SoundSpel

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SoundSpel is an English language spelling reform proposal. Its origins date back to 1910.^[1]

SoundSpel has been endorsed by the American Literacy Council^[2] because English speakers can easily read it.^[3]

Contents 1 Description 1.1 Phonetics 1.2 Exceptions and other differences 2 Examples 2.1 The Star 2.2 Britten when yung 2.3 Oed to a Nietingael 3 History 4 Advantages 5 Disadvantages 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

[edit] Description

[edit] Phonetics

Phonemes are represented as follows:^[4]

Notation	Vowel of
a	sat
e	set
i	did
o	dot
u	cut

Notation	Vowel of
ae	formulae
ee	see
ie	die
oe	doe
ue	cue

Notation	Vowel of
ar	bar
er	merger
or	for

Notation	Vowel of
arr	marry
err	cherry
orr	sorry

Notation	Vowel of
air	air
aa	alm
eer	beer
oo	moon
uu	book
oi	oil
ou/ow	out
au/aw	saw
ur	tour

Notation	As used in
b	bat
c/k	cat, kit
ch	chat
d	did
f	fat
g	gag
h	hat
j	jet
l	let
m	met
n	net
ng	song, ringing
nk	ink
p	pep
q	quake
r	red
s	set
sh	shed
t	tot
th	thin
th	this
v	van
w	war
wh	why
x	box
y	yes
z	zoo
zh	azure

[edit] Exceptions and other differences

U, meaning you, is always capital.

No change in was, as, of, the, he, she, me, we, be, do, to, thru, off, -ful, and their compounds such as being, together, thruout, offer, helpful.

No change in plural-s (jobs ), possessive-s (man's), and in 3d person present tense singular (he runs), even though the s is pronounced z.

No change in the letter pair 'th'-- which occurs more frequently than any consonant digraph. Similarly the letter 'x' is retained for both voiced (gz) and unvoiced (ks). The unvoiced occurrences outnumber the voiced 5 to 1, and words normally calling for voiced-x are understood even if pronounced with an unvoiced x.

No change in the spelling of short (schwa) vowels in the unstressed syllables of words like organ, novel, pensil, lemon -- unless the spelling clearly misleads in a deliberate overpronunciation of the word, as in "mountain".

Depending on its position in the word or root, the unstressed "½-ee" continues to be spelled e i or y| the unstressed syllables of between, detect, reform, champion, editorial, hapyest, fifty.

rr, as in traditional orthography, indicates that the preceding vowel is short -- carry, merry, sorry.

ll indicates that the preceding 'a' is pronounced 'aw' fall, tall, call.

The long-O or long-I sound at the end of a word may be written with a single letter -- banjo, go, so, alibi, hi, fli, mi (--but banjoes, alibieing, flies, etc.)

A hyphen following a vowel indicates that that vowel is long: re-enter, co-operaet.

If two vowels -- such as ea -- do not match a digraph on the SoundSpel chart, then the syllable ends with the first vowel: react (ea is not a digraph), jeenius, memorial, creaetiv, etc. In cases of more than 2 vowels the syllable ends with the first digraph: flooid (oo, being the first digraph, ends the syllable -- not flooid), hieest, freeing, inueendo, power, continueing, paeabl, evalueaet.^[5]

[edit] Examples

^[6]

[edit] The Star

It was on the ferst dae of the nue yeer the anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that the moeshun of the planet Neptune, the outermoest of all planets that wheel about the Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in the reejon of the perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found the intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that the nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum the orderly progres of the planets. – Herbert George Wells

[edit] Britten when yung

We mae nowadaes be chairy about uezing the werd "jeenius", but we stil hav a guud iedeea whut is ment bi it. For exampl, thair ar graet numbers of verry gifted muezishans hoo ar admierd but not calld jeeniuses. But thair ar uthers, manifestly prodijus, performing offen at extraordinerrily erly aejes, a varieety of feets so complex that the muezical laeman cuud hardly imajin, eeven with the moest desperet laebor, acomplishing eny of them, whiel eeven muezishans ar astonisht and we then reech for the guud, handy, vaeg Enlietenment werd and call them jeeniuses. The list incloods Mozart and Mendelssohn; and, despiet all the limiting jujments, it incloods Benjamin Britten. – Frank Kermode

[edit] Oed to a Nietingael

Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paens Mi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk, Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draens Wun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not thru envy of thi hapy lot, But beeing too hapy in thien hapynes, That thow, liet-wingèd Dryad of the trees, In sum meloedius plot Of beechen green, and shadoes numberles Singest of sumer in fuul-throeted eez. – John Keats

[edit] History

In 1910 philologist Alexander John Ellis played a major role in developing a system now known as "Classic New Spelling". Walter Ripman and William Archer wrote the first dictionary of the system, "New Spelling" (NuSpelling), which was republished in 1941 by the Simplified Spelling Society.^[7]

In 1969 Godfrey Dewey improved upon Ripman's and Archer's work, producing "World English Spelling". Dewey and Edward Rondthaler, a prominent typesetter, CEO of International Typeface Corporation, corresponded from 1971.

In 1986 the book "Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling" written by Rondthaler and Edward Lias was published by the American Language Academy. Its full title was "Dictionary of American spelling: A simplified alternative spelling for the English language : written as it sounds, pronounced as it's written". This called for improvements to spelling, with clearer rules and better grapheme/ phoneme correspondence. It was slightly less strict than Classic New Spelling, allowing "the" rather than "dhe", for example.

The system was further reformed from 1987 on and became SoundSpel.

[edit] Advantages

Compared to other proposals

• Does not introduce any new symbols, unlike Pitman's Initial Teaching Alphabet, Unifon, and the Shavian and Deseret alphabets.

• Relies upon familiar digraphs.

• Does not assign unusual notations for sounds (ex. using q for the ng sound), except for 'uu' and 'zh'.

• Does not introduce diacriticals (such as accents), which are generally not favored in English-speaking countries.^[8][9]

• Does not dramatically change the appearance of existing words.

• Due to above reasons, is easier to learn, and especially easier to read, for those who are familiar with traditional English spelling, than other systems, such as those mentioned above.

Shared with other proposals

• Improves consistency of writing. This would reduce learning time and reading difficulties, compared to those of traditional English spelling.

• Also promotes more precise pronunciation in speech.^[10]

• Generally decreases text length by about 4% .^[11]

[edit] Disadvantages

• The phonetics of SoundSpel is primarily based upon "General American" and differs somewhat from the British "Received Pronunciation." There may be other small differences from Australian, Indian, South African, Canadian and other regional accents.

• SoundSpel is only one of many English spelling reform proposals. There is no agreement on what proposal, if any, should be adopted.

• Those already familiar with traditional spelling would need to learn a new system if it became the standard.

• Compromises and rule exceptions^*above make SoundSpel more difficult to learn than it would be if it was a purely phonetic system. Learning to write it directly would especially require effort, unless computer software is used as an aid.^[12]

• Either two systems would need to be learned in order to read both old and new literature, or the text of many books and printed materials would need to be translated to the new system, if traditional spelling is discontinued.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Spelling reform

[edit] External links

• SoundSpel
• "DoubleLine" Translator