NuEnglish

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NuEnglish (from New English) is English spelled phonemically. That is, NuEnglish has a perfect one-to-one correspondence between the spoken units (phonemes) and the written units (graphemes). It is intended to replace traditional English spelling, to aid all English language users: illiterates, native English-speaking children and adults, and people learning English.

NuEnglish uses the traditional Roman alphabet, with optional macrons (long marks) over the vowels. NuEnglish spelling is similar to traditional spelling, so that proficient English readers are able to learn the new spelling system in five minutes, and regain their former reading speeds in a few months.^[1]

1 History
2 NuEnglish spelling rules
3 Sample text
4 Notes

[edit] History

Bob Cleckler became passionately concerned about illiteracy in 1985. He first described NuEnglish in his book, Instant Literacy for Everyone in 1993. To present the problem and solution of illiteracy more clearly and forcefully, Cleckler wrote Let's End Our Literacy Crisis in 2005.

[edit] NuEnglish spelling rules

NuEnglish will not change how you speak English, only how you spell it. Every syllable of every word is to be spelled as you pronounce it, unless you feel that your readers will not understand what you write, in which case you should spell according to "Standard Broadcast English" pronunciation (the way radio and TV announcers and newspeople pronounce).

1. Each letter or combination of letters has only one sound, as follows:

5 short vowels: use A, E, I, O, and U for the more-often-used sounds, as in “That pet did not run.”

5 long vowels: use macrons (lines over vowels) for the less-often-used sounds, as in “Thā ēt frīd tōfū" (They eat fried tofu), or add an E to the vowels (AE, EE, IE, OE, or UE) if macrons are not available, as in “Mae Green tried roe glue”.

(Note: "short" and "long" as used here are traditional and popular, but not phonetic, terms.)

4 other vowel sounds: use AU, OO, OI, and OU for the sounds in “Haul good oil out.”

18 consonant sounds represented by a single letter: use the letters that are used most often as in “Yes, Val 'Zip' Kim hid our big fan-jet win.”

6 consonant sounds represented by digraphs (two letters): (1) use TH and TT for the sounds as in "then" and "thin", respectively; (2) use C ONLY in CH as in "chip"; (3) use SH and NG for the sounds in "wishing"; (4) use ZH in "muzhik", for the sound of Z in "azure", of S in "treasure", and of G in "massage".

use Q ONLY as follows: use Q (not QU) for the KW sound as "qit" ("quit").

use X ONLY as follows: use X for the KS sound of "exit", as in "suxes" ("success") and for CS, which has a KS sound, as in academic subjects: "fiz/ix", "mattemat/ix", and "ekonom/ix" ("physics", "mathematics", and "economics"). Use KS instead of X for plurals and possessives ending in K, as in "duks" and "duk's" ("ducks" and "duck's").

There are two "long U" sounds in English, as in few and sue. To distinguish them, NuEnglish spelling of the English word "fuel" (or the vowel of any word with this "long U" sound) is fyuel or fyūl. This is equivalent to adding the sound of the letter F before the English word yule.

Although some combinations of a vowel and a following "R" are actually phonemes, beginning students can learn these as combinations in the same way as they learn all other combinations of phonemes. The WH combination is actually a combination of the "H" and the "W" phonemes (in that order) but is spelled as WH to agree with traditional spelling and to be consistent with the spelling of the "CH, SH, TH," and "ZH" phonemes.

2. There are no silent letters and no double letters that make a single sound, except OO and TT—and EE if macrons aren't used.

3. All sounds must be shown, except for the NG sound in NK and NX, as in "bank" and "jinx".

4. For consistency, the "-able" and "-ible" suffixes are always written "-ubul" in NuEnglish, as in "kāp/ubul" and "ter/ubul" ("capable" and "terrible").

5. The spelling of proper names and trademarks ("John" and "Drano") are unchanged, except the names of the months and days ("Jan/yūerē", "Mun/dā", etc.), and proper nouns used as common nouns, as in "Mok" ("Mach [number]").

6. A slash (/) follows primary accented vowel unless the primary accent is on the last syllable, as in "emploiē" ("employee"). Insert a slash at a prefix or suffix boundary, as in "rē/tāl" and "in/stunt" ("retail" and "instant"); otherwise, include as many consonants as if the syllable were a separate word, as in "sil/ubul", "rēsept/ur", and "muth/ur" ("syllable", "receptor", and "mother").

7. Compound words (words composed of 2 or more words) are hyphenated, as in "hot-rod" and "fing/gur-print".

8. If pronunciation of proper nouns and trademarks needs to be shown, add the NuEnglish spelling between square brackets after the proper noun or trademark, as in "Matthew [Matt/yū]" and "Tylenol [Tīl/unaul]".

9. Use an apostrophe to show contractions, as in "kan't" for "kan not"), or possession, as in "Tom'z" ("Tom's").

10. The only deviation from phonemic spelling is for numbers of less than a million. Thus: "U 3-fōld in/krēs", "1 and 1 iz 2", "Sum-1 iz at thu dōr", and "Ī'l bē uwā fōr 4 dāz". The reasons are because numerals are universally understood, are very compact, and are easily distinguished from "won", "to", "too", "for", "fore", and "ate". Ordinal numbers are written as a numeral plus "tt" or "ett": "4tt", "10tt", "100tt", "20ett", "30ett", excepting "1st", "2nd", and "3rd", and the pronunciation of "5tt" (fiftt).

[edit] Sample text

From the Gospel According To St. John, New King James version

Thu Good Nūz uv John

In thu begin/ing wuz thu Wurd, and thu Wurd wuz witt God, and thu Wurd wuz God. Thu sām wuz in thu begin/ing witt God. Aul ttingz wur mād bī Him, and witt-out Him wuz not en/ē tting mād that wuz mād. In Him wuz līf, and thu līf wuz thu līt uv men. And thu līt shīn/utt in dork/nus, and thu dork/nus komprehend/ud it not.

Ther wuz u man sent frum God, hūz nām wuz John [Jon]. Thu sām kām for u wit/nus, tū ber wit/nus of thu Līt, that aul men ttrū him mīt belēv. Hē wuz not that Līt, but wuz sent tū ber wit/nus uv that Līt.

That wuz thu trū Līt, which līt/utt ev/rē man that kum/utt in-tū thu wurld. Hē wuz in thu wurld, and thu wurld wuz mād bī Him, and thu wurld nū Him not. Hē kām un/tū Hiz ōn, and Hiz ōn resēvd Him not. But az men/ē az rezēvd Him, to them gāv Hē pou/ur tū bekum thu sunz uv God, ēv/un tū them that belēv on Hiz nām: which wur bōrn, not uv blud, nor uv thu wil uv thu flesh, nor uv thu wil uv man, but uv God. And thu Wurd wuz mād flesh, and dwelt umung us, and wē beheld Hiz glōr/ē, thu glōr/ē uv thu ōn/lē begot/un uv thu Foth/ur, ful uv grās and trūtt.