Fonetic spelling of Inglish

"One only has to tweak the current system to reduce inconsistencies and anomalies, and it would work as well as if not better than any purely phonetic system ever could."

I agree. There are many strange spellings that could be changed for the better without doing a full phonetic reform. For instance, does dialect pronounce the "g" in phlegm, the "s" in "isle", or the "b" in "debt"? There are tons of words with silent letters that no one ever pronounces no matter what dialect they speak, and they should be removed.

>>-all should be spelled as -oll <<

-all and -oll produce very different sounds in most English language accents.

''-all and -oll produce very different sounds in most English language accents.''

Not really, both have either /A/ [1] or /Q/ [2] in

[1] traditional Western accents, w/o L-colorization or CVS
[2] Canadian accents, RP, some Western accents (due to either L-colorization and/or CVS), Pittsburgh and Boston accents

for example CALL [kAl or kQl] rhymes with DOLL [dAl or dQl]
caught/cot unmerger is so unnatural, it reduces the number of rhymes.

or FALL, FOLLOW, they both have the same nucleus [fAl] or [fQl] in Canada, RP and the West
it's artificial to have [O] in Fall, and [ä] in Follow, or [O] in ball, but
[ä] in doll, involve, as in NYC.

A BackEast pronunciation [kOl, bOl] sounds like ''Cole, Bowl'' to my ear.

I would retain -all for one syllable words like "fall", "hall"; and the raised alternate when two syllables are present as in "shallow", "hallow". No change needed. "Shall" would remain an exception due to history.

-oll for would be for words like "toll", "roll" and altered for multi-syllablic words like "dollar", "follow". No change needed.

I would even retain the silent "k" in words like "know", "knee" because they are consistently silent (there is no case where sometimes "k" is silent, sometimes it is pronounced [generally] in "kn-") for etymological reasons, and because it *looks* English. Same for "gn-". "Phlegm" would have to change, possibly to "phlem", or "phleym" with a short vowel (note retention of "ph" as alternate "f" to show etymology because "ph" is always [generally] pronounced like "f")

the point is: you cannot make a phonetic spelling of English because the language is becoming more and more diverse (accents of English are different, alive & kicking, with so many mergers and shifts). Southerners may want to spell get as ''git'', Westerners may want to spell ''hawk'' as ''hok'' or ''hahk'', and yellow as yallow;Canadians may like to spell father as ''fother'' or ''fauther'', and ''about'' as ''abuhot''

<<''-all and -oll produce very different sounds in most English language accents.''

Not really, both have either /A/ [1] or /Q/ [2]...for example CALL [kAl or kQl] rhymes with DOLL [dAl or dQl]>>

That's not true. In RP 'call' is [kO:l] and 'doll' is [dQl]. Apart from the difference in sound, one is a longer sound than the other.

<<caught/cot unmerger is so unnatural, it reduces the number of rhymes.>>

This is a perfect example of my problem with phonetic spelling. People make up stupid reasons why one thing should be one way instead of noticing that these trivial differences have not actually been any obstacle to communication at all. The comment above is particularly funny. I would say the most unnatural thing about the cot/caught 'unmerger' (or would it be 'split'?) is that it hasn't happened; a cot/caught merger has occurred in some accents. While I think poetry is great, it seems one big plus about words is that I can differentiate between different ones when spoken, so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water! :)

As an academic project it's pretty harmless, but there seem to be clear 'big brother' undertones about what is effectively regulating speech.