Friedo's Suggestions for Spelling Reform

Great Debates
1

It seems to me, that English, as a language, really sucks. I spent a few years studying Manderin Chinese. Never got particularly good at it, but one aspect was extremely interesting. Over there in the land of people we like to pretend are not communists, they have a system called pinyin, which is their system for using Roman characters as written language, instead of the traditional Chinese idiographs. The system is extraordinarily simple and is always consistent. This is because it was invented after the fact, and did not evolve over thousands of years with the language. If you heard any word, you could write it down correctly. It’s almost impossible to misspell something in pinyin.

Spelling in English is convoluted, inconsistent, and hard to master, even if you are learning English as your first language. I have, therefore, come up with some suggestions for reforming English spelling. These will make spelling much more intuitive and easier to learn. Note that there may be a few flaws in my system, as I probably have not thought about the full ramifications in a lot of detail. Most words affected by the changes will be shorter, but some will be longer. All in all, everything will be easier to read.

  1. Eliminate the letter X.
    The letter X is entirely useless. In most cases, it can be replaced with “ks.” In other cases, with “z.”

wax --> waks
box --> boks
Xerxes --> Zerkses

  1. Eliminate the letter Q.
    In English, Q is almost universally followed by U. This sound can be better represented by “kw.” This also makes U less ambiguous.

quite --> kwite

  1. (This is the controversal one) Eliminate the letter C.
    C has three uses, as a hard consonent (as in consonent) an alternative to S (as in nice) and has a modifer to H (as in chair). The first two uses are ambiguous, as these sounds are the natural territory of S and K.

I have chosen to keep “sh” instead of “ch,” because in my mind, it seems that “sh” is closer to “s” than “ch” is to “c.” Thus, words requiring a “ch” will get a “tsh.”

nice --> nise
comb --> komb
chair --> tshair

Now, as for vowels. One of the most illogical items in English spelling is the concept of the Silent E. In most cases, you must look to the end of the word to determine the correct intonation of the vowel. (Such as creed, cake, or muse.) We need to abolish the Silent E. Instead, we will use accents above our vowels to indicate the pronounciation. I don’t know how to create these nifty characters on my American keyboard, so I will use an apostrophe to indicate an accent. “Long” vowels will have an accent, and “short” vowels will not. Thus:

cake --> cak
creed --> cred
bike --> bik
bloke --> blok
muse --> mus

And:

smack --> sma’ck
speck --> spe’ck
spit --> spi’t
pop --> po’p
putz --> pu’tz

And finally, some miscellaneous items:

Abolish “ck” in favor of “k.”
Abolish “ph” in favor of “f.”
Abolish double-ending-consonents, i.e. putt, puff.
Abolish “gh” in favor of “f” and get rid of silent “gh”.

My next challenge will be to actually write something coherent with my new rules.

Anyhoo, debate away.

Edited for vB coding

[Edited by Coldfire on 01-08-2001 at 07:50 AM]

2

Problem with this and all other schemes for spelling reform is that most spelling idiosyncracies made sense at one time. Peoples speech and pronunciation changed over the centuries, leaving many spellings in the dust. Any new scheme will be good for a while, only to fall victim to the same problem.

3

It’s sort of ironic that i’m typing this while running late for phonetics class, but whatever. The problem with spelling reform is, on the basis of whose pronunciation would you base it? English, since it is so widely spread, has very wide pronunciation variation. On one hand, to represent the southern US you’d need to make e and i the same (pin /pIn/ vs. pen /pIn/), but to represent England you’d have to split w into w and wh (wail /weil/ and whale /Weil/).

Note too that English spelling in some cases doesn’t even try to be phonemic, but rather morphophonemic: consider the plural -s or -es, which never loses its s even though it can be pronounced /z/, /s/, or /@z/.

4

By the way, the u in your example of muse is incorrect, since it’s pronounced /mjuz/, not */muz/ “mooze”.

5

O’lso, yu wi’ll ha’f tu di’sti’ngwish be’twen the “th” sound i’n “that” a’nd the “th” in “ba’th.” I su’gje’st “dh” for the’ forme’r

Yu wi’l a’lso ha’f tu co’nsi’de’r dha’t E’ngli’sh ha’z me’ne mor vo’we’l soundz tha’n si’mple lo’ng a’nd short wu’nz. (BTW, I thi’nk dha’t yu ha’v dhe de’fi’ni’shi’nz for lo’ng a’nd short vo’we’lz ba’kwe’rdz. Dha’t’s the wa I le’rnd dhe’m e’ne’wa.) A’nd, o’v kours, a’z matt_mcl pointe’d out, dhar a’r me’ne reji’ne’l vareashi’nz a’nd a’kse’nts, tu dhe speke’rz o’v wi’tsh dhe nu si’sti’m wu’d be mor a’kwe’rd tha’n dhe old one beku’z i’t wu’d be dzhu’st a’s kounte’ri’ntui’ti’v.

Dhen, o’v kours, i’f we raz tshi’ldri’n le’rni’ng dhi’s si’stem e’xclusi’vle, we wi’ll ha’f tu repri’nt o’l of our old books, me’ne o’v wi’tsh wi’l be out o’v pri’nt, so no pu’bli’shing hous wi’ll wa’nt to repri’nt dhe’m. Or, we kood tetsh dhe’m dhe kuren’t si’ste’m o’lso, bu’t dhe’n, wu’t’s dhe point of dhe nu wu’n? I’n orde’r for it tu ha’v a pe’rpu’s, pepl wood ha’f tu no’t ned to le’rn dhe old wun. Dhi’s wood a’lso re’kwir a’l u’dhe’r I’ngli’sh speki’ng ku’ntrez tu u’do’pt dhe nu si’ste’m a’z we’l, or e’ls pepl o’v dhe nashu’nz dha’t yuz dhe si’ste’m wi’l be u’nabl tu red pu’bli’cashi’nz fru’m dhe o’dhe’r ku’ntrez. I’t wi’ll o’lmost se’rti’nle beku’m ne’se’sare tu le’rn dhe old si’ste’m. Evi’n i’f dhe nu si’ste’m di’d ke’tsh o’n, i’t wood tak ge’ne’rashi’nz befor i’t bekam une’si’sare tu le’rn dhe old wu’n, i’f e’ve’r. O’l tu e’li’mi’nat spe’li’ng are’rz.

No thanks, we should just stick with getting Newspeak to catch on. a language plusgood is

6

I just have to mention that i saw a commercial recently for a promotion by the Good Guys, an electronics chain here in California (could be elsewhere, i don’t know).

they have something called “Double Good” prices. i stopped in my tracks when i heard this nonsense. Orwell must be rolling in his grave…

7

Freido, I pretty much spell that way now.

8

George Bernard Shaw suggested that too.

when i took, but didn’t learn, spanish the teacher said they didn’t have spelling bees in spanish, because the language was easy to spell. we waste a lot of childrens time learning dumb spellings.

when i was six i tried singing MY BONNY LIES OVER THE OCEAN form childcraft books. of course i was singing OH KEEN. dumb kid.

Dal Timgar

9

Here’s a suggestion. Use “jh” for the “ch” sound. The “jh” combination is unused and the “j” sound is close to the “ch” sound.

10

Oh sure, and while we’re at it let’s change over to the metric system too! :smiley:

11

Metric spelling? Do all words have to be 10 letters long?

12

There have been many, many proposals to reform English spelling over the years.

All of them have failed, usually for the reason matt_mcl cites.

One of the more recent attempts was called “Kanadean”. Remember Kanadean? I thought not.