The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other alphabets except one -- the phonographic.  This is the only competent alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our language.

Edward Carney, who wrote the most recent comprehensive survey of the regularities in English spelling, commented, " Perhaps the greatest practical problem in dealing with spelling is that people do not have a familiar and generally accepted way of tackling the phonetic side of correspondences." [1994, p. 33]

Phonemes map onto traditional letters only 40% of time rather than 85% or more as in most other alphabetical writing systems. In other words, in the traditional English writing system, spelling corresponds to pronunciation only about 40% of the time.  English has about 42 important sound categories or phonemes, the writing system has over 560 ways to spell these sounds. [see Dewey] As Hanna remarked, the writing system simply has "too many orthographic options" - too many ways to spell the same sound -- too many heterographic homophones.

The IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet was developed just before 1900 to address this problem.  The IPA approach was to extend the alphabet and to substitute special characters for ambiguous letters.  This worked but other than in dictionary pronunciation guides, it was rarely used and generally never taught outside of linguistics departments.  Two other factors inhibited the usefulness and wider adoption of IPA symbols [1] the special characters were not supported by most keyboards, [2] the transcriptions were   difficult for some to read, and [3] IPA did not use traditional devices for distinguishing English speech sounds.

While the IPA provided Twain's phonographic alphabet, it had a few deficiencies that prevented its widespread adoption. These deficiencies have been directly addressed by the Spanglish code.  Spanglish can be read without a key and does not use any special characters.  The transcription system is rooted in English tradition and uses traditional devices to distinguish between the various vowel sounds.  The code is compatible with existing keyboards and consistent with IPA.  Spanglish is an attempt to create an ascii-IPA.  If your dictionary provides an IPA transcription of a word, it is easy to convert it to Spanglish because Spanglish letters and digraphs are isomorphic with IPA.  Spanglish even shows primary stress.  [See the chart above for Spanglish  IPA correspondences]

Besides not requiring a special font or special keyboard, the chief advantage of Spanglish is that it is much easier to read than IPA.  Spanglish looks like English and can be read without a key.  A key may be helpful when reading Spanglish text aloud:  e.g., tomaato is not pronounced tomeito.  Spanglish is pronunciation guide spelling.  Learning a restored unifonic [one sound per symbol] alphabet can provide insight into traditional spelling and improve phonemic awareness.  Note that the symbols in spanglish are often digraphs - two letters that represent one sound [urr, er, ea, ae, ei, oa, aa, ie, ao, uu ] or a diphthong [ai,ou/au, oi/oy, ] two letters that represent two blended sounds.  [Du yu no the sho about oald Noa]  Like the traditional orthography, Spanglish is also positional:  before a consonant, free or long vowels are written out [aa, ie, ei, ao, oa, uu].  At the end of a word most are abbreviated: [a, i, y, ei, ao, o, u] [a and y are always unstressed] canoe could be written canu but the emphasize last syllable stress it would be written as canuu. node=noad, noah=noa or noaa.
 

A Fonimic Aelfabet for English The Saxon alfabet: 42 foniemz- 17 vaulz - 25 connsonants A e,i ago the AA aar caar A. AE aet catt AI 'y ais ice A .U aut out B bibb C cancel Ch tsh check D didd UR ER hurrder E. EA bread EI ey eys ace F fetch G gagg H. *hw hu rrdl I. it tippy IE I .Y yield si J dzh judj jvj K  Qu kick quit L 'l littl M  'm maund N  'n nvn .NG singl O. otter O AO dog OA OW owe OY oi oyster P pick R .  'r roar S sisster Sh shipp T tot tott Th thh thy  thhai U. v upp urr .U. .W hwk hook U uu guuru V vatt W. hw winner X  ks tax tacks Y. Yu yess Z zipp Zh mezhr   vowels-white,semivowels-gray, consonants-blue, digrafs-dk. blue Irregular traditionally spelled words are italicized, eye-ai, out-aut,  *vowels when not followedby a vowel - wwln =woolen  more

90% of what you need to know to read and write Spanglish can be reduced to this simple symbol sound correspondence chart. 

One unique characteristic of the Spanglish alphabet is the representation of all vowels [white] and semivowels [gray].  This adds 16 [often digraphic] symbols to the traditional 26 letter alphabet.  Counting the semivowels, Spanglish has 24 vowels and 25 consonants. Theunstressed mid lax vowel or [schwa] is usually [a].  The letter [e] is used as a schwa after [eth] and before R.  An [e] at the end ofa syllable is unstressed.  [because] is spelled [becaoz or becoz]instead of bik>:z.  The pronunciation of single unmarked vowel letters in Spanglish is lax and indistinct.  Only stressed vowels are distinctly pronounced.  The v and w are consonants only when followed by a vowel. Otherwise they represent the two short u sounds in hookup nutwood [hwkvp nvtwwd].  The words can also be written hukap and nuttwud. huk  is also an unstressed u. nutt  indicates a stressed vowel.

In denying the utility of phonic methods, Frank Smith [1978, p. 56] observed:

It would be difficult to exaggerate the complexity and unreliability of [anglo] phonics.  The sound associated with [ho] is different in hot hope hook hoot house hoist horse horizon honey hourand honest.  Can anyone really believe that a child could learn to identify any of these words by sounding out the letters?  [Cf.  p. 33,  Carney,  1994].

Although most of these words correctly represent Middle English pronunciations, their relation to the shifted modern pronunciations can be obscure.  The sound values of the letters marked in red are problematic.  The silent 'magic-e' in hope can serve as a long vowel marker and can be incorporated in a systematic spelling system [see RITE]. This use of [e] is called 'magic' because it modifies at a distance.

The unit of analysis is not [ho].  Traditional spelling is positional and the most important positions are before and after a consonant in the same syllable.  Before a consonant the vowel is short unless marked.  After a consonant no mark is required because a short checked vowel cannot be used in this location in English.  When there is no trailing consonant the pronunciation is always long [never short].  This is a major regularity in the traditional writing system. There are no short terminal vowels.  [the] looks like a short e but it is either ' or i:  In Spanish orthography, there can be a terminal [e] but it is usually pronounced to rhyme with the terminal vowel in [ray] or [resume].

In two syllable words the second vowel is often unstressed [very].  In Spanglish and in most English words, a double consonant marks a short stressed vowel  [berry]. However, in the traditional writing system [TS] words derived from Latin do not use this device.  In fact, the double consonant in latinate words can be at odds with the principle.  [attic-attack] the second word is pronounced atack. [allergy-allowance] the second word is pronounced alouwans. 

Sounding out simple words requires several sequentially applied rules before something close to the correct pronunciation can be predicted.  It works for literate people becuase they use pattern recognition and lexical cues.  It only works half the time for those who have never seen the word in print. ho = hoe because it could not be a checked vowel as in hop.  For this sound in a free form use ha.
 

Traditional Spelling	Sound-out & respell  menu spel	Pronunciation spelling	Spelling Pronunciation menu spel	IPA  [Sampa / K]
ho	hoe or haw	ho  alt.hoa	rhymes with hoe	hou ho  [ho]
ha	hah	haa	as in palm	ha:   [hA]
hot	haut or haht	haat  hott	haat or haht	ha:t  [hAt]
hope	hau-peh  h -p	hoap	as in soap	houp
hook	hawk	huk,  hwk	as in put	hUk
hoot	haut	huut	hoot	hu:t
house	hous-seh	hous  haus	haw-oos  hae-oos	haus  hae-u:s
hoist	hoist	hoist	haw-eest	hist
horse hoarse	hor-seh	hors  hoars	hors  [horse]	hrs
horizon	haurihzaun	horaizan	haw-raa-ee-zun	hr 'aizn
horizontal	haurih-zauntael	horizaantal	haw-ri-zawn-tul	'hr i ,znt l
honey	haw-nay	hunny  hvny	hunn-nee	'h Lni: [hVni]
hour	hour	our  aur	aw-oor	aur  [&ur]
honest	haun-est	onest	on as in lawn	'a:n st
choir	choy-er	kwair quair	kwire as in aquire	kwair
picture  mature	pick-tyoor   -tur	pickcher machur	pick-chur	'pik- tSrm tSur
feature	fee-tyoor  -tur	fiecher	fee-cher	'fi:- tSr

In Spanglish <o> before a consonant  is ambiguous in order to include all dialects:  aa  aw  uh [@]
Spelling pronunciation is written in "menuspell" which issupposed to be intuitive for those literate in English.
Ellis & Cataldo 1990.  Good spelling predicted good reading. Good reading  not a predictor of good spelling.

These notations for writing or transcribing English speech are referred to as Saxon because they are based on a restored Saxon alphabet.  The notation also looks a little like English written in a Spanish orthography, hence the name Spanglish.  [rong ]
 

The word,  spanglish, also refers to the importation of English loan words into Spanish.  The only connection between this and Spanglish, the writing system,  is with respect to English words that are respelled after being imported such as futbol [football] and bifstek [beef-steak].  In Saxon Spanglish these words would be spelled [futbol] or [fwtbol] and[biefsteik] which is isomorphic with the way they are spelled in the General American pronunciation dictionary . [fUtb:l bi:fsteik]

The difference is that the pronunciation dictionary will often use diacritics and special characters [such as the turned omega for the short u and the turned c for "awe"] to reference the appropriate phoneme.  Spanglish can reference the correct phoneme without special characters.   Spanglish marks short vowels with double consonants,  the device used by Saxon, German, and the most recent Norwegian spelling system.  Trailing double consonants mark stressed  short vowels and distinguish them from long vowels. Spanglish also marks the long vowel when stressed.  canoe=canuu. gruesome =gruusom.  guru = guru , herder=hurrder, murder=murrder, hurry=hurry, very= verry... short stressed vowels are marked with a double consonant:  butter, huckster, bruther, putt.  [note:the u and e are redundant in hurrder which could bewritten as hrrdr. hrrdr is sufficient but not as traditional looking as hurrder].

The Spanglish phonemic notation is designed to be used as a way of introducing traditional English spelling- particularly in a bilingual classroom.  The notation is isomorphic with IPAand can be used as a pronunciation guide. The advantage of Spanglish is that it is closer to traditional English and can be written without diacritics and special characters.  The spelling reform associated with Spanglish applies only to words that cannot be pronounced or sounded out when each letter is pronounced according to the Saxon alphabet.  A reform basedon a phonemic notation requires that 60% of the traditional English words be respelled.  Spanglish identifies the words that cannot be understood when pronounced alphabetically.  Examples include the "ughly" words: through, tough, thorough, rough.

According to Webster, if we could restore the alphabet, everything would fall into place.  People could spell the way they speak and spelling pronunciation [speaking the way that words are spelled] would be intelligible:  [Just tryto pronounce enough as it is spelled].  Mark Twain called for a phonographic alphabet which amounts to the same thing. 

With a true alphabet, children could write using any word they could pronounce.  Spelling Bee's would be a thing of the past since anyone who memorized the simple code consisting of 40 paired-associates [sounds & symbols] could easily spell anyword they could correctly pronounce.  [test]
 

Saxon-Spanglish Foniemic transcripshan beisd on a historic alfabet Phonemictranscription based on a historic alphabet  Ignoringvowel shifts and raiting acording tu the  dicshanerry pranunncieishan gaid daz not produus caos. The result iz riedabl without a ki.

Saxon Spanglish restores most of the original consistent English alphabet.  The 10th Century Saxon or Old English alphabet was an augmented Latin alphabet with twosounds for every vowel letter.  The difference between the two sounds was usually marked by doubling the consonant after a short or checkedvowel in multi-syllable words:  [ bitter beater | bitter biter ].  Quite often double consonants were also used in one syllable words but this practice was dropped.  [itt, att, off, ] 

In the chart below, short vowels are marked with a dot indicating the need to add a double consonant. Saxon used both the E and the A to represent the schwa sound in [ago] and [sofa ]. The phonemic alphabet below uses only A [urban = arban]. Saxon Spanglish is more than a phonemic solution to the alphabet problem. The phonemic solution is presented first because it is the easiest to explain. 100% phonemic solutions are easy to explain.  70% solutions that lookmore like traditional spelling are not. The goal of a 70% solution is to avoid respelling more than 10% of the words in the dictionary.  All 100% solutions respell at lest 60% of the words in the dictionary.

In the early 1800's,  Noah Webster remarked, " Letters,the most useful invention that ever blessed mankind, lose a part of their value by no longer being representatives of the sounds originally annexed to them."  The effect is,"to destroy the benefits of the alphabet." Webster was aware that there was a time in English history when the language had a functional alphabet. Tenth century clerics devised a Latin based alphabet for English that made it possible to spell words as they were pronounced and pronounce words as they were spelled. This and ease of learning were and continue to be the principle benefits of alphabetical writingsystems.

Could the restoration of the benefits of thealphabet be as simple as restoring the Saxon alphabet?  Could the functionality of the English alphabet be higher than today's 40%? Could the usefulness of the alphabet be restored by restoring the soundsoriginally annexed to the letters?  The answer is yes it couldbe.The phonemic solution, however, is not without problems.  Having one sound associated with each symbol results in word spellings that do not match traditional spellings.  The new spellings may correspond to the dictionary's pronunciation guide. However, only 40% will match traditional word spellings.  The most that any consistent system can hope to match traditional English spelling is 40%.

English spelling is not only inconsistent, the dominant letters and letter patterns used for the long vowels are out of sync with the rest of the world.  Nobody else on the earth associates long sound /ei/ as in they  with the letter A [thA].  Everyone else sticks with the Italian conventions. Thus if a consistent spelling patterns is to be taught, it should be the international one not the one that is peculiar to the post 1400 English writing system. Before 1400, [a] was the italian a [aa].  day [dag] was pronounced daa-ee as it still is in some dialects of English.  The vowel sound in [they] was spelled [ey] or [ei].  Ice was pronounced i:s [ees]. [ more]

Spanglish starts with the Saxon augmented Latin alphabet.  Those who want to devolve the system [i.e., add other incompatible spelling patterns to it] to facilitate reading the traditional orthography may do so.  Starting with one of the basic patterns that is consistent with pronunciation, history, and the rest of the world should make the task easier.  We recommend sticking with 90% of the conventional spelling but acquiring a spelling pronunciation based on the Saxon alphabet to bridge the gap between spelling and pronunciation. 
 
 

30 Vowels shortchekt longfree unstressed combined r-combined a.- ae add  batter aa faather a sofa ai- 'y ailais mait aar| air caar|ire e.- ea bell bread non-rhotic fairly-fealy e  the ei- ey eis grey they eir-ear their heir bear i. ill  fill  itt ie- ee  siiel  field y- i veryvary oi- oy oil oyster ir- ier irrigate near o. otter pott ao- o costot lao o silogo slo oa- ow slowerboat or ore pour roar .w.-ou hookhwk put uu guruzu u guru-guru yu-iu yu yuz ur tour poor u. uppercutt rr-urr herderurn r- er other au-ou kraut out aur-aewr ourpower .w. means a w between two consonants = /u/  could= cwd  wud

Saxon Spanglish is a little more complicated than necessary because it is designed to transition to traditional English spelling.  parralell is a systematic spelling, parallel is the traditional spelling.  Traditional spelling often lacks an underlying logic. The second A is a schwa so consonant doubling should be avoided. The first a is ae, a short sstressed vowel is marked by doubling the trailing consonant - hence arr.  Spanglish allows two spellings per vowel sound [stressed & unstressed] compared to 20 in TO. This is more complicated than the ideal notation but much simpler than the traditional writing system which adds more options and uses the same spelling to reference different sounds. SS allows bedd & bread but not beak for biek. beckon the beacon =beckan the biecan.

English speakers have resisted writing according to the pronunciation guide in the dictionary because it used unavailable characters and looked odd.  Spanglish does not look as odd as traditional spelling to those who have not been conditioned to it by ten years of schooling. It also achieves a high level of phonemic accuracy without employing new letters.  It consistently assigns each letter or letter combination to a simple sound.  The letter A, for instance is assigned to the sound it has in AMERICAN and AGO.  The sound in APE is assigned to a digraph [ei-ey] as in the word THEY.  [eip]

When English speakers are asked, "Which spelling do you prefer [give or giv], [have or hav], [debt or det], [dumber or dumr],they almost always select the traditional spelling with redundant silent letters." [They want the ol' time spelling -- warts and all].  reference
On the other hand, students who start out with a consistent writing system [An i. t. a. or Spanish, for instance]   are often disturbed by the prospect of having the spell words as they are not spoken.  Having to insert silent letters is an inconvenience.
 

The basic rules of Saxon Spanglish:  cut redundant letters - retain silent letters that have a function cut surplus double consonants [aply, acount ] but retain double      consonants used to mark short stressed vowels [ better, butter, appl]  stressed short vowels must be marked in multi-syllable words      The marker is a double consonant - enny better wimmen   bizzy & bizness both have two consonants before the next vowel.    The marker can be any two consonanats as in pickerand hvnter there are no short terminal vowels:  haaresumeythe si silo so guru     but they can be unstressed ones in two syllable words: berry verry sofa stressed long vowels are marked with digraphs ei ie er ai oa yuu stressed short vowels are followed by dbl. consonants att, edj, ill,     off, buck as in [ attituud, appathy, bizzy, suddenly ]. All other double     consonants are surplus and can be eliminated [ aply, acount, alowance] No silent letters except in digraphs. [ h] used as a marker in th, ch, sh, zh

Saxon-Spanglish is a proposed i. t. a. or initial teaching alpha bet.  It is a systematic way of representing the simple sounds of English speech.  An i.t.a. can be quickly mastered by children who can usually begin reading and writing after only four weeks of study.  A simple transparent code leads to early success.  An i. t. a. is a substitute for invented spellings. It postpones the frustration of having to deal with an inconsistent code until around the 4th grade.  SS differs from Pitman's i. t. a. that was popular in the 1960's in two ways: it does not require a special font and it has only one made up digraph [ao] for awe. This minimizes the amount of relearning required when transitioning to the TwS [traditional writing system].

There are dozens of ways to code or set  up the shape to sound mapping conventions.  SS approximates the way that it was originally done back when England adopted the Latin alphabet.  The most historically accurate way of associating sounds and letters is also the simplest way to retain some visual connection to traditional spelling. 

With the Saxon alphabet, letters keep their Saxon alphabet sound values even when used in combinations.  For example: EY [eh-ee], AI [uh-ee or ah-ee] .  This makes Spanglish significantly that New Spelling, the notation used by Pitman's i.t.a.

English has about 55 phonemes if all 18 combinations shown below are included  [See How many phonemes in English]. Spanglish can almost get by with listing only the 35 pure phonems because almost all of the combinations are transparent combinations of the sounds of the individual letters.
The phonetic alphabet (above ) isolates 40 phonemes.      [index page]

The following iz rittanin fonettic Spanglish yuusing GA [General American] azz the beis pronuncieyshan: The ownly problem with a fonimic reform izthaet 60% av the reformd spellingz will not match the tradishanal orthografy.  Wail this iz tru, the Spanglish noteishan cann bi read withaut a ki. Olreform noteishanz waant tu show off their clevver soluushanz tu the aelfabetproblam.  Spanglish iz no' exceppshan.

The traditional letter names identify these semi vowels -- they are the consonants that do not beginwith their unique sound [ar, el, em, en].  In Spanglish, the initialvowel is always a mid-lax vowel so instead of /aar /,the letter name is pronounced /ar/ [ 'r]. Therower herd the distant ror av the rappidz. Hi thot thaet running the rappidz wud bi thi ulltimat thrill.  [the changesto thi before a vowel.  [thin] can be  spelled thhin to distinguish the unvoiced pronunciation. [ror] can be spelled roror roar sinceboth pronunciations would be understood as the same word]
 

Diphthongs: ai, oi, ou  [aa+ie], [aw+ie], [aw+uu] Other digraphs: aa, ae, er, ei, ie, ao, oa, uu

The restored Saxon alphabet contains 7 vowel digraphs.  Some of these such as [ ey]and [ao/ow] could and do have a pure pronunciation in other languages and in some dialects of English.  [ ou] and  [ai] are not self evident soundblends:   [ou] [awe+uu] is actually [ae+w] in most dialects of English and this would support the representation [au]. However, other than saurkraut there are few cases where this digraph is used in a way consistent with its component sounds.  [ ai] is correct for RP but GA is closer to [aai ]. [oy] is a blend of [awe+ee] as in oysterboy.

A correspondence tableand a few key words is about all most people need to start reading andwriting in Spanglish.  For those who have trouble unpacking tabular data, there is a more linear discursive presentation of the Saxonalphabet. 

The troublewith the traditional orthography

There are social consequences to using overlycomplex and difficult writing system: Almost half of the people in theU.S. have failed to learn it.  Part of the proposed solution is to start teaching a parallel notation which can serve as a dictionary pronunciation guide and an initial teaching alphabet.  Because of its consistency, it does not take much effort or intelligence to master Spanglish. Some will be able to function in Spanglish who never quite make the transition to the traditional system. 

To master the traditional writing system requiresreducing the orthograhic options and then having a good memory for wordpatterns.  It is easy to start with to alouans, [uh-lawoo-unss] then add the common  /s/ terminal spelling [ce] to yield alouance.  It takes some effort to associate this pronunciation spelling with allowance.   [all-low-ance]

SpellingMatters  How bad is the literacy problem in the U.S.?  Nearly half of the nation's 191 million adult citizens are not proficient enough in English to write a letter.  This was the conclusion of afour year education department study which used a random sample of 26,000citizens. 

About half of those goingthrough the school system manage to master the intricacies of traditional English spelling.  For the other half,  the lack of code consistency results in them not recognizing the consistency that is there.  They never achieve enough proficiency to write a simple letter.  With asimpler code, every child could spell every word they could pronounce. 
 

Visit these related pages on applied linguistics and rationalized spelling

nU qlf@bets for EGliS indexof spelling sites

x simplifYd speliG sOsYetE simplifiedspelling

american litRasi kWnsL  americanliteracy council

simplifYd speliG e-group ssslist e-group

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