Truespel
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Truespel is a spelling reform proposal.
[edit] Truespel - A "Pronunciation Guide" Writing/Spelling System
Truespel is a "pronunciation guide writing/spelling system." It is based on USA English and is keyboard friendly - which the creator, Tom Zurinskas, believes is a big improvement over other pronunciation guides.
It's a writing system because it uses normal caps and punctuation. It's a pronunciation guide because it suggests a phonetic spelling that shows stress in words. Zurinskas has chosen to make it English friendly because he believes English is the most important language. As support for this view he claims that "95% of the scientific journals are in English."
In support of his system, Zurinskas offers a conversion system on his website, including a web text converter. He encourages readers to use the URL Converter on his website [1].
[edit] Truespel's Attempt to Represent USA English pronunciation
For USA English, Zurinskas has attempted to make truespel "more accurate" than other dictionaries. He claims that he has succeeded though no phonologist or phonetician has confirmed or supported this claim. He has rewritten 63,000 English words in "truespel," attempting to clarify all "vague" symbols, such as schwa, in an American accent. He claims that his "improvements bring the quality up to a 15% improvement over most dictionaries in terms of phonetic accuarcy [sic]." His book Beginner's Dictionary of USA English: Truespel Book 3 gives the Voice of America's Intermediate Dictionary a truespel pronunciation guide (authorhouse.com). Of another of his books, he claims "Truespel Book Two gives a large USA English Spelling guide based on finding the word in truespel to see how its [sic] spelled in tradspel (authorhouse.com)."
Zurinskas uses "tradspel" to mean traditional spelling.
[edit] Integration of language learning, pronouncing, translating, researching
With truespel Zurinskas intends "to replace current dictionary pronunciation guides, with a simple, easy to remember guide." He believes that the system will allow "truespel to be used as an initial teaching aid for children." He further claims "Children can be taught both to read and write at the same time with truespel in just a matter of months." Whether or not there is any research of any sort to support this claim is not clear. He also claims that the transition to "tradspel" is facilitated by "truespel's" resemblance to traditional spelling. He also suggests "Children taught to read with truespel always have the truespel dictionary to lean on for pronunciation." He also speaks of plans to expand his system to transcribe other languages. He says they "will be respelled in truespel so that pronunciation of translation guides for truespel adepts will be easy."
[edit] Truespel Analyzes How the Alphabet Spells USA English Sounds
Zurinskas hopes that truespel will be used as a research tool. "Because no special characters are used to spell phonemes," he says, "the truespel database is easily accessible for phoneme frequency analysis using spreadsheets." Of two of his books he says "Truespel Books One and Four analyze USA English in a new way (authorhouse.com)." In Book One he claims to analyze the full data set of 60,000 words, while in Book Four he claims to analyze the 5,000 most "popular" words and sort the phonemes in terms of how often they are used in most used words.
[edit] How Truespel Works
Mr Zurinskas offers the following guide to the "truespel" system.
"Truespel is a replacement pronunciation guide for our dictionaries, presently for USA English only. It can be learned quickly by USA English literate folks and be readable within a few minutes, but it takes an hour or so of practice to use. Below is all the initial familiarization you need.
A little story contains all the sounds of USA English: 'That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog. Look out I shout, for he's foiled you again, creating chaos.' Now written in truespel: 'That kwik baezh faaks jumpd in thee air oever eech thhin daug. Look out ie shout for heez foild yue uggen, kreeyyaeteeng (kree”aeteeng) kaeyaas (kae’aas). This short story is actually a complete tutorial on truespel. It contains all 40 sounds of USA English and illustrates the two rules you need to know about truespel. Note that 'creating chaos' can be said with a 'y-glide' or not.
Two Truespel Rules. There are two rules to truespel, the stress rule and glottal stop rule.
To be a pronunciation guide truespel must show primary stress in a word. Truespel does this by having the first syllable in a word be the default stressed syllable then showing stress on other syllables by preceding them with a double consonant, for example 'desert,dessert.' For the consonants spelled with two letters, stress is indicated by doubling the first letter; e.g., ch/cch sh/ssh, th/tth, thh/tthh, zh/zzh.
The glottal stop is shown by most spelling systems as an apostrophe. An example is bottle being shown as bo’le, where the 'tt' is replaced by the nonsound of compressing the larynx rather than making a 't'. In truespel the apostrophe is used the same way, in essence coming between two vowels, especially when the pronunciation of a consonant is dropped, such as when the 'tt' is dropped in saying 'bottle.' The apostrophe thus separates two vowels next to each other, e.g. chaos (kae’aas). When the second vowel is stressed, the apostrophe is doubled (quote sign), so 'created' become 'kree”aetid' in truespel. (Note that 'creating chaos' could be truespeld 'kreeyyaeteeng kaeyaas' if pronunciation has a distict 'y' instead of a glottal stop.)
That's it for learning truespel. There are 40 phonemes and two rules to learn. The rest is practice in spelling what you hear, achieving phonetic awareness. The spelling key of the 40 USA English phonemes is below. (note that ~ means phonetically spelled in truespel Truespel - 17 USA English vowels - sample words. (Here for vowels, all sample words are spelled similarly in truespel)
~a – pat, ~aa – Saab, ~ae - sundae, ~air - air, ~au – auger, ~e – pet, ~ee – see, ~er – her, ~i – pit, ~ie – pie, ~oe – toe, ~oi - void, ~oo – look, ~or – or, ~ou – out, ~u – up, ~ue – blue,
Truespel – 23 USA English consonants – sample words. (Two words would be spelled differently in truespel – ~thhin and ~vizhin)
~b – but, ~ch – chin, ~d – did, ~f – fun, ~g – get, ~h – hat, ~j – jet, ~k – kit, ~l – let, ~m – men, ~n – nap, ~p – pen, ~r – run, ~s – sun, ~sh – ship, ~t - tap, ~th - that, ~thh - thin, ~v - van, ~w - win, ~y - yes, ~z - zip, ~zh – vision,
~q = Spanish 'r' with one trill, ~rq = Spanish 'r' with muli-trills,
[edit] Truespel Books by Thomas E. Zurinskas Available at Authorhouse.com
Truespel Book One: Analysis of the Sounds (Phonemes) of USA English Truespel Book One is a unique analysis of USA English. It takes the 60k word truespel database and analysis the frequency of phonemes and phoneme spellings. It also takes pronunciation samples of words in 13 other popular world languages and compares the phoneme set to the USA English phoneme set. This book should be standard reading for those interested in USA English phonetics
Truespel Book Two: Phonetic Dictionary of USA English Published in April 2006, Truespel Book Two is a large phonetic dictionary with an interesting twist. This dictionary gives the phonetic word first alphabetized, so the reader looks up a word as it sounds written in truespel notation to find the traditional spelling of the word. The book is 300 pages with over 30k words.
Beginner's Dictionary of USA English: Truespel Book 3: From the Voice of America Intermediate English Dictionary This dictionary takes the Voice of America Dictionary, which is missing a pronunciation guide, and adds one in truespel. The 1,500 words of the dictionary are those used in simplified VOA broadcasts worldwide. Additionally, the second half is a “reverse” dictionary, listing words phonetically first, in truespel. Thus, words that are heard but not yet seen can be looked up in the phonetics first section
The Alphabet and Sounds of USA English: Truespel Book 4 This book is similar to Truespel Book One in that it analyzes the frequency of letters and sounds, but it takes a different perspective. It analyzes the 5k most popular words and considers the number of times these words are used in general text. Thus the results are typical of phoneme usage in speech. The sample size is 15.4 million words. The ten most popular words for each sound are given. A unique table shows the relative frequency of all sounds to each other. No reference library is complete without this unique work.
