OzIdeas Home Social Innovation Political and Economic Life-style

Education Ideas Literacy Spelling Writing Systems

Alternativ SPELLING for the Millennium

International English Spelling Part 2.

The first step for English Spelling for the next Millennium is

(See International English Spelling Part 1)

Now for further steps...

The next step is:

spell F instead of PH whenevr you like

as in telefon, fotograf, graf

This fits international practice, except for Phrench.

A Third Step

- still needs experiment and research as it may not fit with international practice Spell J as J whenevr you like

Write J instead of DG as in gajet

Write J insted of soft G as in mesaj and garaj,

Optionl J chanjes u might like to make sometime could include: - garaj  mesaj  jiraf  manaj  vilaj  jail  gajet  wijet  Jerry  Jill grunj jelatin

A Fourth Step for International English Spelling

Why worry about weird vowel spellings? Use principles, not gesswork to spell the unclear sounds in words.

For ends of words just use 'a' as in: -ant  -ance  -ary  -abl 

For sounds you can't really hear: Omit as in

tecnikly   difrent   seprat   dictionry   patd  silabl  ansr  singr  mortr   apl  litl posibl

A fifth step for Internationl English Spelling

Mor sensabl rules for silly vowel spellings

TABLE 1. The five short vowels

TABLE 2 The five long vowels

TABLE 3. The last eight vowels

Note on spelling words the same if they sound the same:

Distinctions are rarely necessary, except when they often occur together, as in four/for to/too/two

Present English spelling is full of words that are spelld the same, without anyone even noticing -
words such as present even rare sow note sound just bow row well con let light can may hose

Moderat cutting of surplus letrs

Text with mor drastic cutng of surplus letrs.

64% of words unchanged. 6.3% shortr. Market reserch shows that the least popular letr deletion is to cut 'the' to 'th'. 'the' is the most comn word in text, so cutng it by a third makes a visual jolt. th is therefor one of th later 'mor drastic' cut spelngs to be made.

It ws on th first day of th new year that th anouncement ws made, almost simultaneusly from three observatries, that th motion of th planet Neptune, th outrmost of all th planets that wheel about th Sun, had becom very eratic. A retardation in its velocity had been suspectd in Decembr. Then a faint, remote spek of light ws discovrd in th rejion of th perturbd planet. At first this did not cause any very great exitement. Sientific peple, howevr, found th intelijence remarkabl enuf, even befor it became known that th new body ws rapidly growing larjr and brightr, and that its motion ws quite difrent from th ordrly progress of th planets.

Internationl English Spelling - Summary of
Interspel Gidelines to spelling English sounds

Fonemes are the sounds that distinguish words in the a language. Some are simpl speech sounds, some are diphthongs - combinations of two fonetic sounds - or may even be pronounced as triphthongs. Interspel's categories of fonemes are for pragmatic everyday use, not theoretical linguistics.

1. Consonants as in -
bab, dad, fluf, gag, ha, juj, kik, lul, mum, nan, pup, quik, ror, sis, tat, valv, wow, ax, yay, ziz, sing, sink, church, shush, this, thin, which. New, zh, as in trezhr

2. Vowels. 48 spellings represent 19 English vowel fonemes.
The unclear 'schwa' is the 20th (qv) and is usualy not speld at all in Interspel, e.g. litl actr ansr

TÀBL 4 Sequences of vowels - exampls of words show how simple their spelling is in Interspel.

(In brackets, spellings of singl vowel sounds, alredy listd above. Also listed in capitals are spelling convention -ial, -ion - iot and qu- )

Now See Interspel Part 3

Interspel Part 3 Looks at principls of gramr and pronunsiasion for an internasionl English spelling.
an Looks at the posibility of using an inconspicuus grav acsent to sho long vowels, as in tàbl.

  Back to Ozideas Home Page