Spelling reform idea.

Here is a spelling reform system that I recently invented:

b - /b/ - boat
ch - /tS/ - chair
d - /d/ - door
f - /f/ - fish, fry, fire
g - /g/ - gold, goat
h - /h/ - house
j - /dZ/ - jam, jelly
k - /k/ - cat, kitchen
kh - /x/ - loch
l - /l/ - linger, link, live
m - /m/ - mat, machine
n - /n/ - near, night
p - /p/ - pipe
r - /r/ - rat, rack
s - /s/ - siren
sh - /S/ - shine
t - /t/ - tire
þ - /T/ - think
v - /v/ - vent
w - /w/ - wind
y - /j/ - yes
z - /z/ - zoo
zh /Z/ - vision

ŋ - /N/ - sing, sink, think, finger, singer - i.e. <feeŋgɚ> vs. <seeŋɚ>
þ - /T/ - think
ð - /D/ - then, that, father
ł - /5/ - fill, still, bill, build, mildew, bell, pool
ɹ (semivocalic /r/) - card, board, shore, beer, appear, hair, far, for, nor,
tour, fair, fear
đ - /4/

Vowels
a - /{/ - bag
e - /E/ - fed, bed
i - /I/ - sip, dip
o - /Q/ - cot, hot
u - /V/ - cup
ae - /eI/ - date
ee - /i/ - seed
ie - /aI/ - strike
oe - /oU/ - folk
ue - /ju/ - mute, beautiful, cue, few
aa - /A/ - father, psalm, balm, calm
oa - /o@/ - hoarse, board, shore, four, court, more, store, explore, galore, door, floor
oo - /u/ - mood, brood, rude, crude, moo, lute
uu - /U/ - wood, should, could
oi - /oI/ - boil, coin
ao - /e@/ - fair, stair, spare, rare, care, impair
eo - /I@/ - fear, steer, clear, appear, rear, beer, ear
uo - /U@/ - tour
au - /O/ - caught, law, saw, corn, morning, for, short, bought, horse, war, warn, haught, fought
eu - /3/
ou - /aU/ - brown, sound
ə - /@/ - arrest, around, ahead, again
ɚ - /@`/ - center, better, winter, inventor
ɝ - /3`/ - bird, fern, worm, burn, turn, furry
ų - syllabic consonants,
ųł - /5=/
ųn - /n=/

Other symbol

‡ (used to avoid confusion with diagraphs, as in ''lighthouse'' which becomes ''liet‡hous''.

Something I forgot to mention:

ŭ - /o/ - endulge, culture, lightbulb, gulf, multiple, multiverse

<<<used to avoid confusion with diagraphs, as in ''lighthouse'' which becomes ''liet‡hous>>>>

Sorry. That was a mistake. ''th'' is unambiguous in my system, so ''lighthouse'' would not get a ''‡'' and it would become <liethous> not <liet‡hous>

''grasshopper'' would have a ''‡'' in it, though.

Whose variety of English gets to set the standard for your new system:
AE, BE, Canadian English, Indian English, Australian English, South African English or New Zealand English?

Many people have created various kinds of spelling reform systems. As a learner, I am not sure of what to choose. But one thing is clear. I do not want to spell "daet" for "date".

Spelling reform is a very bad idea. A much better idea is pronunciation reform, that is, pronouncing words the way they are written (instead of trying to spell words the way they are pronounced).

The reasons for this should be obvious. Pronuncation drifts much more rapidly than spelling, so pronunciation should be aligned on spelling, rather than the other way around (otherwise spelling must be constantly changed). And there are many different pronunciations of English words, but generally only one (or at most two) ways to spell them, so no spelling reform could accommodate more than a fraction of all English speakers, whereas a pronunciation reform could accommodate all forms of written English.

Strangely, nobody ever suggests pronunciation reform. I guess they are too lazy to change their own pronunciations and just want everyone else to talk and spell as they talk.

That's because language is spoken. Written language is just a representation of the spoken language. Therefore, we should change the written system, not the spoken system.

Although I have no idea how to deal with vowels, the are a few minor changes to your consonantal system that I would like to suggest to make it more one sound=one symbol and vice versa.

'c' represents /S/ and 'tc' represents /tS/
'j' represents /Z/ and 'dj' represents /dZ/ (as in French)

'x' represents /x/

Also, instead of having two symbols each for the different sounds represented by 'l' and 'r', leave them be, as which exact sound could be figured by surrounding sounds.

As you can probably tell, I've thought about this before. ;)

In response to JJM, I think there could be several standards, as it would be highly illogical to arbitrarily choose one, because then it would only a mild improvement on the current system.

Crazy thought...perhaps those interested in English spelling reform could start a yahoo group to discuss and vote on different proposals...

I have no idea how to deal with vowels either. How about looking at this idea, then?
<www.spellingsociety.org/journals/pamflets/p14lojikon.php>

Ok, if anyone's interested:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/englishspellingreformgroup/

American Nic,

Did you start that group?

Maybe...


Ok, so I was bored, plus it seems to come up a lot here, so to get it away from here (which I think is to help learners of real-world English), people with that interest could be redirected to pursue their interest there. ;)

Language is spoken, but speech is ephemeral. The real long-term influence of language is exerted exclusively through the written word. Changing spelling makes older written forms of a language obsolete and unreadable, making them forever inaccessible to later generations. Changing pronunciation does none of this, since virtually no speech is recorded, anyway.

Spoken language doesn't really change that quickly today, especially when high mobility and rapid communication tend to smooth over any minor deviations. However, the changes that do occur are more permanent; and even with slower rates of change, pronunciation changes far more quickly than the written word. Therefore it makes sense to align the language upon its most stable dimension, that of the written word, in order to preserve all that has been created thus far in the language for posterity.

But I don't expect this to take hold. Most people who want to reform spelling are simply poor spellers who are too lazy to improve their spelling. The last thing on their minds is preserving the language for future generations.

Ok. You're right. For the sake of being able to read Shakespeare in its original form, I think we should subject all kids in school, and all foreign learners of English, to hundreds of (wasted) hours learning the correct spelling of every single word. That's logical.

Spelling was not standardized in Shakespeare's time. It is now.

And rest assured that if multiple spelling reforms had occurred in English in the time intervening since the Bard put pen to paper, his work today would be quite unreadable.