L. Craig Schoonmaker's spelling reform ideas.
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| I started a thread about L. Craig Schoonmaker's ideas about respelling words and it was going strongly. Where did it go? I've looked in the archives and didn't see it but it's not here. |
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I don't know but why not just post the link
http://www.geocities.com/sswordday/index.html instead of copying and pasting huge chunks of the website? |
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Jim, I was just wondering, how should a spelling reform (If one were to occur which
is unnecessary) deal with the centering diphthongs [e..(r)], [i..(r)], [o..(r)] and
[u..(r)] in ''tear'' (rip), ''tear'' (from your eye), ''tore'' and ''tour''? Some
people pronounce those words with
[e..(r)], [i..(r)], [o..(r)] and [u..(r)] but others pronounce them [eir], [i:r], [Our] and [u:r]? What would be a good way to deal with those in a phonemic spelling reform if one were to occur which is unnecessary? |
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| Sample sentence- They tore a tear in the paper on the tour bus and the window was wet with a tear. |
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Here are some of his ideas again,
Sunday, December 12, 2004: "sez" for "says" Yesterday we dealt with one form of the slightly irregular verb "say", its past and past participle "said" (to "sed"). Today, let's deal with its other unusual form, "says", which looks regular but isn't pronounced as it looks. Rather, it is pronounced "sez", and that spelling is very commonly used in informal, slangy writing, especially in the challenge, "Sez who?" There was even a movie in 1999, starring the bizarre basketball player Dennis Rodman, called Simon Sez. Since no speaker of English has any confusion about what word is intended by that spelling,* we should write what we say: "sez". _____________________ * In searching on Google to see how common the spelling "sez" is, I saw that there is even a mock advice column called "Confuseus Sez". SEZ is also an abbreviation for Special Economic Zone. There's a band called "Jeffery Sez". And there are, oddly, two airports with that abbreviation, one in Sedona, Arizona and one in Mahe Island, Seychelles! With all the acronyms and abbreviations, it's hard to know how many of the 2,050,000 website listings Google came up with relate to the use of "sez" as an alternate spelling for "says", but there are plainly a great many. Google came up with 11,600 listings for the quoted phrase "sez who"! Saturday, December 11, 2004: "sed" for "said" The verb "say" is slightly irregular, in having s-a-i-d as its past and past participle rather than s-a-y-e-d. AI for short-E is an unusual and ambiguous spelling. AI far more often represents a long-A (acclaim), flat-A (air), even short-A (plaid) and two vowels side-by-side (archaic). We don't pronounce "said" any of those ways, so shouldn't use that ambiguous spelling. Rather, we should write what we say: "sed". Saturday, October 9, 2004: "duz" for "does" Yesterday's word, "was" (to wuz) is parallel in sound but not spelling to today's word, "does". Why is that? It is that kind of insane confusion in even the littlest words that makes English so very hard to read and write. People who pretend that "phonics" can solve the problem ar kidding themselves. There's no "phonic" solution to recognizing "was" and "does", nor coping with the underlined letters in today's discussion. (For this purpose, I'll even pass over PH for the F-sound, and TI for the SH-sound in tion endings. Kids and foran lerners of English may object to such spellings as silly and needless, but they're fairly consistent idiotic, but consistent.) Aside from the fact that "does" and its derivative "doesn't" ar the only two words in all of English in which OE is pronounced short-U,* "does" is also a homonym with the plural of the word for female deer, doe. It is as well parallel to another word kids lern young, "goes", but doesn't sound like that either. Since it doesn't sound like "does" or "goes", however, it shouldn't be spelled like them. It's pronounced duz, so should be spelled "duz". ____________________ * The third pronunciation given by the American Heritage Dictionary for the geological term "loess" is "lus", but that is both a very uncommon word and an infrequent pronunciation of that unusual word. Friday, October 8, 2004: "wuz" for "was" This simple-past tense form of the extremely irregular verb "to be" looks as tho it should be pronounced like "has". But it isn't. Nor is it pronounced like "gas". It's pronounced wuz, so should be spelled "wuz". Munday and Tuesday, October 4 and 5, 2004: "skool" for "school" "skooner" for "schooner" CH should, ideally, be reserved to "the CH-sound" as in church. A manufacturer of children's educational toys, Playskool, intelligently uses a K for the K-sound in its own name. Kids who learn that spelling might be a bit puzzled when they get to kindergarten or first grade and find out that the "correct" spelling has a CH in it. Let's not puzzle them, but use a K in the correct spelling for the name of an educational institution and for the vaguely familiar word kids learn around the same time, for a sailing vessel: "skool" and "skooner". Thursday, September 30, 2004: "fother" for "father" This week has been dedicated to the names of family members (so far, muther, bruther, and ont). Let's continue with perhaps the most controversial of my proposed reforms, "fother" (on the pattern of "bother", which has the right vowel, short-O) for "father" (which has the wrong vowel, A, as in "gather"). British spelling reformers object that the broad-A in "father" is not the same sound, in their dialect, as the O in "bother". This page would like to be collegial and propose words that can be reformed the same way across the English-speaking world / "Anglosphere", but at end we can't let Britain hold the United States back. 70% of all native speakers of English reside in just one country, the United States, and our population grows about 10% (or more) every decade. It grew by 33 million from 1990 to 2000, the equivalent of more than half the total population of Britain, in just ten years! By contrast, Britain's population is less than 60 million and static. There's no reason for 300 million Americans (and counting) to have to write stupidly to accommodate Britain. Noah Webster, the great American lexicographer, was indeed happy to distinguish American spellings from British, to show pride in his Nation. Spellings Webster proposed in 1783 and which were widely adopted here, like "color", have still not been adopted in Britain. So there's no point in waiting for that antique society to catch up before moving on. Britain will likely be backward for a very long time when it comes to spelling. So let the British write "father", and just as we know what they mean when they write preposterous things like "programme" and "gaol", they will know what we mean when we write "fother". Munday, September 26 thru Wensday, September 29, 2004: "muther" for "monther" "bruther" for "brother" "ont" for "aunt" (Personal commitments earlier this week delayed these entries.) "Mother" does not rhyme with "bother". Nor does the first syllable rhyme with "moth" or "troth". The word is pronounced "muther" so should be written "muther". "Brother" doesn't rhyme with "bother" either. Nor does its first syllable sound like either "broth" or the first syllable of "brothel". And "aunt" is often mispronounced as tho spelled "ant", which produces a needless homonym that's rather insulting to your mother or father's sister! So let's rewrite these words sensibly: "muther", "bruther", and "ont". Friday, September 24, 2004: "tume" for "tomb" There are only two words (with their derivatives) in all of English in which the letter combination O-M-B is used for the sound UEM: tomb and womb. That's two too many. Why should O be used to express a U sound? And why should we tolerate a silent-B? Let's just spell this word sensibly, on the pattern of flume and assume: "tume". Friday, September 17, 2004: "dum" for "dumb" There is a B at the end of the word "dumb" but it's not pronounced. That's dumb. Let's just chop it off and have done: "dum". Thursday, September 16, 2004: "draur" for "drawer" There are actually two words in the spelling "drawer", one of two syllables (a person who draws) and one of one syllable (an open-top box that slides in and out of a piece of furniture). It is the second I propose be changed to "draur", which will not only show people the proper pronunciation but will also eliminate one of the English language's hundreds of homographs and make plain that "drawer" is two syllables and refers to one who draws. As for "drawers" for underpants, that becomes "draurs". Tuesday, September 7, 2004:"lutenant" for "lieutenant" Yesterday's word was "sargent" for "sergeant". Today, we move up a rank. But before that, and as an integral part of this reform, let's deal with "lieu", the unfonetic part of "lieutenant". We could have chosen "lieu" as today's word, and then added on, to simplify "lieutenant" instead of the other way around. "Lieu" is a French loan word pronounced "lyoo" in French, where the OO is short, as in "good" you can do that in French, but not in English, which pretty much automatically makes every vowel in final position either long or schwa (the neutral unstressed vowel as in both A's in "America"). "Lieu" means "place, stead", and when originally borrowed could be used as a word in itself. Nowadays, however, "lieu" is heard only in the expression "in lieu of", meaning, appropriately, "in place of, instead of", and is pronounced as if spelled "loo". However, we mustn't write "lootenant" because "loo" is an existing word, for "toilet" or "lavatory" in Britain and the more British-oriented parts of the "Anglosphere". Americans don't use it (the term, that is). The British also peculiarly mispronounce "lieutenant" as tho spelled "leftenant". Australians are confused about this, and their navy says "lutenant" while their army says "leftenant"! The website from which I learned that speculates that the distinction may have arisen during the Napoleonic Wars, when the British navy had only occasional conflict with the French, so didn't reject a French pronunciation, while the army, slogging away every day against the French, couldn't bear to use a French pronunciation for their own officers. Interesting, but unknowable. Suffice it to say that that Australian website suggests we should all, across the English-speaking world, say "lutenant". I agree. If some people want to say "leftenant", let them respell the word to show that pronunciation. You can't get "lef" out of "lieu". In any case, "lieutenant" means, literally, "place holder", which sounds, today, rather demeaning, as might make one think of the "seat-fillers" who take the place of celebrities at the Oscars who have to go to the loo, so the cameras don't show holes in the crowd. But it's really more important than that, as in "lieutenant governor", a person who can stand in for the governor and take his place if he (or she) should be out of state or die. Similarly, in the military, a lieutenant is someone qualified to take the place of the next higher up in the chain of command if he (or, nowadays, she) were absent or killed! In any case, we have today another twofer: for "lieu", "lu" and for "lieutenant", "lutenant". Munday, September 6, 2004: "sargent" for "sergeant" I have often been surprised, in checking the origins of words, that Middle English was spelled more simply. Not in the case of this word. The Middle English form, tho presumably fonetic for its day, was sergeaunte. With this word, it's the Old French form that's simpler, sergent. We are familiar with the spelling "sargent" from the famous American portraitist, John Singer Sargent. There are also some small towns whose names have that spelling, which is clear as to pronunciation and simple to spell from the sound. So that's the spelling the word should have: "sargent". |
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Here are some more,
Friday, September 3, 2004: "zilafone" for "xylophone" Dictionary.com remarks of this word, "Alphabet books for children frequently feature the word xylophone because it is one of the few words beginning with x that a child (or most adults, for that matter) would know." But there shouldn't be any words in English starting with X, since an X in initial position is never pronounced like X anywhere else (KS, GZ, or GZH), but always as Z! Do we really need four different pronunciations for X? I don't think so. With an X that's not pronounced like X and a PH that's pronounced like F, "xylophone" is one of the stupidest and most preposterous spellings in English. Let's toss it on the trash heap of linguistic history: "zilafone". Thursday, September 2, 2004: "bute" for "butte" Why is there a double-T in "butte"? Doesn't a double consonant ordinarily signal a short vowel? On the model of Bette Davis, then, shouldn't "butte" be pronounced "butty"? (There are lots of single-E's at the end of a word that are pronounced long-E, from "sesame" and "epitome" to "Penelope" and "facsimile".) Let's get rid of one needless and misleading letter and make this word simpler: "bute". Wensday, September 1, 2004: "pritty" for "pretty" P-E-T-T-Y and P-R-E-T-T-Y should rhyme. They don't, because the vowel in "pretty" is wrong. It should be I. Let "petty" and "Betty" rhyme. "Pretty" rhymes with "kitty", so should be spelled like "kitty": "pritty". Saturday, August 28, 2004: "farmacy" for "pharmacy" This is yet another word that was spelled better, farmacie, in Middle English than it is in Modern English. That makes no sense to me. Shouldn't the modern world be more rational than the Middle Ages, not less? Scores of millions of American visitors to Mexico and to Hispanic neighborhoods in their own country will have noticed signs saying "Farmacia" and not been puzzled as to what that might mean. Spanish is far closer to Latin, from which we got "pharmacy", than is English, yet sees no need to retain a foolish (phoolish?) PH just to show that the word originally came from Greek. Nor should we. Who cares whether it came from Greek, Russian, or Chinese? Why should that make a difference in the way it's spelled? (And how far back are we to go? "Fool" doesn't come from Greek, so we might not spell it "phool", but it does come from the Indo-European root "bhel-". Should we therefore spell it "bhool" and just remember that here the BH sounds like F? Hey, as far as I'm concerned, BH as F is not one whit more 'phoolish' than PH as F.) Some opponents of spelling reform pretend that changing words like "pharmacy" could confuse people as to meaning, such that they see "farm" in the word and think "farm" as in Old McDonald. Not bloody likely. If we don't confuse the words "farm" and "pharmacy" when we hear them, we won't confuse them when we see both written with the F we hear in both: "farmacy". Wensday, August 18, 2004: "complection" for "complexion" "Complexion" is, according to my electronic American Heritage Dictionary, one of only four werds in the entire English language that end in X-I-O-N, and two of those, "suffixion" and "transfixion", ar rarely used. "Crucifixion" is the only such werd other than "complexion" that most people would encounter. By contrast, there ar dozens of werds that end in -ection or -iction. Spelling simplification is not necessarily about shortening werds (tho it often does produce that result) but rather about making spelling easy to predict by making the patterns consistent. In Britain, a number of werds that Americans spell with -ction ar instead spelled with -xion (e.g., "reflexion" and "inflexion"), so they hav gone in the opposite direction which, curiously, is not one of the werds they spell with -xion! Rather than try to remember which du and which don't take -xion, it's a lot simpler just to spell all such werds with -ction. Let's start with "complection". Tuesday, August 17, 2004: "fonetic" for "phonetic" Ironically, the werd that means "written as it's said" is not itself written as it's said. That would be funny were it not so stupid. The spelling of English is so bizarre that it's as tho a group of college students got together to invent a ridiculous spelling "system" and then sell it to the public for its asserted "benefits", such as showing the history of the werd in its form and honoring the languages from which English derives even tho it makes learning to read and write extremely difficult. Further, they even played with the way the Greek alphabet is to be transliterated, assigning two letters, PH, to the one Greek letter that is the equivalent of the Roman letter F. And they got away with this crazy prank! for centuries! Playtime is over now. English is a language with a lot of work to do. It is the world's No. 1 means of international communication, so it is important that it be learned and used easily, which means it must be as close to phonetic as possible. What better way to show we're serious about making English easy to use than by reforming the spelling of "phonetic" itself: "fonetic". Monday, July 26, 2004: "tord/s" for "toward/s" "Toward/s" looks as tho it should be pronounced as two syllables, but that is a "spelling pronunciation", that is, an artificial mispronunciation induced by misleading spelling. "Toward/s" is one syllable. The "ward" part of the word isn't separate; yu're not going to a ward when yu go toward something, so should not pronounce the word as tho yu are. As to whether the word has an S on the end or not, that is a dialectal and personal choice. As usual, the British prefer the longer and mor cumbersome form, with the S; Americans generally prefer the shorter form, without the S. But some Americans (pretentious people? people insecure about what they may perceive (wrongly) as casual speech?) think the longer form is mor dignified (it is not) so prefer that. Be that as it may, the main word is one syllable, so should be spelled that way: "tord". Sunday, July 25, 2004: "yot" for "yacht" English is filled with silent-GH's. Silent-CH is rare in fact, aside from that in "yacht", I can't think of any and no mor justified, ever, than a silent-GH. Simply dropping the CH would leave "yat", which would lead people to make it rhyme with "bat", "cat", and "fat", which it doesn't. However, if we change the A to O, we hav a perfectly phonetic spelling that works equally well in the U.S. and Britain (which pronounce the word slightly differently): "yot". |
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| I think that many of his ideas are pretty bad ones. Would you agree? |
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''Sunday, July 25, 2004: "yot" for "yacht"
''English is filled with silent-GH's. Silent-CH is rare in fact, aside from that in "yacht", I can't think of any and no mor justified, ever, than a silent-GH. Simply dropping the CH would leave "yat", which would lead people to make it rhyme with "bat", "cat", and "fat", which it doesn't. However, if we change the A to O, we hav a perfectly phonetic spelling that works equally well in the U.S. and Britain (which pronounce the word slightly differently): "yot".'' The ''ch'' in ''yacht'' is not silent for me. For me the ''ch'' in ''yacht'' is pronounced like the ''ch'' in ''loch'' i.e. [yaKt]. ''yot'' is just a strange pronunciation that people from England and America gave to the German-derived word ''yacht''. In Scotland (or at least the part of Scotland where I'm from) we pronounce the ''ch'' in ''yacht'' as it is pronounced in German. The respelling ''yot'' won't work for me and I won't accept it. |
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[yaKt].
That was a typo. yacht-[jaKt] not [yaKt]. |
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Jim, how about this spelling reform system? What do you think about it? How does
it compare to Truespel?
bdfghjklmnpqrstvwyz-use is unchanged of course. a-cat e-set i-kit o-cot u-cut ae-rake ee-week ie-bike oe-Coke ue-cube aa-father, pasta au-caught oi-coi oo-moon ou-mount uu-wood R-vowel sounds aer-[eir]-stair, pear, bear, share eer-[i:r]-beer, clear, fear, ear oer-[Our]-four, board, core, store, shore, more, bored, floor, door, oar, oor-[u:r]-tour ar-start, cart, fart er-center, better, feather, fighter or-corn, for, or, corps, storm, horn, morning, fort, sword ur-burn, fern, bird, stern, third, learn, journal Double the ''r'' to show that a vowel is short before ''r'' i.e. in ''marry'', ''merry'' or ''curry''. Consonant combinations ch-chip ng-sing dh-then sh-ship th-thick wh-whip zh-vision, genre |
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Rhickerstick,
Why not "ai" and "air" instead of "ae" and "aer"? You could also swap your "oo"s and "uu"s (including the ones in your "oor"s). Here's a good argument for why. http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j6/moonjoon.html What about the unstressed vowel represented by schwa; as in "about", "sofa", "the", etc.? This is where the creators of Truespel would claim to have beat you: they show syllable stress. Where your idea is better than Truespel is in that you can write such words as "cot", ''marry'', ''merry'' & ''curry''. Also I prefer "dh"/"th" to Truespel's "th"/"tth". |
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''Where your idea is better than Truespel is in that you can write such words as
"cot", ''marry'', ''merry'' & ''curry''. Also I prefer "dh"/"th" to Truespel's "th"/"tth".''
What about distinguishing ''for'' and ''four'' i.e [fo:r] vs. [fOur], and ''wine'' and ''whine'' [wain] and [Wain]? Does truespel do that too? ''Why not "ai" and "air" instead of "ae" and "aer"?'' I'm trying to be consistent with the name saying vowels in that all of them end in a diagraph with an ''e''. That's a rule in my system, ''e'' makes the vowel say it's name. I haven't found any way to deal with the schwa sound yet. I think the best way to deal with it would be to add the letter ''schwa''. |
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i.e.
four and for = ''foer'' and ''for'' ''whine'' and ''wine'' = ''whien'' and ''wien''. Truespel's spellings, ''four'' and ''for'' = ''for'' ''whine'' and ''wine'' = ''wien'' Which is better? |
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And how do the two compare to L. Craigs Schoonmaker's respellings,
''whine'' and ''wine'' = ''hwien'' and ''wien''. ''four'' and ''for'' = ''faur'' |
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"Hw" for "wh" is horrible. Most of us pronounce "wh" and "w" the same anyway. There
are some who pronounce "wh" as /hw/ but others pronounce it /W/. Let's not have
the tail wag the dog (to use one of Schoonmaker's analogies).
There is some logic behind your choice of "ae" and "aer" but I prefer "ai", "ay" and "air" because this is by far the more common spelling thus it's easier to recognise and will involve less of a disruption. |