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In the late 1960's and early 1970's, the ITA experiments confirmed the source of the problem:   Students using a consistent alphabetic orthography learned to read and write as fast as their Spanish counterparts and nearly three times as fast as students who were trying to master traditional English orthography.  A comparative task analysis suggests that those learning a consistent spelling scheme have less than a tenth as much to remember. The real mystery is why ITA wasn't 5 to 10 times better than TO, the traditional orthography.  Students achieved mastery of the ITA code up to 3 times faster.  Why couldn't they have learned to read and write in ITA ten times quicker than in TO?    The advantages of        simplification    Task analysis suggests that a consistent orthography should make   English ten times as easy to learn and spell.    Research has been unable to substantiate this level of facilitation With ITA (and Spanglish), the student must remember forty paired associates (40 phoneme--grapheme correspondences).  With TO (the traditional orthography), the student has to remember ten times more: over 400 relationships between sound and symbol.  To take one example, the difference is between learning 1 way to spell to spell /u:/, the vowel in hoop, and learning 29 ways. (Here are 18 of the 29 different ways there are to spell this sound).  According to Pitman, ITA was a medium (essentially a phonemic alphabet with a new font) not a method.  It was taught in a variety of different ways including the "look - say" method.  Initially no attempt was made to teach the children how to transition from ITA to TO.  [ More on ITA. ]  While a phonemic alphabet will make any method of teaching reading and writing more effective, it was probably a mistake not to find the most effective method to transition.  When the transition was botched, the blame was put on ITA.  While students were quick in learning to read and write in ITA, they lost ground when in the 4th year they had to start reading and writing the traditional way. Spanglish can also be used as an initial teaching alphabet.  It is about as consistent as ITA and much more consistent than TO.  Like ITA, it standardizes a particular spelling pattern for 40 sounds which often makes the spellings look odd. Spanglish, however, does not look odd when compared to the Dictionary's pronunciation guide.   [by comparing the two slates, it is clear that Spanglish and ITA have chosen different spelling patterns. Spanglish is aligned with the rest of Europe, ITA is anglocentric]. What one learns with an ITA is one way to spell a sound.  To transition to the traditional orthography, the student has to learn at least 5 more ways to spell most sounds.  The important point is that Spanglish can be read without a key.  A key helps when it comes to pronunciation because the range of possible pronunciations is severely limited compared to TO.  Spanglish has a few peculiarities: o is always pronounced awe before a consonant and oh at the end of a word or syllable.  Thus, boro=bau-row.  bol=baul (ball)  ro=roh (row)  or=awr (or)  bot=baut (bought).  Spanish does not use the awe sound in a free position (i.e., at the end of a word).  English does and this is the source of the ambiguity: Does lo refer to low or law?  Another amgibuity comes when the owe sound comes before a consonant:  cost/coast  bought/boat.  The recommended solution is to use the grave accent for awe and the acute accent for owe.  c'ost/co'st. A second solution is to use w  (the marker for the short u sound except at the beginning of a word).  cost/cowst  bot/bowt.  A third solution is to use a schwa [à] to lengthen the o.  cost/coàst.  In English, one can spell the same sound 14 different ways and the same letter pattern may have several pronunciations (e.g., use (yus, yuz), live (liv, laiv), read (rid, red), ... ).  English spelling tends to be unpredictable and inconsistent.  It is in accord with an alphabetic principle only 40% of the time. The lack of an alphabetic system means that loan words are rarely respelled.  Without an alphabetical system, these words are often mispronounced. In some cases the mispronunciation of foreign loan words becomes official.  (e.g., silo /si:lou/ (from Latin via French) /sai-lou/) English dictionaries tend to be very democratic both with respect to how words are spelled and how they are pronounced.  If a majority of people spelled "tough" as "tuf" this would become the accepted spelling. Spanglish would recommend t'af.  Since most people pronounce the Latin loan word UNITY as YOO-NI-TEE, this has become the dictionary pronunciation. Spanglish does not respell Latin and Greek roots.  It does however suggest a slightly different (but understandable) pronunciation:  idea = ee-deh-ah rather than /eye-dih-uh/ /ai-'di-/. unity = oo-ni-tee rather than yoo-nit-tee. Compared to English, Spanish orthography is transparent and consistent.  Letters are usually associated with the same sound in every word.  The traditional English orthography (TO) associates an average of 14 sounds for every letter.  (See the monograph, "How many ways can you spell DAY.")  More on the need for reform and what's wrong with English spelling. A good hybrid or common spelling system should be capable of constructing words that are identifiable to speakers and readers of both languages and provide a guide to pronunciation.  The Latin alphabet was adapted for English speech before the great vowel shift in the 15th century where the pronunciation of  many words changed with no corresponding change in their spelling. So to some extent Spanglish is an attempt to undo the vowel shift by reintroducing the use of the original correspondence chart .  Spanglish retains Latin/Greek spellings resulting in a slight change in the referenced pronunciation. Latin and Greek words spelled in Spanglish reflect international pronunciation, not English pronunciation.  Thus CAPABLE (is spelled capabl or capabal rather than keipabl)  The pronunciation is /cahpahbuhl/.  As mentioned earlier,  IDEA and UNITY are spelled the same but pronounced /ee-deh-ah/ and /oo-nee-tee/.  Of course, one does not have to pronounce the words the way they are spelled but in most languages, other than English, this is the way the alphabetic principle works.  Research indicates that students of German can spell better in German than they can in English (Upward, 1992).  This should also be true of students of Spanish. The more consistent & alphabetic the orthography, the easier it is to spell. Spanish and almost every European language [other than English and French] have this consistent sound to symbol correspondence which makes the orthography transparent.  When there are 14 or more possibilities, the orthography or spelling system becomes opaque -- a linguistic guessing game. What most people retain from the study of a foreign language is a greater understanding of their own language.  Starting out in Spanglish would have the same effect.  Spanglish would enhance the understanding of the peculiarities of the traditional English orthography and IPA based pronunciation guides found in many dictionaries. If yu can sey Frito Ley (Lay) then yu can spel in  The ai/ei diphthong is problematic because some dialects (e.g., Australian) pronounced LAY and DAY the way they are spelled (rhymes with LIE or læ-ee). (see How many ways can you spell DAY?) Few authorities dispute the fact that English could use an overhaul.  The problem has always been to find an alternative that satisfied everyone.  Given the critical nature of the growing literacy problem, the switch to a transparent orthography is a good idea.  Adopting an orthography that promoted literacy in two languages  and facilitated transitions from one to the other would also be a good idea. If one is going to use an initial medium to simplify the task of early learning, why not use one that has some lasting value.  Spanglish is a hybrid orthography very close to Spanish but with the capability of referencing most of the phonemes of English speech.  Spanglish iz a haibrid orthografy very clos tu Spanish but with the capability ov refrencing most ov the fonimz ov English spich. The issue is whether or not spelling English sentences in an augmented Spanish orthography has sufficient instructional utility to displace some of the traditional language learning activities.  Does it help English speaking students to write Spanish or Spanish speaking students to learn English ? Actually, it can reference all of the fonimz.  However, as normally used, some spellings are not all that accurate. This is for two reasons: merged phonemes {Hi bit the biit] and because Latin and Greek roots are retained suggesting an European rather than an English pronunciation.  oasis = <awe-ah-sis> not <oh-ace-sis> In the 1940's, Spanish scholar and british member of parliament, Mont Follick, proposed a Spanglish orthography for English.  When put to a vote in parliament, it almost passed. Follick's Spanglish was parodied in the press because it made some familiar words look very odd.  E.G., Huer kan ai faind ei huait hai tsheir.  The Spanglish propozd hir iz a litl les fonetic and a litl izier tu riid: Wer can ai faind a wait hai cher. Spanglish for Spanish looks almost identical to traditional Spanish spelling. One difference is that Spanglish uses only ASCII characters so ñ in señor becomes senyor.  The consonants h, j, x, and v are given English rather than Spanish interpretations: e.g., Jorje = Horhei, Jesus = Heisus, hole' = ole'.  when referencing Spanish pronunciation, Spanglish would not change many proper names or words based on Latin-Greek roots, however, the following chart shows the difference between phonetic Spanglish and the actual spelling conventions. If Spanglish were pronounced the way it was printed, some pronunciations would change (slightly).    English Spanglish fonetic Spanish Spanglish fonetic Spanglish George jorj Jorje horhe Jorj Jesus jisas Jesus hesus Jesus  /Jeh-soos/ Stephen stivèn Estaban estavan Stivàn, Stivèn senior sinyèr Señor senyor sinyor, Senyor English phonemes   Long vowels a:  i:/aie  o:/ao  ou/ow   u: diphthongs ei-ey  ai  o-oa  iu-yu  oi-oy  au  (free vowels and difthongs) *Ai sey niu boy go aut! (note that gow can be shortened to go) *Ther bàt for thè greis ov God go ai. [augmented] *Der bat for da greis ov God go ai.   [merged] *Mai neim iz thè seim az yurz. See the full list of Spanish Difthongs Exersaiz - Transcraib intu Spanglish pit   peat    pew    put    pool pet  paper  putt    paut  poak at    pipe    what   pot    paul   answers below

Phonemes coded blue are not present in Spanish.  The Maroon cells can be ignored. Since [ou] is not used, it could be substituted for /æu/ as in [out] to increase the similarity to the more familiar traditional spelling.  The pronunciation would be /awe-oot/, which is probably close enough. This option is not taken because it could have consequences for Spanish.  *The phoneme, awe, is neither short nor checked which is why it has a circumflex [ô] instead of a grave accent.  In the complete vowel table it is in the correct column.  In this truncated table, it has been moved to the checked vowel column.  When free, use ao to avoid terminal sound ambiguity:   law = lò. lao could also be used.  Spanglish is simple because the 12 pure vowels keep their same sound values in diphthongs (Gr. 2 sounds) This is not the case in New Spelling or in notations based on Nue Speling such as Truespel.

 

Rechid Spel  - in Truespel2

Rechid Speling Sistem  -  in Spanglish

Wen ie kanaat sae thu werdz ie see,  Iz thu fault in them or thu fault in mee?  Wen ie kanaat riet thu werdz ie heer  Iz mie speleeng raung or mie eerz unklleer?  Wen ie braek miesself uppaart tue reed  Never speleeng due ie giv u heed,  For iev lernd tue spel menee yeerz uggoe  Soe ie skan thu werdz that ie need tue noe.  Yet withh pen in hand trieyeeng az ie miet  Wen thu leterz due naat kum out riet,  Then ie kers thoez deeminz uv truddishin  That maenttaen this rechid speleeng sistim.

Wen (huen) ai canot sey thè wèrdz ai si  Iz thè folt ìn them or thè folt ìn mi  Wen ai canot rait thè wèrdz ai hir  Iz mai speling rong or mai irz unklir  Wen ai breik maiself àpart tu riid  Nevèr speling du ai gìv a hid  For aiv lèrnd tu spel meny yirz ago  So ai skæn thè wèrdz thæt ai nid tu no  Yet with pen ìn hænd traing az ai mait  Wen thè letèrz du not com aut rait,  Then ai curs thowz dimànz ov tradision  Thæt meintein thìs rechìd speling sìstèm

 

The above are two of many consistent and predictable spelling notations or systems for English. Truespel (shown above) is more phonetic than Spanglish and always indicates stress. If the pronunciation indicated by Spanglish is close enough to be understood, that is good enough. Spanglish repeats most of the inconsistencies and ambiguities of Spanish orthography. It also contains some of the same ambiguities as TO with respect to the obscure vowels er and schwa With a typewriter or in ASCII, the accented letters can be marked with an apostrophe or left out. Published material should include the accents because this would avoid ambiguity with respect to pronunciation.  There would be no extra burden for writers:  The accents could be added by running the ambiguous text through a spelling converter. A Quick History of English Spelling English (Anglo Saxon) was first written with Latin letters around 700 A.D.  By the 10th century, West Saxon had a highly consistent orthography based on and augmented Latin correspondence table not unlike the one adopted here for Spanglish. (more) Over time, the pronunciation of words changes.  However, this alone does not account for the devolution  of the English writing system.  After the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD), there were a series of linguistic catastrophes that befell English.  For a couple of hundred years, scribes spent most of the time writing in Normal French which unlike Saxon had a illogical spelling system.  These scribes tended to write English in a French way.  However, the old Saxon conventions survived resulting in an unpredictable mix of three systems:  Saxon, Latin, and French.  The u and v looked the same in the handwriting of 1200, so it became the convention to spell the sound /uv/ as ov:  luv became love.  In the 16th century etymologist introduced a reform:  they added silent letters to indicate origin:  det became debt. About 30% of the etymologies were wrong but the silent letters stayed and sometimes led to changes in pronunciation. amyrel was assumed to be Latin and respelled admiral. The Saxon word actually comes from the Arabic amir.  Near the end of the 16th century, with the introduction of the printing press, Dutch spelling conventions were introduced into English words.  Middle English looks like modern English but it sounded like Old English.  There was an unnecessary spelling change implemented by the Norman scribes.  Then when the pronunciation changed and a spelling change was needed, there was none. Academies: Itialian 1582  sicology French 1634 Spanish 1713 Portuguese Summary It makes sense to find a consistent alphabetical way to introduce the traditional English orthography.  Starting with a simple  correspondence table, children and second language learners can quickly learn the logic of alphabetical spelling and be able to write any word they can pronounce and pronounce any word they see spelled. It should take less than 40 hours to memorize 40 paired associates:  a=ah, 'a=uh as in up, e=eh as in el, 'e=uh (schwa), h'er=her, ...   Like other ITA's Spanglish provides a quick track to a certain type of literacy:  Literacy in a consistent spelling system.  It teaches the logic of the alphabet before tackling the more difficult issues of how to deal with the illogical aspects of English spelling.  The importance of quick success can be under rated.  The key reason for reading failure is that some students are so frustrated in their attempts to learn to read and write they just give up.  (see the fishfood study)  Spanglish has but one way to represent a particular sound. Since closely related sounds have a similar shape, it is possible to remove the marker or diacritic and still be close.    Diphthongs are referenced with simple combinations of component sound signs. This is not possible in an anglocentric system that makes some diphthongs into basic vowels.  If you know the grapheme phoneme correspondences for the 12 pure vowels, you can transcribe any vowel sound in English speech and can read aloud any passage written in this code.      Spanglish does not simplify the difficulty of transitioning to TS (traditional spelling).  It does,   however, provide a solid foundation on which to add the illogical variants.    The English was first written with Latin letters around 700 A.D.  By the 10th century, West Saxon   had developed a highly consistent orthography based on and augmented Latin correspondence   table not unlike the one adopted here for Spanglish.     Pronunciation of words change over time. To retain consistent alphabetic spelling, when   pronunciation changes, spelling should change. There have been many changes in English spelling since the 10th century, however, respelling words to match the old Saxon correspondence table was not one of them. In the mid 18th century, spelling was standardized at the word level but these spellings were never realigned with pronunciation. English writers still employ most of the 1755 conventions which is why written English is so chaotic and inconsistent.    Latin spelling remains one of the three primary spelling codes used in traditional English   orthography.  It is something that has to be learned in order to become a proficient speller.  Thus,   learning Spanglish is different from learning a system such as IPA and ITA .  Parts of these codes   have to be unlearned or discarded later on.     The phonemic Spanglish alphabet can be written in ASCII or Latin-1.  Both are readily available on   the Web.  No special fonts are required.  This alone would be an improvement over IPA or Pitman's   ITA.    Few authorities dispute the fact that English could use an overhaul.  The problem has always been   to find an alternative that satisfied everyone. Spanglish is a solution that addresses many concerns of those who have resisted other phonemic solutions.  It will not satisfy everyone.     Given the critical nature of the growing literacy problem, the switch to a transparent orthography is a good idea.  Adopting an orthography that promoted literacy in two languages and facilitated   transitions from one to the other would also seem to be a good idea.  If one is going to use an initial medium to simplify the task of early learning, why not use one that has some lasting value. There is very little of Spanglish that has to be unlearned when transitioning to TO.  It does provide insight into the pronunciation of English words that have Latin roots.  In some  cases the insight is that English speakers mispronounce some of these words [e.g., silo and idea]  and the mispronunciation of Latin became so widespread that it became the norm.      Some of the advantages for Spanglish as an ITA and reform spelling include:    1. Eurocentric rather than anglo centric - easier to learn for most ESL students    2. Can be written in ASCII or aesthetically in LATIN 1 and HTML    3. Can be read aloud by forigners who know the key and be understood by English speakers    4. Can be read without a key - the key may be necessary for pronunciation.    5. Requires fewer respellings than other phonemic solutions              As an ITA, Spanglish is as good as any consistent orthography in teaching the basics of reading and writing.  It is a good place to start with the difficulties of traditional English spelling.  It is also a good orthography in and of itself in the event that it were used as a parallel alternative spelling system. With diacritics, Spanglish has a full set of 40 graphemes needed for use as a pronunciation guide.  Without diacritics, Spanglish merges the long and short vowels leading to some ambiguity.  Having two sounds associated with one grapheme is superior to having 6 or more as in the traditional English writing system. Recommended Readings: Ayers, D.M.  English Words from Latin and Greek Elements. Arizona, 1965 Ellis, Alexander (1814-1890) 421.52 Jones, P.V. and K.C. Sidwell. Reading Latin. Cambridge, 1985 Jones, P.V. and K.C. Sidwell. The World of Rome. Cambridge, 1997 Jones, Peter.  Learn Latin. Barnes & Noble, 1997 Partridge, E.  Origins. Routledge, 1966 Scragg, D.G.  A History of English Spelling.  Spooner, A.J.  Lingo. Bristol Classical Press, 1988

: What would English look like if it were transcribed into the orthography used for Spanish? http://204.196.54.50/Spanish/spanglish.htm

Traditional  Orthography	"That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog. Look out, I shout, for he's foiled you again."
	That kwik baezh faaks jumpd in thu air oever eech thhin daug. Look out, ie shout, for heez foild yue uggen.
int'l phonetic alfa	Ðæt kwik bei3 fks d3^mpt in ð e ouv i:tS þin d:g.  Luk aut ai shaut f:r hi:z foild ju: gen.
	Dat kwik bAzh fox jumpd in the er Over Ich Tin dog.  l'uk Wt I shWt, for hEz foild U ugen.
Nue Speling	That kwik baezh fox jumpt in the aer oever eech thin dog.  Luuk out ie shout, for heez foild yue agen.
	Thæt quìk beizh fox jàmpt in thè er ovèr ich thìn dog.  Lùk aut ai shaut for hiz foild yu àgen.
	Xa·t kwi·k bei2 fo·x ju''mpt in x er o'vr ich thi·n dog.  Lu·k aut 'I shaut, for hiz foild iu a'gen.

To check on the phonetic spelling of American English, use the Cambridge Dictionary and pronunciation guide. www.CUP.com

  Latin-1 Æ  æ  à  ì  è  ò  ô  ó  ù     å   î   é       consonants ñ 

• Spanish Pronunciation Guide   Local  Spel notes
• Spanish-diphthongsSpanish Diphthongs (old)
• Language Translator (Machine Translation)  English to Spanish, Spanish to English
• Spelling (Orthographic) Converter - English to phonetic English
• The sounds of English
• More on spelling reform
• More on applied linguistics
• Spelling made easier
• Table of contents for the applied linguistics
• ITA - The Initial Teaching Alphabet    Dr. Yule's comments
• Upward, C (1992a) 'German & English Spelling Difficulty Compared'  research report 92/2 p22
• Other references:  Follick, Pitman (ITA), Dewey (alt. spellings),
• Latin-1 - Latin-1 source of HTML compatible special characters and diacritics.

http://204.196.54.50/latin-1.htm  - æ  à  ì  è  ò  ô  ù  (ringsite #2)
• Brown, B. Augmented Alphabets
• Consonants and Vowels:  syllabics and semi-vowels

This site of the  Spelling Reform Ring is owned by steve bett

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NOTES Spanish has no need for o as ah since the a is always used to indicate this sound. Many English pronunciation dictionaries dispense with o for ah as well.  In Spanish,  o is used to indicate both the awe and the oh sounds.  Before a consonant (that is, in the checked position) o is usually awe.  In the terminal position, o is usually pronounced oh.  The shift is mild enough to allow Spanglish to retain most traditional spellings.  box would be pronounced /bauks/ which in context would be close enough for the correct interpretation.  Going the reverse direction, Car wash could be respelled cor wosh.  cor is not quite right but wosh is actually the way that some people pronounce wash. Hi cot the caet on the cat represents phonetic spelling.  Hi cot the caet on the cot represents the kind of compromise spelling found in Spanglish.  ô is positioned as a checked vowel because of the /ou/ shift.  /ou/ becomes oa /oà/  to avoid confusion with 2 correspondences in TO.  /ou/ is represented as  o'  ó   ow  or oà.  Without the diacritics or markers, lo could be interpreted with law or low.  low is OK spelling because w=/u/ except in the initial position. The cóld óld maen cold aut tu the loman but hiz vois waz so ló hi waz not hèrd. The cowld owld maen cold aut tu the loman but hiz vois waz so low hi waz not hèrd. The cold old man called out to the lawman but his voice was so low he was not heard. out may have been right 1000 years ago.  Today, the word is pronounced /æ-oo-t/.  If o = awe it is still close enough today not to respell the word. The phonemic spelling would be /aut/ or to be precise /æù t/.   today.  The basic problem with using OU as the correspondent is elsewhere. Should ou be substituted for /au/?  Should sound be spelt saund or sound?  If the switch was made, then au could be used for the free awe  As in (its the lau). All changes have ramifications.  It may draw the new orthography closer to the traditional form in one place, but ground is lost in another.  soul = saul.

Quiz Would DAY be respelled in Spanglish?  day or dey How would you sound spell the words  ACEand DAY  in Spanglish?  eis, dey Rewrite the sentence   "There are very many ways to spell a sound."   in consistent Spanglish spelling.  Ther ar very meny weys tu spel a saund in the traditonal orthography. How do you spell  EYE and ICE in Spanglish? ai ais How do you spell the letter names (the so called long vowels) in Spanglish? ei, i:, ai, ou, yu (ju). Which of these vowels is a pure vowel? (not a blend or diphthong)?  i ICE is spelled EIS in German.  How is it spelled in Spanglish?ais

TEST YOUR LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE        1.How many significant sounds [or phonemes] are there in English speech?         2.How many ways can these sounds be written in traditional English orthography?         3.How many ways are they written in the dictionary pronunciation guide?         4.How many pure or uncombined vowels are there in English speech?         5.What is the average number of ways that each vowel sound is written?         6.How many phonograms does it take to transcribe the 12 vowel sounds using a dictionary notation?          7.In an ideal system, how many phonograms should be used for 12 sounds?         8.How many sound signs does Spanglish (w/o accents) use to write 12 vowel sounds?         9.           1-40-50,  2. 561 in abridged dictionary,  3-42,  4-12,  5-20,  6-12,  7-6    Answers:  1. over 40,    2. over 500,    3. over 40,   4. 34 + schwa,    5. 20,     6. 12,    7. 12,     8.  6

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