Spelling reform

yeah, ''y'' would look crazy spelled as the ''schwa'' sound because, again would become ''ygen'' arrest would became ''yrest''. what about words like soda, data, and betta, they would definitely look crazy spelled ''soady'' ''daity'' and ''bety''. They would look like they were suppose to be pronounced ''sew-dee'' ''day-tee'' and ''betty''. The system decribed here spells them as soedu, daetu, and betu.

I guess also just like they spell both ''perfect's'' as ''purfekt''. They also spell both meanings of suspect as ''suspekt''.

I just thought of someting, and I will post it in all of these forums about spelling reform too.

What if one English-speaking country decided to have an English-language spelling reform, and the reform was based mainly on that country's accent(s). Let's say that the country that does this spelling reform is Canada; would anyone personally feel like adopting the system simply because the country has reformed and in theory improved the English spelling system?

Yeah, it does look a bit odd using the letter "y" for the sound of schwa but I don't think it's any worse than using "a", "e", "i", "o" or "u". No matter what you do, any phonemic spelling reform is going to look odd.

Don't you think that "soedu", "daetu" and "betu" look odd? Ending a word with "u" (straight after a consonant letter) makes it look as if the final sound is /u:/, i.e. the "oo" in "too".

Let's take the sentence "Ask a question about shortening the radius of the captain's photography pencil which he left on the metal sofa." and change all the schwa sounds to "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" and "y" (changing only those consonant letters as necessary).

A) "Ask a queschan about shortaning tha radias of tha captan's phatography pensal which he left on tha metal sofa."

E) "Ask e queschen ebout shortening the radies of the capten's phetogrephy pencel which he left on the metel sofe."

I) "Ask i queschin ibout shortining thi radiis of thi captin's phitogriphy pencil which he left on thi metil sofi."

O) "Ask o queschon obout shortoning tho radios of tho capton's photogrophy pensol which he left on tho metol sofo."

U) "Ask u queschun ubout shortuning thu radius of thu captun's phutogruphy pensul which he left on thu metul sofu."

Y) "Ask y queschyn ybout shortyning thy radiys of thy captyn's phytogryphy pencyl which he left on thy metyl sofy."

Now which of these doesn't look "crazy"? They all look odd, don't they? The reason I chose "y" for this vowel is that each of the other letters strongly indicate a different vowel. The letter "y", on the other hand, is a bit wishy-washy when it comes to representing vowels, it tends to do whatever it wants. Thus I felt that it was a good letter for this vowel.

In my proposal, the sound of schwa would be written as a "y" before a consonant and as an "a" at the end of a word (also "er" is pronounced as a schwa sound in many accents).

Some words in the sentence (Y) above do look pretty far from right but that's not quite how things would look. Here's how the sentence would really come out (in my accent).

"Aask a queschyn ybout shortyning dha raidiys ov dha captyn's fytogryfy pensyl which he left on dha metyl soafa."

How a letter (or more generally a grapheme), in my system, is pronounced depends on what follows it. Conversely, how you spell a phoneme depends on what follows it.

The letters "y", "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u" would be pronounced differently at the end of a word to how they'd be pronounced before a consonant. Here are some examples.

The letters "y", "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u" before a consonant.

"question" ==>> "queschyn"
"little" ==>> "lityl"
"pencil" ==>> "pensyl"
"captain" ==>> "captyn"

"cat" ==>> "cat"
"carry" ==>> "carry"
"damn" ==>> "dam"
"and" ==>> "and"

"net" ==>> "net"
"den" ==>> "den"
"egg" ==>> "eg"
"edge" ==>> "ej"

"igloo" ==>> "iglu"
"into" ==>> "intu"
"whip" ==>> "whip"
"witch" ==>> "wich"

"dog" ==>> "dog"
"of" ==>> "ov"
"off" ==>> "of"
"flock" ==>> "flok"

"cut" ==>> "cut"
"hut" ==>> "cut"
"putt" ==>> "put"
"brother" ==>> "brudher"

The letters "y", "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u" at the end of a word.

"ferry" ==>> "ferry"
"fairy" ==>> "fairy"
"happy" ==>> "hapy"
"closely" ==>> "cloasly"

"soda" ==>> "soada"
"data" ==>> "daata" (U.S. "daita")
"betta" ==>> "beta"
"the" ==>> "dha"

"sea" ==>> "se"
"be" ==>> "be"
"me" ==>> "me"
"thee" ==>> "dhe"

"thy" ==>> "dhi"
"my" ==>> "mi"
"buy" ==>> "bi"
"pi" ==>> "pi"

"know" ==>> "no"
"toe" ==>> "to"
"though" ==>> "dho"
"so" ==>> "so"

"clue" ==>> "clu"
"through" ==>> "thru"
"grew" ==>> "gru"
"too" ==>> "tu"