in particular this link to a Mark Twain quote, mentioned inside the above thread
I want to (take your pick)
a) invent a new language,
or
b) simplify the spelling of an existing language, for example English
My ground rule is:
I want one letter per sound that you can make. A one-to-one correspondance, not like the english confusion where c is sometimes the same as s, and sometimes the same as k, and where k is redundant with q, and where you need two letters for some sounds, like th. In my alphabet, the f sound will always be an f. The z sound will always be a z. ph will always be written f. etc…
I know that I’ll have to write down foreign words sometimes, like Chinese place names, or Hawaiian proper names, so I need to have enough letters that I can also represent the sounds found in any other spoken language.
International Phonetic Alphabet is a place to start, and they cover most of the sounds used in languages. It says: “As of 2008, there are 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosodic marks in the IPA.” Up to you if you want to count diacritics or not; if not then your number shoots up.
Somewhat grinning at Arnold for asking this question. Troublemaker!
You’d need symbols for all the pronunciation keys mentioned by, say the Websters.
In addition, one could argue, any symbol in a foreign language with words commonly spoken in the US that did not correspond to the English pronunciation keys.
You could try to force people to use a simpler set, but that would fail, since language and pronunciation drifts. (“In America they haven’t spoken it for years!”)
(I missed the lurkinghorror’s message about the IPA, that might work, too.)
If you spell it wrong, people will think you’re full of skit.
I agree that the IPA is the best current solution to the problem as posed. This fact may induce the OP to pose a somewhat different problem. For example, Spanish has a near-perfect orthography that serves many divergent dialects. It only serves Spanish, however, which allows it to be quite simple.
You need 10 letters to make it the metric alphabet.
The 10 letters are:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
So some words are spelled the same, like BEEF -> BEEF
Other word look different, like DOG -> DJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZG
The thing about Esperanto is that it has only five vowels. English has at least a dozen. The vowels make the biggest difference between dialects; the consonants are much simpler. We need to figure out a way to mask differences between English dialects while still maintaining a regular spelling system. Otherwise England and America will sart to spell words like ‘cat’ differently.
Unless you’re doing this for a book or story or something, don’t. Reinventing the wheel is pointless. Every possible phoneme (basic unit of language-construction) has already been categorized and labeled via the International Phonetic Alphabet.
You would need exactly as many letters as there are IPA characters. Hie thee to Google, unless thy common sense doth preventeth thee fromst continuing.
Dunno if it’s relevant, bur if you’re looking for tiny languages, the Rotokas language, spoken on Papua New Guinea, apparently gets by with just 12 letters and 11 phonemes (why the extra letter? Pure extravagance, obviously.)
Yeah, but I was speaking of differences in English vowels across English dialects. Esperanto speakers can vary their vowels quite a bit more and still be understood; differences that would be understoon as different vowels in English merely sound like a strong accent in Esperanto.
Ymmm. Prolly should have mentioned that I’m a professional linguist who has a patent that’s widely used in commercial products. But, you know. It’s always amusing to give those people on drugs, with intellectual pretenses enough rope … such as r********