Spelling reform idea.

Toyota, one important note is that the scheme that I've designed is not designed to fit all of English in the first place, considering that it seems to me that such would be prohibitively difficult, especially with someone like myself who does not have the resources and time to design something such as a phonemic etymological orthography designed to phonemically represent reconstructed *earliest common forms* (in most cases circa mid 1600s), and trying to design a phonemic orthography for all of English based on *current* phonemic forms would be practically impossible. (Such an approach based on reconstructing common historical forms seems to me to be the only way to be able truly create a single new orthography for *all* of English, albeit one that does not directly represent modern pronunciation in cases.)

Therefore, it is really only meant to be used to represent a relatively limited range of NAE dialects, all things considered, even though it does have things designed into it to at least make the range of dialects which can be represented wider. Furthermore, it is not designed to form the basis of a *standardized* orthography, so hence what is written specifically and only is representative of the specific dialect under consideration. Even still, then, such a representation is purely phonemic, which will likely obscure many dialects' phonological features, for obvious reasons, and furthermore, in most circumstances stressed forms are preferred over unstressed forms except when specifically trying to represent such. Hence, I would write "These things or those are just examples of text written in this orthography." as:

"Dhies things oor dhoos aar djast egzaempyls av tekst rittin in dhiss oorthaagraffi."

rather than, for example:

"Dies sings er dooser djass egzaempylsa teks rittyn in niss oorthaagraffi."

While the second example in many ways is closer to actual speech that isn't stressed, it for starters does not represent /D/ and /T/ as specific phonemes and rather shows the results of various phonological processes upon them, and it also shows the results of reduction and elision processes rather than the original phonemes *before* their application. One important note, though, is that the grapheme <s> may represent multiple different phonemes, based on context and like; it is not ambiguous in its usage, but rather one just has to understand a number of rules that determine how /s/ and /z/ are to be represented.

Quote-''Toyota, one important note is that the scheme that I've designed is not designed to fit all of English in the first place, considering that it seems to me that such would be prohibitively difficult, especially with someone like myself who does not have the resources and time to design something such as a phonemic etymological orthography designed to phonemically represent reconstructed *earliest common forms*''

Surely it's difficult to design a orthography that works for all dialects when it comes to individual words. But it's not so difficult to include phonemic distinctions made in some dialects but not others, such as not merging ''wine-whine'', ''father-bother'', ''cot-caught'' etc. Your mistake in merging the ''father'' and ''bother'' vowels is very similar to a mistake that was made by a spelling reformer that's been talked about alot on this forum, who proposed to spell ''father'' as ''fother'' ignoring the non father-bother merged people.

Maybe the difficulty for you is that you don't know which words in non father-bother merged dialects have the /A/ vowel and which have the /Q/ vowel.

Well, here it is:

When it's spelled in present spelling as ''o'', it's pronounce /Q/ as in ''not'', ''cot'', ''dollar'' etc. and when it's spelled in present spelling as ''a'' or ''ah'', as in ''taco'', ''tsunami'', ''father'' etc. it's pronounced /A/.

Quote-''One important note, though, is that the grapheme <s> may represent multiple different phonemes, based on context and like; it is not ambiguous in its usage, but rather one just has to understand a number of rules that determine how /s/ and /z/ are to be represented.''

Why not just use ''s'' for the /s/ sound and ''z'' for the /z/ sound, rather than making a bunch of needless complex rules determining whether an ''s'' is pronounced /s/ or /z/?

Including the /A/-/Q/ father-bother distinction in your system would also have the benefit of not making a bunch of words such as ''not'', ''cot'', ''on'', ''bother'', ''pot'', ''mom'' etc. become undesireably longer, as spelling them ''naat'', ''kaat'', ''aan'', ''baadher'', ''paat'' and ''maam'' would do.

Quote-''remember that this design assumes "father"-"bother" merger, and the default version of it also assumes a full "Mary"-"merry"-"marry" merger, "horse"-"hoarse" merger, "nearer"-"mirror" merger, and change of /Ur/ to /@`/.''

Travis,

What about these mergers:

* ''forward''-''foreword'' merger /@`/ vs. /3`/

forward - /fOrw@`d/

foreword - /fOrw3`d/ or /forw3`d/ (both words are stressed on the same syllable and differ only by /@`/ vs. /3`/ (and tenseness vs. laxness) in most British dialects including my own, but are merged in North American English.

burger - /b3`g@`/ vs. merged /b@`g@`/

* ''upon''-''above'' merger /V/ vs. /@/

again - /@gEn/

object (verb) - /@bjEkt/

upon - /VpQn/ (has an unstressed /V/ in many British dialects including my own, but is merged to /@/ in North American English.)

suspect (verb) - /sVspEkt/ (unstressed /V/)

subject (verb) - /sVspEkt/ (unstressed /V/)

abut - /@bVt/ vs. merged /@b@t/

* ''hurry''-''furry'' merger /3`/ vs. /Vr/

furry - /f3`i/

hurry - /hVri/

Merged in most of North America.

* ''dial''-''tile'', ''royal''-''roil'' and ''towel''-''owl'' mergers i.e. merger of syllabic and nonsyllabic /l/ before /aI/, /OI/ and /aU/:

dial - /daIl=/

tile - /taIl/

royal - /rOIl=/

roil - /rOIl/

towel - /taUl=/

owl - /aUl/

Does your system assume a full merger of these distinctions too?

In my dialect, ''tile'' doesn't rhyme with ''dial'', ''roil'' doesn't sound the same as ''royal'' and ''towel'' doesn't rhyme with ''owl''.

''subject (verb) - /sVspEkt/ (unstressed /V/)''

Typo:

subject (verb) - /sVbdZEkt/ (unstressed /V/)

More words with an unstressed /V/ in my accent:

suprise - /sVpraIz/

support - /sVpOrt/

supplies - /sVplaIz/

spatula - /sp@tSVl@/

How would this sentence come out in your system:

''I was pulled into the pool by something.''

One thing you must remember is that the system I designed must be noted as being provisional in nature, because I specifically did not design things in which I myself could not tell what would be used in any given case were a distinction to be maintained in certain places. Trying to figure out what should be what across the board is easy for "father" versus "bother", as the two are quite distinct from each other in the current orthography, but others are not so obvious. Hence, many of the less common distinctions in North American English are not included if they don't exist locally, simply because I really am working off a very limited set of data myself.

And yes, it cannot distinguish /@/ from /V/ or /@`/ from /3`/, simply because it is designed for a set of dialects in which [@] and [V], and [@`] and [3`] are allophones, with the former of each occuring in unstressed environents, and the latter of each in stressed environments, so hence such distinctions were simply not designed in. Of course, I would have a hard time designing any orthography which distinguished both members of both pairs, both not speaking a dialect which distinguishes either pair and also not having access to data which would allow termining what form should be used in what places if such distinctions are to be preserved. The only thing is that it does seem like the current orthography does preserve some indications where unstressed [V] might be present.

On the other hand, though, it does distinguish in all cases /l/ and /l=/, and as well may indicate /n=/ and /m=/. One note though is that various cases of [l=] in many dialects are actually as a result of allophony of /l/, such as in "tile" here, which is /taIl/ -> [t_haIl=]. Locally, it is clear that this is allophonic, as adding the morpheme "ing" in the case of "tiling" results in /"taIlIN/ -> ["t_a:I.lIN]. On the other hand, "dial" here by itself is /daIl=/ -> [daIl=], but when one adds "ing" to it as "dialing", it results in /"daIl=IN/ -> [daIl=IN]. Consequently, even though in the realizations of the two verbs' infinitives there are no distinctions in realization between the two, once one brings morphology into play, it is clear that there is a phonemic differentiation present, nonetheless. Similarly, with the other two pairs you mentioned, "royal" and "roil", and "towel" and "owl", once one adds another morpheme after them which starts with a vowel, in cases like "roiling", "toweling", and "owlings", and the hypothetical word "royaling", also are differentiated here. Consequently, I would write these as:

"dial" : daiyl
"tile" : tail
"royal" : roiyl
"roil" : roil
"towel" : tauyl
"owl" : aul

>>Quote-''One important note, though, is that the grapheme <s> may represent multiple different phonemes, based on context and like; it is not ambiguous in its usage, but rather one just has to understand a number of rules that determine how /s/ and /z/ are to be represented.''

Why not just use ''s'' for the /s/ sound and ''z'' for the /z/ sound, rather than making a bunch of needless complex rules determining whether an ''s'' is pronounced /s/ or /z/?<<

Actually, I initially had that, but unfortunately people tend to be picky about how things look, even if the changes to make things more palatable make something logically more complex. Of course, if I did not care about what people thought, I would use an eth (Ð ð) for "dh", a thorn (Þ þ) for "th", and an ash (Æ æ) for "ae"; as much as I myself prefer the aesthetics of these, and these characters did historically exist in written Old English and some extent Middle English, and are used today in various languages, many might not want to try to type them, and one of the main goals of the system which I devised provisionally was to compromise between logical cleaness, aesthetics, and practical matters such as typing. Of that, the only part that was not compromisable is that, for the targeted phoneme inventory and distribution, it would be purely phonemic, and could represent any possible target phoneme in any place where it could occur in theory in the first place. One note though is that when I'm on a machine which will easily allow such, I will still write in this orthography using eths, thorns, and ashes nonetheless, even though they aren't required parts of said orthography.

>>How would this sentence come out in your system:

''I was pulled into the pool by something.''<<

It would be:
"Ai was pyld intu dha puul bai samthing."

or if I feel like using extra characters:
"Ai was pyld intu ða puul bai samþing."

>>Including the /A/-/Q/ father-bother distinction in your system would also have the benefit of not making a bunch of words such as ''not'', ''cot'', ''on'', ''bother'', ''pot'', ''mom'' etc. become undesireably longer, as spelling them ''naat'', ''kaat'', ''aan'', ''baadher'', ''paat'' and ''maam'' would do.<<

Again, I wanted to make sure things kepts being purely phonemic, as I did not design this as trying to target a particularly large dialect range in the first place, and did not mean for it to be one which tries to maximize the number of distinctions present even if they are not present at all in the target dialect range. Hence, I did not include the /A/-/Q/ distinction, even though I very well could have if I wanted, primarily because I was specifically not being etymological from a design perspective here. There is one distinction that many lack in said range which is still included, which is /w/ as in "Wales" versus /W/ as in "whales", simply because many older people here still have it, but even then, such is meant to be purely optional in nature (so hence one may write "what" as "hwat" or "wat" for such in the dialect here in such).

Besides worrying about mergers, what about splits? For example, in full Canadian raising, higher is not the same as hire. How would you deal with this?

american nic, Canadian Raising is an interesting case in that it is not a true phonemic split in most cases, but rather is allophonic in nature. The "in most cases" part is that there are some words where [@I] has seemed to become phonemic at least here, such as in the word "spider" (["sp@:I.4@`]) and the surname "Schneider" (["Sn@:I.4@`]), as opposed to "rider" (["r\a:I.4@`]); at best this could possibly be considered a case of allophony which is sensitive to morpheme boundaries, but even then I am not exactly how such would be represented in writing, as morpheme boundaries themselves are clearly not marked in such. Consequently, I have simply denoted the digraph <ei> as referring to this anomalous [@I] which cannot be explained in terms of allophony caused by a following unvoiced consonant (with a possible interceding sonorant) or a following /r/, for use in dialects which actually have such a possibly phonemic or morphologically sensitive allophonic [@I]. Thusly, "rider" would be spelled <raider> but "spider" would be spelled <speider>.

Other splits which are actually non-marginally phonemic, though, would be harder to handle, definitely moreso than "splits" that are only at the realization level and still moreso than mergers, which can be handled by simply trying to represent as many historical distinctions as possible even if many only have a limited portion of them. Probably the only real ways to handle such phonemic splits at all is to either simply favor the most conservative forms within the dialect range actually under consideration, or to introduce forms in writing which separately indicate the differentiated cases in the case of the split in question, even if many do not actually differentiate such.

Of course, with all this adding extra distinctions in writing to account for the lack of various mergers and new splits in some dialects within a large range under consideration, one is likely to end up having a quite complex orthography, using many digraphs and or many diacritics, and which would have to be learned in nature if one wanted to have consistent spellings across the board, for obvious reasons. Also, forget about representing a relatively clean and orthogonal vowel system, which was one of the nice parts subjectively about the dialect range I was considering, as such had simply four tense/lax phonemic monophthong pairs, one for each combination of middle versus high and front versus back, two unpaired low monophthong one low and one back, one unpaired central monophthong, three phonemic diphthongs, one rhoticized central monophthong, and three phonemic syllabic consonants.

I have thought about how to work /Q/ versus /A/, /@/ versus /V/, and /@`/ versus /Vr/ into such a system like that which I created, and it requires making the system in question more complex and less orthogonal overall. For starters, undoubled <o> would become /Q/, and /O/ would become <oa>. Likewise, undoubled <u> would become /V/, and /U/ would become <ui>. Furthermore, <urr> before vowels and <ur> elsewhere would become /Vr/ while <err> before vowels and <er> elsewhere would stay as /@`/; even though <urr>/<ur> was reserved for any NAE dialects which do have /Ur/ somewhere, as I don't know of any which do have such, while I know some do distinguish /@`/ and /Vr/, this is better used for such then. Hence, for example, "cot" would become <kot>, "cought" would become <koat>, "coat" would stay as <koot>, "again" would remain as <aggen>, "suspect" would become <suspekt>, "subject" would become <subdjekt>, "book" would become <buik>, "boot" would remain <buut>, "furry" would stay as <ferri>, and "hurry" would become <hurri>. While this is a more complicated system than that which I started with here, it works out okay overall, even though I still probably would not use it myself except on a theoretical level simply because my own dialect does not contain any of such distinctions, and I would only be trying to represent my own dialect alone in such contexts rather than trying to have an across-the-board uniform orthography.

<<Trying to figure out what should be what across the board is easy for

"father" versus "bother", as the two are quite distinct from each other in

the current orthography, but others are not so obvious.'' ''The only thing is

that it does seem like the current orthography does preserve some indications

where unstressed [V] might be present.>>


Here's some some indications of what words belong to the different sets of

some of the other mergers:

The ''Mary''-''marry''-''merry'' merger - /er/ occurs in words with ''air''

or ''are'' or ''ar'' before a vowel in them, /{r/ occurs in words with

''arr'' like ''marry'' and ''arrow'' and /Er/ occurs in words where the

present spelling is ''err'' or ''er'' as in ''therepy'', ''very'' and

''terrible''.

The ''mirror''-''nearer'' merger - /ir/ occurs in words with ''eer'' or

''ear'' or ''er'' in the spelling as in ''serious'', ''nearer'' and ''beer''

and /Ir/ occurs in words with ''ir'', ''irr'' or ''yr'' in the spelling such

as ''mirror'', ''Sirius'', ''miracle'', ''spirit'' and ''pyramid''.

The ''horse''-''hoarse'' merger - /Or/ occurs in words with ''or'' or ''aur''

or ''war'' in the spelling such as ''for'', ''or'', ''corn'', ''short'',

''dinosaur'', ''warn'', ''warm'', ''wart'' etc. and /or/ occurs in words with

''oar'', ''ore'', ''oor'' or ''our'' in the spelling such as ''roar'',

''oar'', ''more'', ''store'', ''door'', ''floor'', ''four'', ''court'' and

''course''.

The ''hurry''-''furry'' merger - /3`/ occurs in words that have more than one

morpheme as in ''furry'', ''occurrance'', ''blurry'' etc. and /Vr/ occurs in

words that have single morphemes as in ''hurricane'', ''hurry'', ''curry'',

''Murray'' etc. with the exception of ''burr'' and ''burry'' which are /bVr/

and /bVri/.

The ''forward''-''foreword'' merger /@`/ vs. /3`/

unstressed /3`/ occurs in compound words like ''bluebird'', ''glowworm'',

''foreword'', ''sunburn'' etc. with the exception of the word ''yogurt''

which has an unstressed /3`/ /jog3`t/.

Travis,

''pyld'' for ''pulled''? What does ''yl'' represent?

How about these words:

wool

full

bull

bullet

boulevard

How do you spell them in your system?

<<The only thing is that it does seem like the current orthography does

preserve some indications where unstressed [V] might be present.>>

Unstressed /V/ is present in these dialects where the unstressed vowel is
spelled with a ''u''. Also, these dialects pronounce ''what'' and ''was'' as
/w@t/ and /w@z/ with a stressed /@/ so that ''was'' doesn't rhyme with
''buzz'' /bVz/. The stressed /@/ does not occur elsewhere. ''cup'', ''son'',
''front'' and ''luck'' all have stressed /V/.

What about these mergers and splits:

The ''fern''-''fir''-''fur'' merger: /E`/ vs. /I`/ vs. /3`/

fern - /fE`n/

fir - /fI`/

fur - /f3`/

word - /w3`d/

bird - /bI`d/

herd - /hE`d/

learn - /lE`n/

This merger occurs everywhere except for Scotland and some parts of Ireland.

'''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''vane''-''vain''-''vein'' merger: /e/ vs. /{I/ vs. /eI/

vane - /ven/

vain - /v{In/

vein - /veIn/

Merged everywhere except for parts of Northern England and Wales.

'''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''toe''-''tow'' merger: /o/ vs. /oU/

toe - /to/

tow - /toU/

sole - /sol/

soul - /soUl/

moan - /mon/

mow - /moU/

whoa - /wo/

go - /go/

know - /noU/

pour - /poUr/

pore - /por/

court - /koUrt/

though - /DoU/

more - /mor/

/oU/ occurs where the spelling is ''ow'' or ''ou(gh)'' and /o/ occurs
elsewhere.

Merged everywhere except for parts of Northern England and Wales.

'''''''''''''''''

The ''meet''-''meat'' merger: /i/ vs. /I@/

meet - /mit/

meat - /mI@t/

see - /si/

sea - /sI@/

reed - /rid/

read - /rI@d/

field - /fild/

thief - /Tif/

ceiling - /sI@liN/

seize - /sI@z/

Occurs everywhere except for parts of Northern England.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''rode''-''road'' merger: /o/ vs /o@/

rode - /rod/

road - /ro@d/

go - /go/

toe - /to/

cole - /kol/

coal - /ko@l/

load - /lo@d/

moat - /mo@t/

Mote - /mot/

whoa - /wo@/

Distinct in parts of Scotland.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''mews''-''muse'' merger: /Iu/ vs. /y/

mews - /mIuz/

muse - /myz/

neuter - /nIuter/

pseudo - /sIudo/

nutrition - /nytrIS@n/

ewe - /Iu/

dew - /dIu/

due - /dy/

Doo - /du/

yew - /jIu/

you - /ju/

yule - /jyl/

yoohoo - /juhu/

Distinct in parts of Scotland.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''kitty''-''committee'' merger: /i/ vs. /i:/

coffee - /kAfi:/

happy - /h{pi/

fee - /fi:/

reed - /ri:d/

be - /bi:/

greedy - /gri:di/

cookie - /kUki/

committee - /k@mIti:/

kitty - /kIti/

monkey - /mVnki/

key - /ki/

sea - /si:/

Distinct in various parts of Briton.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''bad''-''lad'' split: /{/ vs. /{:/

man - /m{:n/

ham - /h{:m/

pan - /p{:n/

bad - /b{:d/

glad - /gl{:d/

mad - /m{:d/

sad - /s{:d/

lad - /l{d/

pad - /p{d/

had - /h{d/

can (able to) - /k{n/

can (metal container) - /k{:n/

can't (not able to) - /k{nt/

am - /{m/

an - /{n/

and - /{nd/

ran - /r{n/

Indications of the ''bad''-''lad'' split are that /{/ occurs before /d/ with
the exceptions of the words ''glad'', ''mad'', ''sad'' and ''bad'' which have
/{:/ and /{:/ occurs before nasal consonants /n/ and /m/ with the exceptions of the words ''am'', ''an'', ''and'', ''ran'' and ''can'' (able to) which have /{/. /{/ occurs elsewhere.

Distinct in parts of Southern England and Australia.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The ''brute''-''fruit'' merger: /y/ vs. /Y/

brute - /bryt/

boot - /but/

fruit - /frYt/

suit - /sYt/

cruise - /krYz/

lute - /lyt/

rude - /ryd/

luid - /lYd/

juice - /dZYs/

Distinct in parts of Scotland.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

It seems like your system doesn't distinguish them either.