The English spelling system

in half a page

 

Do you know the Engish spelling system?

Not many people do

See full lists and cartoons of present vowels spelling and spoken

 

Table of the basic English Vowel Spellings

a e i o u
pat
pet
pit
pot
nut

Ending a word

pity

A E I O U
mate - bait

mete - meat - meet

mite - might- typing
mote - moat
mute

Ending a word

may
me - bee
hi - my
no
emu

ar er air or/aw

cart - banana
fern - burn
fair
taut - fork

Ending a word

banana
her
air
saw - or

ow oy oo OO

shout
boil
boot
book - put

Ending a word

cow
boy
tabu - too

A dictionary of at least 40,000 words is needed to set out the complete English spelling system as it is at present. No other major alphabetic spelling system is as bad as that.

This is because the English language has around 44 sounds, but only 26 roman letters, A-Z. And these 26 letters are used to represent the 44 sounds in more than 650 different ways .

However, there is a basic spelling system underlying all the accumulated mess. And it is not too bad - it only needs cleaning up.


25 Consonants: b d f g h j k l m n p r s t v w y z plus ch, sh, wh, ng and th/th as in think this
There are no letters really for zh as in measure vision

19 Vowels: a e i o u, a-e e-e i-e o-e u-e, ar er air or/aw, ow oy oo
There are no basic letters for oo as in book, or for the unclear sound when a vowel is not stressed, as in int' rpr' t alph'bet,. This sound is sometimes called schwa, and written upside-down e

The 318 different spellings for the 19 vowel sounds could be reduced to the 40 most consistent vowel spellings without chanjing the usual appearance of print too much, but making it much easier to lern to read and write, as you can see from the Table of Basic English vowel spellings above

This basic system stil includes the 'magic e' as a silent letter to show a long vowel.
Hat
is not the same as hate.
Minut
would not be the same as minute.
This convention keeps togethr the look of word families lik
e bit/bite/bitn/biter which all hav the same stem bit.

Consonants can be dubld to show a short vowel befor them. So comma is not the same as coma.

See how close to a sensibl English speling reform u can get. Explore. If u kept the spelings of 30 very comn 'sight' words like what who to use of off once one could should would, how hard would a sensibl English spelng be for u to read, and how much less dificult to spel? How much faster could it be lernd? What ar th chanjes u would like to make?