oo', 'oe', as in threw, true, who, too, shoe.
ou The 'ou' sound can be written 'oo', 'oul' as in wood, and could.
a The 'a' sound can be written 'a', 'ah', as in bat and ah.
e The 'e' sound can be written 'e' as in bet.
i The 'i' sound can be written 'i', 'y' as in bit and mystery.
As I have proved there are twelve vowel sounds in the Canadian English dialect, but there are 36 ways of spelling them. So in total we have 35 phonemes in Canadian English but 83 different ways of writting them. And that, as I said before, is a conservative estimate. It should be clear by now that English spelling is neither obvious nor practical.
On the Necessity and Desireability of Reform
The are many systems that have been proposed for reforming English spelling. All have their advantages and disadvantages. But any intelligent proposal would be an improvement on the current system. I have been writing this essay from the perspective that spelling reform is necessary, beneficial, and practical, but is it? It is possible for people to continue doing things in a sloppy, inefficient way, but that doesn't mean that this sloppy, inefficient way is the best of all possible worlds. Maybe if people realized how badly English spelling is in need of a renovation, how beneficial it would be for everyone, and how practical it really is, it would catch on. I have already dealt with the flaws in English spelling, but why would reform be beneficial?
The first group of people who would benefit are people who are learning English as a second language, and there are millions of them. Learners of English, often are very bad spellers, in that they spell, at the beginning, very phonetically. Instead of encouraging this natural tendency, most teachers try to nip it in the bud, which results in many students becoming fluent in verbal English, but functionary illiterate in written English. Another problem students encounter is the difficulty of replicating the sounds of English in the absence of a native speaker. This results in many students sticking with (and indeed only being familiar with) the pronunciation of non-native English teachers. And because of a lack of systemization (or rather several competing phonetic systems in English spelling) teachers have to teach pronunciation practically on a word by word basis. This is obviously not an ideal situation. To devise a new system of spelling, for ESL students has many benefits, and a few obvious, draw backs. The first benefit, is that from the begining the teacher can teach the sounds of English, and teach students how to recognize and reproduce these sounds. The drawback, of course, is that students will eventually have to deal with the traditional, flawed system of orthography. A further drawback are the numerous English accents and dialects in the world. This method will be based upon the Canadian accent, as it is my accent and the only one I can write about with any authority. Luckily, the Canadian accent is easily understood around the world, in all English speaking areas.
The essential features of this system are that it should be regular, so that any word can be spelled by the student, and reproduced by the student even if they are unfamiliar with the word. It is a reduction of systems. So the conventional student of English sees the word 'reduction' for example. To pronounce this word correctly the student has to remember on top of the basic phonetic rules for consonents in English, two exceptions and where to put the stress. The exceptions are the 'hard' c, and the 'sh' sound of the '-tion' words. In my first system, the word is spelled, 'redukxun'. In my second system, the word is spelled 'redukśun'. The only rules the student has to remember are word stress and the regularized rules of consonants. Providing they have mastered the rules of the system, they can pronounce this word without the help of a teacher.
The system should be compatable with modern technology and familiar to the students. They should be able to do their homework on a computer with mininum difficulty. While it is tempting to be a revivalist and assign the old Anglo-Saxon letter thorn for the 'th' sound, it would be easily understood by students, but would be quite difficult for them to reproduce on their computers.
But perhaps the arrogant speaker of English doesn't care about those poor little foreigners who are struggling. There are several other reasons that spelling reform is a good idea. Many so called learning disabilities such as dylexia are aggrevated or caused by the attrocious system of spelling in English. A person who is learning to spell, has to learn not one system, but several as I have previously proved, and often these systems are mutual exclusive. If there is one system the errors that a dysklexic student or a normal student make would be reduced. But that is not the only benefit. Children will be able to spell more quickly and more accurately. Adults also will be able to spell more quickly and more accurately. I have devised two systems of reformed spellings, which are both quicker than standard spelling. In the first system, the sentence before the last one would be represented as 'Udults awlso wil bee aibul tu spel mor kwiklee en mor akurutlee'. In the second system, it would be represented as, 'Udults ąlso wyl bi ębul tu spel mor kwykli en mor akurutli.' In the standard spelling, that sentence has fifty-five characters. In my first system, it has fifty-two characters. In my second system it has forty-seven characters. That's a reduction of three and eight characters respectively. It doesn't seem like much, but once someone has mastered the new system, it means a reduction of typing time, or writing time by approximately five percent with the first system and twenty with the second system. And twenty percent less time typing means twenty percent more time thinking. Another reason for the adoption of spelling reform is that reformed spellings more accurately record the language that we actually speak. There are obvious differences between the language I am writing in and the language of Shakespeare, but there are no obvious differences between my language and that of Dickens, although there is a gulf of dialect, geography, and time between us. The great thing about Chaucer is that you can tell that's actually how he spoke. He spoke as he wrote. We owe it to the generations of the future to be able to show how we spoke. There are many traditionalists who would have an apoletic fit if you suggested to them that maybe they should use a revised spelling system, which leads me to my next point. How pratical is this idea, really? Isn't it just the idea of a bunch of crack pots?
There are valid reasons to consider the idea, the most important of which is that written English is drifting farther and farther away from spoken English. Words are symbols for things, and the written word is a further abstraction. Because spelling is a human invention, the product of human choices, it can be improved. There is no 'natural' way to spell in English. In the past hundred years there have been many different attempts to reform spelling. They have all failed. The reasons for their failure have been various, but I would say that any attempt to reform the spelling of English everywhere is going to fail. English is a world language, and no one is in charge. This is a disadvantage, but it is also an incredible advantage. You can write English any way you want, and this is what this essay is an attempt to do, to start to reform English from the grassroots up. The critics say that this attempt at reform will be horribly expensive because we will have to reprint millions of books. We can keep those books and the ability to read them. I think that there should be two systems of spelling, the standard which will remain in place as it is of obvious benefit for international communication, and a series of reformed systems for different national dialects, or regional dialects of English. What I envision is that people outside of schools, outside of governments will start to reform their spelling. Maybe you could try? Here is a system which is easy to master and understand. Send this essay to your friends, start writing with the new systems and let's see if we can make it catch on democratically.
Two Options for the Future
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this essay, I have devised two reformed systems of spelling for English. They are both based on my dialect of English, which is Canadian English, as it is the only one which I can speak about with any authority. Although the two systems are slightly different, they share the same basic philosophy. That philosophy is that one letter or one combination of letters should always represent the same sound. There are no silent letters. There are no variations in spelling. Variation is spelling is only due to variation in pronounication and not idiosyncrcy. The first system, Levertonian Orthography is designed for people who are frightened by the concept of accents, which is probably most monolingual speakers of English. It is slightly less effecient than the second system, but still an improvement over standard. The second system, Kanuk, is more efficient but probably less practical and attractive as it relies heavily on accent. Although they both look like foreign languages, they are English, and the average person can learn to recognize them and use them in a few weeks.
Levertonian Orthography
This chart shows the Levertonian system of orthography, and how it corresponds with standard othography.
Standard Phoneme Levertonian
ax = a = aks
edge = e = ej
it = i = it
fox = aw = fawks
hook = ou = houk
cup = u = kup
eel = ee = eel
ooze = ew = ewz
eye = ae = ae
ache = ai = aik
over = o = ovur
boy = oi = boi
under = u = undur
how = ow = how
boy = b = boi
church = c = curc
door = d = dor
floor = f = flor
good = g = goud
hello = h = helo
juice = j = jews
king = k = king
love = l = luv
money = m = munee
new = n = new
pin = p = pin
rake = r = raik
sleet = s = sleet
shoe = x = xew
tail = t = tail
that = q = qat
very = v = vairee
when = w = wen
yes = y = yes
is = z = iz
pleasure = zh = plezhur
bring = ng = bring
' represents a glottal stop, as in the words, little, and bottle, and uncertainly.
Kanuk
This chart shows the Kanuk system of orthography and how it corresponds to Standard orthography.
ax = a = aks
edge = e = eż
it = y = yt
fox = ą = fąks
hook = ou = houk
cup = u = kup
eel = i = il
ooze = ó = óz
eye = ae = ae
ache = ai = aik
over = o = ovur
boy = oi = boi
under = u = undur
how = ow = how
boy = b = boi
church = c = curc
door = d = dor
floor = f = flor
good = g = goud
hello = h = helo
juice = j = jós
king = k = kyń
love = l = luv
money = m = muni
new = n = nó
pin = p = pyn
rake = r = ręk
sleet = s = slit
shoe = ś = śó
tail = t = tęl
that = q = qat
very = v = vęri
when = w = wen
yes = j = jes
is = z = yz
pleasure = ź = pleźur
bring = ń = bryń
' represents a glottal stop, as in the words, little, and bottle, and uncertainly.
The First Poem (Standard)
the first poem is the hardest
the moment before the plunge
the delicious uncertainty
I have never woken up
beside you sleeping
though god I want to
that the aftermath of these moments
I asked the conquesting stars
how they entice the shy planets to dance
a mute and silent response
so dance with me until the timid light fades away
until the forever night swallows up
the tender sighs of the stumbling day.
Qu Furst Poum (Levertonian)
qu furst poum iz qu hardist
qu momunt bufor qu plunj
qu dulixus unsur'untee
Ae hav nevur wokun up
busaed yew sleeping
qo gawd Ae wawnt tew
qat an qu afdurmaq uv qeez momunts
Ae askt qu kawnkwesding starz
how qai entaes qu xae planuts tu dants
u myewt an saelunt ruspawnts
so dants wiq mee until qu timud laet faidz uwai
until qu furevur naet swawloz up
qu tendur saez uv qu stumbling dai.
Qu Furst Poum (Kanuk)
qu furst poum yz qu hardyst
qu momunt bufor qu plunź
qu dulyśus unsur'unti
Ae hav nevur wokun up
busaed jó slipyń
qo gąd Ae wąnt tó
qat an qu afdurmaq uv qiz momunts
Ae askt qu kąnkwesdyń starz
how qę entaes qu śae planuts tu dants
u mjót en saelunt ruspąnts
so dants wyq mi untyl qu tymud laet fędz uwę
untyl qu furevur naet swąloz up
qu tendur saez uv qu stumblyń dę.
