SoundSpel

SoundSpel is an English language spelling reform proposal. Its origins date back to 1910. [Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#back "Personal View 8" (Background of the Notation)] , www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.] SoundSpel has been endorsed by the American Literacy CouncilRondthaler,Edward, [http://americanliteracy.com/ss-history.htm "A Brief History of Efforts to Simplify English Spelling"] , americanliteracy.com, accessed May 16, 2008.] because English speakers can easily read it.Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#anser "Personal View 8" (Answers to Specific Questions)] #10, www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 29, 2008.]

Description

Phonetics

Phonemes are represented as follows: [Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#sound "Personal View 8" (The SoundSpel (TM) Notation System)] , www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.]

Exceptions and other differences

"U", meaning "you", is capitalized.

There is no change in the words "was", "as", "of", "the", "he", "she", "me", "we", "be", "do", "to", "thru", and "off". Words derived from these (such as "being", "together", and "thruout") also remain unchanged. Words ending in "-ful" remain unchanged.

There is no change in the plural suffix "-s" (as in "jobs"), the possessive suffix "-'s" (as in "man's"), and in the third person present singular verb suffix "-s" (as in "he runs"), even though in all these cases the "s" is sometimes pronounced [z] .

There is no change in the digraph "th", even though it can be pronounced as voiced [ð] or unvoiced [θ] . Similarly the letter "x" is retained for both voiced [gz] and unvoiced [ks] . The reason may be that unvoiced occurrences outnumber the voiced 5 to 1,Fact|date=October 2008 and words normally calling for a voiced "x" are understood even if pronounced unvoiced.

There are usually no changes in the spelling of short (schwa) vowels in the unstressed syllables of words like "organ", "novel", "pencil", and "lemon", unless the spelling would otherwise indicate an overpronunciation of the word (as in "mountain").

Depending on its position in the word or root, the unstressed "half "ee" (as in "between", "detect", "reform", "champion", "editorial", "hapyer", and "fifty") continues to be spelled as "e", "i", or "y".

Double "rr", as in traditional orthography, indicates that the preceding vowel is short (as in "carry", "merry", and "sorry").

Double "ll" indicates that the preceding "a" is pronounced [ɔ] (as in "fall", "tall", and "call").

The long "o" or long "i" sound at the end of a word may be written with a single letter, as in "banjo", "go", "so", "alibi", "hi", "fli", "mi" (but "banjoes", "alibieing", "flies", etc., since the vowel is no longer at the end of the word).

A hyphen following a vowel unambiguously separates a long vowel from another vowel following, as in "re-enter" and "co-operaet".

If two vowels—such as ea—do not match a digraph on the SoundSpel chart, then the syllable ends with the first vowel: "react" ("ea" is not a digraph), "jeenius", "memorial", "creaetiv". In cases of more than two vowels the syllable ends with the first digraph: "flooid" ("oo", being the first digraph, ends the syllable—it is not "flo-oid"), "hieest", "freeing", "inueendo", "power", "continueing", "paeabl", "evalueaet". [Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#text "Personal View 8" (Answers to Specific Questions)] #5, 6 & 7, www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.]

Examples

[Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#text "Personal View 8" (Sampl texts transliteraeted into SoundSpel.)] , www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.]

The Star

It was on the ferst dae of the nue yeer the anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that the moeshun of the planet Neptune, the outermoest of all planets that wheel about the Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in the reejon of the perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found the intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that the nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum the orderly progres of the planets. – Herbert George Wells

Britten when yung

We mae nowadaes be chairy about uezing the werd "jeenius", but we stil hav a guud iedeea whut is ment bi it. For exampl, thair ar graet numbers of verry gifted muezishans hoo ar admierd but not calld jeeniuses. But thair ar uthers, manifestly prodijus, performing offen at extraordinerrily erly aejes, a varieety of feets so complex that the muezical laeman cuud hardly imajin, eeven with the moest desperet laebor, acomplishing eny of them, whiel eeven muezishans ar astonisht and we then reech for the guud, handy, vaeg Enlietenment werd and call them jeeniuses. The list incloods Mozart and Mendelssohn; and, despiet all the limiting jujments, it incloods Benjamin Britten. – Frank Kermode

Oed to a Nietingael

Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paens
Mi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk,
Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draens
Wun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not thru envy of thi hapy lot,
But beeing too hapy in thien hapynes,
That thow, liet-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In sum meloedius plot
Of beechen green, and shadoes numberles
Singest of sumer in fuul-throeted eez.
– John Keats

History

In 1910 philologist Alexander John Ellis played a major role in developing a system now known as "Classic New Spelling". Walter Ripman and William Archer wrote the first dictionary of the system, "New Spelling" (NuSpelling), which was republished in 1941 by the Simplified Spelling Society.

In 1969 Godfrey Dewey improved upon Ripman's and Archer's work, producing "World English Spelling". Dewey and Edward Rondthaler, a prominent typesetter, CEO of International Typeface Corporation, corresponded from 1971.

In 1986 the book "Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling" written by Rondthaler and Edward Lias was published by the American Language Academy. Its full title was "Dictionary of American spelling: A simplified alternative spelling for the English language : written as it sounds, pronounced as it's written". This called for improvements to spelling, with clearer rules and better grapheme/ phoneme correspondence. It was slightly less strict than Classic New Spelling, allowing "the" rather than "dhe", for example.

The system was further reformed from 1987 on and became SoundSpel.

Advantages

;Compared to other proposals
*Does not introduce any new symbols, unlike Pitman's Initial Teaching Alphabet, Unifon, and the Shavian and Deseret alphabets. This makes SoundSpel compatible with the current (QWERTY) keyboard.

*Relies upon familiar digraphs.

*Does not assign unusual notations for sounds (ex. using q for the ng sound), except for 'uu' and 'zh'.

*Does not introduce diacriticals (such as accents), which are generally not favored in English-speaking countries. [Horne, Scott, [http://www.hornetranslations.com/diacriticsenca.shtml "Accents and other diacritical marks in English"] , www.hornetranslations.com, accessed June 7, 2008.] [Bear, Jacci Howard, [http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/expertcharacters/a/diacriticals.htm "Accent Marks Using Diacriticals in Desktop Publishing"] , www.about.com, accessed June 7, 2008.]

*Does not dramatically change the appearance of existing words.

*Due to above reasons, is easier to learn, and especially easier to read, for those who are familiar with traditional English spelling, than other systems, such as those mentioned above.

;Shared with other proposals
*Improves consistency of writing. This would reduce learning time and reading difficulties, compared to those of traditional English spelling.

*Also promotes more precise pronunciation in speech. [Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#anser "Personal View 8" (Answers to Specific Questions)] #4, www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.]
*Generally decreases text length by about 4% . [Rondthaler,Edward, [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php#anser "Personal View 8" (Answers to Specific Questions)] #9, www.spellingsociety.org, accessed May 16, 2008.]

Disadvantages

*The phonetics of SoundSpel is primarily based upon "General American" and differs somewhat from the British "Received Pronunciation." There may be other small differences from Australian, Indian, South African, Canadian and other regional accents.

*SoundSpel is only one of many English spelling reform proposals. There is no agreement on what proposal, if any, should be adopted.

*Those already familiar with traditional spelling would need to learn a new system if it became the standard.

*Compromises and rule exceptions^*above make SoundSpel more difficult to learn than it would be if it was a purely phonetic system. Learning to write it directly would especially require effort, unless computer software is used as an aid.
*Either two systems would need to be learned in order to read both old and new literature, or the text of many books and printed materials would need to be translated to the new system, if traditional spelling is discontinued.

References

ee also

* Spelling reform
* English spelling reform
* List of some English spelling reform proposals

External links

* [http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/pvs/pv8rondthaler.php SoundSpel]
* [http://www.ententetranslator.com/IDL.htm "DoubleLine" Translator]