RITE RULES

Sixteen Majic-e-Oanly RITE English (MORE) speling rules
In all cases we start with the wurd as speld in traditional English spelling (TS).

1. Vowls hav long and short karacters.* The names of the vowls indicate thayr long sownds: a, e, i, o, u. Short vowls ar as in bat, bet, bit, hot, hut, happy.
2. Finel vowls ar long in singel silabel wurds: me, I, go, yu, by
3. Oenly E has majic property of making a vowl, in vCe (vowl/Consonant/e) form, long. In vCe form 'e> is allways majic. It is somtimes majic in
vChe form as wel. (This IS ambiguus and rekwires that the reader ges and the riter lern which wurds hav the long vowl.)
4. Vowl pairs: when too vowls ar tugether, the first is long and the sekond short, if expressd at all. i/de-/a, air, dear, di/al
Medeal long vowls ar represented by; ai, ee, ie, oa, ui
when needed tu replase undesignated vowls as in moast, replie, uinited,
5. AW, OW, EW, OY, ar used in plase of the misleading comparabel TS vowl pairs (au, ou, eu, oi).
6. Y is a long vowl at end of mono-sillabel wurds: ply, my, shyâ€¦ even when preseeded or folloed by an afix: crying, implyed, shyly...   Y is short in multisillabel wurds: marry, happy, poney, partly...
7. Y is a consonant when it is the first letter of wurd or silabel: yak, yule, yelloeâ€¦ and medeally: milyon, rejoyse... In the terminal posizhon it has the sownd of Y in the TS wurd, "body".
8. OO, an exepshon, is "oo" as in "zoo" or "noon" or "tool" or "bamboo" or "poopoo" or as in "zoolojy"...
UH is the sownd in: cuhd, puht, buhk, shuhd, bruhk, wuhd, fuht, luhk...
9. AH is used tu indicate the sownd in: fahther, pah (pa), lah (la), ahnt... /AR/ may hav a similar sownd as in: car, bargan, regard...
10. Finel O is long: radeo, vidyo, peano, follo
11. Finel E may soffen the sownd of /s/: siense, please, wunse (as in TS)
12. Consonants hav wun sownd, modifyed significantly oanly by a folloing 'h> (ch, sh, th, zh, wh)
Exepshons tu the TS consonants ar defined here:
C = ch curc, whic, comp (temporarily, 'ch' is used; church, which, chomp...)
temporarily C = k befor a, o, u, and consonants.
J = j jay, jet, jig, jog, juj, jinjer...
G = g gag, get, git, got, gun, gy...
QU = kw and is allowd for posterity: quak or kwak, quiet or kwiet.... But; likker, anteke,
The di-grafs belo represent singel fonemes and MeO may wurk thru them.
SH = sh        she, sho, ash, speshal, ship, ashor... and replases SCH when so sownded; shist, shmo
TH = th (boath aspirated and voysed)      thin, this, thare, that, thus, tho, wether...
WH = hw (until such time that 'hw bekoms axeptabel)
X is short for ks: next, exit, exekute... (NO majic e funktshon)
Z = z zooâ€¦   chooz...    seizâ€¦ (not "sease") fazeâ€¦ (not "fase") freezâ€¦
ZH = zh vizhon, plezhure... (temporarily, 'sh' may be used)

13. L, temporarily, when folloed by m, l, f, or d, chainjes the sownd of the preseeding vowl: calm, palm, salm, hall, all, mall, half, calf, cold, hold... (The MORE speling of the sownds in "could" is 'cuhd'.) Eventually, these spelings wil be replased; cahm, hawl, cahf, hoald.
14. Sufix -shen has the majic-e funkshon: stashen, speshalizashen, kreashen. Similarly: revolushen, disilushen, oshen... Otherwise, sufix -shon is used. revolshon, ignishon...
15. Sufixes /anse, ant/ ar used unless majic-e funkshon is needed or meaning is derived from pronownseashon. Then use /ense, ent/: repent, pendant, extent, extant, ???
16. Kompownd wurds ar made with hole root wurds and hole sufixes and prefixes: kombust/abel, tranquil/ity, equal/ize, konsise/ly, easy/ly, pre/ambel, pronownse/-ashen, book/keep/or, abel/ly,
17. DELETED {The sufix /or/ is used when the wurd refers tu a person or when the majic-e funcshon is misleading: actor, doctor, baker, reador, teacor, murderor, fishormen...}

Pete Boardman
Groton, NY, USA
April 1, 2000 revised 11/29/01
* * * * * * * * * * *

RITE speling considerashens
compiled by Pete B.
I. Begin with the tradishonal spelling (TS) of English as indicated in British and American dicshonarys.
II. Use oanly the 26 letters of the English alfabet, withowt diacritics or speshal karacters.
III. Aproach the alfabetic prinsipal: letters indicate wun sownd or closely related sownds.
IV. Retain as much of the look, format, and forward and bakward compatabelity with TS as possabel.
V. Reduse the use of unnessesary or redundant letters.
VI. Considder the owtcoms (spelings) efect on boath TS adept and new spelors and readors, and on lerners from boath nativ English and forin speech.

...
THE RITE OBJECTIVES (Compiled by... with comants by Doug*)
...
OVERALL OBJECTIVE: Reducing the irregularities in English (RITE) spellings.
APPROACH: This objective can be accomplished by...
a. Establishing a set of graphemes that, to the extent possible, uniquely represents each phoneme of English speech.
b. Governing the use of the graphemes with a simple set of rules to indicate how wurds are to be spelled, including clear rules to distinguish between the uses of graphemes that represent more than one speech sound, and those that redundantly represent the same speech sound as another grapheme.
c. Revising the spellings of wurds accordingly, including cutting letters that contribute nothing to the pronunciations of wurds.
...

*This diverges from the emerging consensus that I think says we leev most
(especially mor problematical/ controversial) changes for unspecified later
stages, make no reference to eny change except to list/package we suggest,
but try to incorporate as much as possible of the worst spelling problems.*

...
APPROACH: Avoid ambiguity by ...
a. Using the a, e, i, o, and u followed by two or more consonants, or a
doubled consonant, to represent the short vowel speech sounds in initial or
medial position.
b. Using the a, e, i, o, and u to represent a short vowel speech sound in
the penultimate position of a base wurd ending in a single consonant, or
using the a to end a base wurd.
c. Using the a, e, i, o, or u followed by a single consonant and the
'magic-e' in a V-C-E sequence to represent the vowel preceding the
consonant in either initial or medial position as being a long vowel.
d. Using the ai, ee, y, oa, or ue graphemes to represent the long vowels in
either initial or medial position when the vowel sound is followed by two or
more consonants.
e. Using the ay, ee, y, o, or ue graphemes to represent the long vowels in
finel position in base wurds, except change the ee to a single e when adding
the -ing suffix, and change the o to the oa when adding suffixes other than
the -ing, and except use "be" and "the" for these frequently used wurds.
f. Identifying as a long vowel the first of two vowel letters presented in
sequence in which the letter sequence does not match one of the diphthongs
listed in item c, and is not the au, oi, oo, or ou grapheme.
...

*Some of this frazing may be useful in prezenting especially the dubbling
and vCv 'rules'. The overall message is a good summary of much of RITE I
think. -- de*

1a. GENERAL RULES. In order to identify the predominant pronunciation to guide choices in RITE spelling, we use Dictionary pronunciation guides. When there is a difference between a UK Received Pronunciation (RP) and a US General American (GA) pronunciation, we adopt the spelling which is shorter. If neither is shorter, we adopt the one nearest Traditional Spelling (TS). If none is nearer we leave the TS unreformed.

1b. Reformed spelling will not be compulsory. Whoever prefers an unreformed (TS) spelling may continue to use it.

1d. If a new word by these principles wood be spelt the same way as an existing RITE word and they don't have the same pronunciation, we refrain from changing. For instance we refrain from respelling TS waiter as RITE water, unless and until TS water is respelt in some possible reform in future yeers (eventually wauter).

2. CUT ALL REDUNDANT LETTERS, namely those which do not serve any function in the pronunciation of the word, eg hed for head, dout for doubt, exept for except, hankerchif for handkerchief, hav for have, foren for foreign, tho for though, wat for what, frend for friend, no for know, haf for half, nemonic for mnemonic, dam for damn, yung for young, sycological for psychological, ion for iron, iland for island, wach for watch, corse for course and coarse, sho for show, su for sioux.

3a.THE STRESSD SHORT VOWELS ar spelt 'a, e, i, o, u': and, sed, in, on, but. If this vowel is folloed by a consonant and a vowel, we dubble the consonant: havving, matter, enny, better, wimmen, difficult, offen, possible, munny, suddenly.

a) We dont double soft 'g, j, q, r' or 'x', eg vegetables, project, liquid, very, taxi, exept wen TS doubles it, either a "real" double, like 'rr' (carry), or a digraph "replacing" the double, eg 'dg' (edge), 'dj' (adjectiv), 'xc' (excelent). b) no doubling befor the endings '–ity, –ogy, -ic' (and their derivvativs), eg political, authority, ideology. c) no doubling where the result could lead to a mispronunciation, eg national, special. d) Short 'o/u' after 'w' or 'qu' remains 'wa' (in the US sum of them hav short u-sound), eg was, wat. e) Wen the 'c' befor 'e, i' and 'y' has tu be dubbled, we uze 'ss': antissipate for 'anticipate'.

3b. We'l spel short 'oo' (good) with 'oo', exept wen TS spels 'u': cood, but put.

4a. STRESSD LONG VOWELS exept long E ar spelt with the vowel letters a, i, o, u (caos, idea, bias, poet, fuel, baby, biker, over, during). If thair is no vowel sound after the folloing consonant, we uze magic e (made,like, home, huge). Befor consonant clusters we use AI-EE-Y-OA-EU (chainge, fynd, oanly, neuclear). At the end of root words AY-Y-O-EU (thay-ways-by-bys-so-new-news).

a) Derivvativs of final 'o': 'oing/oe': going, noen (known), goes. b) Long 'o' befor L + consonant is spelt 'ol+consonant': old, told.

Becos of the variation in UK and US pronunciation, the sounds /yu:/ and /u:/ ar considderd long 'u' (dune, not american doon), unless thay ar reprezented by 'o', by a vowel combination starting with 'o', or at the end of a base word after L, R and CH, in wich case thay ar considderd long 'o' - see belo)

4b. Long 'e' as in 'complete' is spelt 'e' befor anuther vowel (theory) and in the words 'be, he, me, she, we'. In uther cases it is spelt 'ee' (peeple, eeven).

4c. The long oo-sound of 'boot' is spelt 'oo': room, groop, exept in final position, where it is spelt 'u': tu, flu. Wen thees hav an inflection starting with a consonant and keep thair vowel sound, thay revert tu 'oo': hoos, trooth.

5. a) The suffix '–ly' is considderd tu constitute a seprat word and dus not afect the spelling of the root word, eg slitely, hyly. b) We considder short 'o' the sound represented by 'o', not the wun represented by 'a' (we dont considder 'father' and 'bother' a rime, as menny americans wood du). c) In final 'consonant + le' or '+ re', thees sillables ar treeted as starting with a vowel (wen it reflects the pronunciation), so we spel little, able, acre. If it is spelt '-er' in the US, we spel -'er', eg center.

6. UNSTRESSD VOWELS: RITE dusnt solv this problem in stage 1, but: Unstressd final short I (wich sum peeple mite call an unstressd long 'e' (ee)) is spelt 'y', eg really, coffy, with derivvativs 'ied/ies', eg cuntries.

7.2 The /ks/ sound is spelt 'x', eg six, suxess, exept wen the sound includes an inflection, eg books.

7.3 The /z/ sound is spelt with a 'z', eg az, becoz, exept where the sound is an inflection, eg has (from have - no 's'), was, is (from 'be' - no 's'), yeers, ways, Johns.

http://www.factmonster.com/

MORE Rules

RITE RULES