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| Just look them up - and goose
and choose
And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart - Come, come, I've hardly made a start! -Richard Lederer |
Jvst lwk them vp - a.nd
gus
a.nd chuz
A.nd kork a.nd wrk a.nd card a.nd word A.nd font a.nd fr'vnt a.nd wrd a.nd sord, A.nd du a.nd go' a.nd thwort a.nd kart - K'm, k'm, aiv hardly meid 'a start! -Rich'rd Led'r'r |
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All attempts at consistent spelling change the look of 60% of the words
The Problem About 50% of the words in English can't be spelt without memorizing
the dictionary. Students can usually spell words
in a foreign language better than they can spell in English.
How many ways can you spell a word in English? Orthographic options for dictionary spellings. The Problem with Spelling A little history on how English came to be the way it is. Irregularity in English Spelling 6,000 examples Excerpt from Breaking the Spell (1912) Six Axioms From Dekaspel to Unispel Valerie Yule
Spelling as
a Social Invention The reduced spelling proposal
Pidjins - Lessons
in simplification
George Bernard Shaw
on Spelling Reform.
The SpellRight explanation - Problem- Solution The Solutions note: remote links may not work Cut Spelng (CS) is a simplifyd, partialy regulrizd orthografy wich omits thre categris of misleadng letrs: the silent or redundant letters, the schwa or unstressed /uh/ sound when not the first syllable, and double letters. All clipped spelling proposals do this. CS also includes some substitutions: j for /j/, y for /ai/ when spelled "igh". [e.g. high = hy], f for ph. Removing the redundant letters and silent letters facilitates writing and typing, and can improve pronunciation and reading. Cut Spelling - in depth. Phased approach to a cut spelling reform (CS lite). Why bother? Simplified Spelling Society Page. New
Follick EuroSpel - an enhanced Spanish/Portuguese inspired orthography
for English based on IPA and continental sound values. Th'is
iz an egzamp'l 'v Nu Folik. NF EuroSpel iz a fu'ly regiularyzd orthogra'fi
hwich substitu:ts
a consistent saund syn for eni misli:ding wun. NF is augmented because
(bicoz) Spanish has only 5 vowels while English has l8. The Spanish vowels
are usually in the middle column.
Key featuresof Nu Folik: Schwapostrophe, Extenders: The key to simplified spelling is a seperate symbol for the obscure central vowel known as schwa because it is unrepresented in the English writing system. In NF terminal syllabic consonants mark the schwa [litl, midl, ilu2n], elsewhere an unstressed /uh/ is marked by an apostrophe or an [a'] as in a'go. Checked
Clipped Spelling (CCS) - another IPA EuroSpel system
that takes advantage of the fact that all checked vowels are short and
are follwed by a consonant. Instead of marking extended volwels,
this notation marks the checked vowels. bit / beet = bi.t
/ bit. The advantage is that the
marker cannot be confused with punctuation. o=awe,
a.x=ax, si=see, iu=you, u.p=up, e.j=edge, ej=age
Sound Spell is another
IPA EuroSpel phonemic writing system for English.
Spell Right A phonemic system for English similar to WES [World English Spelling], TrueSpel, & New Spelling. NuSpel An IPA type notational system that uses a new font to create the IPA type symbols. Letter/font chart EnglSpel A partially phonemic system for English designed by a Dutch linguist. Alt.Spell A scheme that uses positional spelling to approximate TO. Inglish A nice page describing a notational scheme similar to New Spelling. ANJeL eliminates the dual redundant character set and uses the capital or upper case letters for the sounds that are represented in TO with digraphs: how/Hc, thin/tiN, church/cuRc, hoe/HO Tools
The Lighter Side of Spelling Reform Staged Reform - remote links only Comic Relief: Mark
Twain on simplified spelling. Second source.
Humor attributed to
Twain.
Related Issues Pidjins as a model for spelling reform, Pidjins & Creoles Handwriting Repair & Reform A legible cursive writing style without the Palmer loops by Kate G. Lojikons (logical icons)- Pictographic Monofon - letters that look and sound just like their name modified to a single stroke (monoline) form adapted to rapid writing. A new alphabet (and font) for English. For a quick look see Scripts compared and Scripts evaluated The Origin of the Alphabet - Pictography, Rebus Writing, Ancient Scripts. The sounds of English - The vowel trapezoid - Click and listen format. Six Axioms The
Schwa - the most frequent sound in the English language which can be
represented by any vowel letter. An unstressed central vowel.
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People with an interest in World Language: world-language@eskimo.com coollist may not be operational |
A Short Reading List
on Spelling Reform
and related topics
Lighter stuf
- a book of Spelling Games:
- Vocalic Frolic - fill in words that match a pattern in the vowel quadrilateral
- Spell Check humor How to Speak Southern
- a Simpl Speling calendar,
- th humorus pieces by
- Mark Twain
- Grandgent
- Selections from Spelling on the Web
- A fixed date for Internationl English Spelling Day.
- Internationl English Spelling (Intrspel) for evryday use
- Intrspel How other countries simplify the spelling of English loan words
- Bob Brown's Bibliography - Bob Brown's article
- Examples of languages whose writing systems allow one to predict the pronunciation (or at least the segmentals) from the spelling
