A Logical Spelling (TO version)

 [This is a copy of a mail I sent the late Edward Rondthaler a number of years ago. It contains a synopsis of the most current rules for the SoundSpel™ system of simplified spelling. The chart cums first, and then the letter to Ed explaining the rationale behind the rules. Points in the chart that are highlighted  indicate rules that differ from earlier versions of SoundSpel™. Note that this post is in traditional orthography. A parallel version that I posted earlier today is in SoundSpel.]

 

A Lojikal Speling

                                SOUNDSPEL ---                                                                                 EEZY TO LURN, EEZY TO REED

CONSONANTS and consonant pairs

b as heard in beg, habit, bib, mob

c/k as heard in cap, became, kit, back[RJM1] 

ch as heard in chin, teacher, church

d as heard in dog, ladder, did, bad

f as heard in fan, effort, fife, chief

g as heard in get, wagon, gag, big

h as heard in hat, heel, home, harm

j as heard in jam, judge, ajar, edge

m as heard in me, common, mom, him

n as heard in no, manner, nun, tan

ng as heard in song, fling, ringing

ngg as heard in finger, single, anger

nk as heard in drank, flunk, inking

p as heard in pin, paper, pep, cap

q as heard in queen, quaek, liquid

r as heard in red, roar, trip, cheer

s as heard in sit, bus, sets, dogs

ss as heard in princess, largess, gneiss[RJM2] 

sh as heard in shin, issue, motion, rush

t as heard in tap, butter, tot, hit

th as heard in thin, method, path

th voiced as in this, mother, smooth

v as heard in van, river, revive, gave

w as heard in will, awoke, weather

wh as heard in wheat, why, worthwhile

x as heard in extra, fix, box, exam

y as heard in yes, beyond, lawyer

z as heard in zebra, lazy, tease, jazy

zh as heard in azure, pleasure, garage

SHORT VOWELS...the most frequently heard vowel sound

a as heard in act, at, am, bag, can, carry    weak a as in organ

e as heard in ebb, end, bed, mend, merry   weak e as in novel

i as heard in it, in, tip, pin, gives, banish    weak i as in pencil

o as heard in odd, hot, sobs, boxes, sorry   weak o as in lemon

u as heard in up, but, fun, blood, young, love

 

LONG VOWELS - Silent e gives a preceding vowel its 'long' name-sound

ae as heard in A, ate, aim, aid,  same, cape, day, they, ways

ee as heard in E, eel, eat, feet, field, team, seen, ski, key

The spelling of unstressed ½-e depends on its position in the word as shown by e in reform, i in memorial, y in needy

ie as heard in I, ice, tie, eye, ride, guide, flight, aisle, buy

oe as heard in O, old, toe, only, home, boat, sew, know

ue as heard in U, unit, hue, cute, used, beauty, few

 

VOWEL PAIRS and vowels combined with r and rr

oo as heard in ooze, moon, zoo, cruise, true, flu

uu as heard in good, should, bush, put, foot, book

oi /oy as heard in oil, boil, noise / loyal, boy

ou /ow as in out, mouth, sounding / how, cows, power

au /aw as in auto, fraud, caucus / saw, sawing, lawyer

ar as heard in ar, card, far, dolar                ...arr as heard in carry

er unstressed  murderer, pervert, pleasure  ...err as heard in berry

or[RJM3]  as heard in order, for, donor, color        ...orr as heard in sorry

ur stressed, as in  murder, pervert, church[RJM4] 

oor /uur as heard in tour, moor / jury, rural, azure

ua as heard in casual, actual      uae as hurd in graduating

aa as heard in alms, ma, pa, calm, father

aer as heard in air, hair, care, swear, where, there

aul as heard in tall, maul, false, crawl

The as heard in phrase leads you to connect the letters with your own pronunciation whether it be Southern, New England, Irish, Australian, British, or other.  Simplicity in spelling— freedom in pronunciation.

●  Proper names of living people and viable institutions are never formally respelled without permission. Proper names and foreign words not respelled in SS may be indicated with italics and pronunciation indicated by (parentheses).

●  No change in to, do, no, so, go, of, off, has, as, is, his, her,

per, wer [were], me, we, be, he, she, all, thru, -ful and their inflected forms[RJM5] .

●  No change in plural-s (jobs), possessives (man's, his), and the 3^rd person present singular (he sees), even when the s is pronounced as z (the grammatical s).  This is a "predictable generality".

●  ss distinguishes sinss [since] from sins, peess [peace] from pees [peas], etc.

●  rr continues, as now, to indicate that the vowel before it is "short" – carry, merry, sorry.

●  Unstressed "½-ee" continues to be spelt e i or y depending on position. It is heard in the unstressed syllables of 

between, detect, reform, editorial, champion, fifty.

●  No change in the spelling of short (shwa) vowels in unstressed syllables – organ, novel, pencil, lemon, – unless the letter is misleading, or does not help in pronouncing the letter, clearly, slowly, and very distinctly.

●  A double consonant is generally not used to indicate a short vowel – later = latter, laeter = later.  Doubled consonants are employed in exceptional cases for specific, limited reasons, as in carry, iess [ice], off, all.

●  A long-O or long-I sound at the end of a word may be written with a single letter – banjo, go, no, so, alibi, hi, whi, fli, cri...but  banjoes, goes, alibieing, flies, cries, etc..

●  In vowel strings the syllable ends after the first vowel or established vowel pair – free ing, cre aetiv, floo id, hie er, pow er, continue ing, evalue aet, re akt, re-enter.

●  A hyphen separates adjacent letters that might otherwise be mistaken for a digraph: (th) pent-hous; (nk) man-kiend; (sh) dis-harten; (wh) cow-hand; (rr) for-runer; (ng) masheen-gun.

●  We accept the flattery of a capital I for ‘me’.  Perhaps we should extend the courtesy – a capital U for ‘you’.

(TS version)

Dear Ed,

This is my copy of the SS spelling chart which you sent me through snail mail.  I had to retype it since you did not send it to me via the internet, and I wanted to have a perfect, typed copy of my revised version of the chart to send back to you.

I have marked all the recommended changes in the text with a yellow highlight.  I appreciate the need to keep the chart simple enough so that all the relevant information can be fit onto just one page, and for that reason, I have not gone into any particular detail concerning my proposed rule changes and my justifications for them.

What I would like to do right now is simply to refer back to the proposed changes in the highlighted areas one at a time in the order in which they appear in the text just to make a few comments about each of the revised rules and my reasons for fixing them.

Later on, I can go into more detail about minor rules and “fine points” to SS orthography which would require several pages of text to fully explain, but what follows should be a good start, and we can take it from thereJ

ngg as heard in finger, single, anger[RJM6] 

I thought it would be appropriate[RJM7]  to be more explicit about this feature of SS, even though the other spelling rules may account for it, since it is one more feature which makes SS superior to confusing TS usage.

s as heard in sit, bus, sets, dogs

ss as heard in princess, largess, gneiss

I altered these to clarify the changes which you have already agreed to concerning the use of the single letter s to stand for both voiced and unvoiced pronunciations of the plural marker, as well as the exceptional use of the doubled ss at the very end of words to avoid ambiguity in certain types of phonetic categories.

oi /oy as heard in oil, boil, noise / loyal, boy

I made this slight change to reflect the rule change I had called for earlier that would allow for the –oy ending at the very end of words and at the end of meaningful syllables, parallel to your use of ou/ ow and au/ aw.

er unstressed  murderer, pervert, pleasure

ur stressed, as in     murder, pervert, church

These changes reflect my desire to return to the earlier convention used in all precursors to SS of using the ‘ur’ for the stressed ur in “gurl” [girl], “lurn” [learn], “furn” [fern], “church,” and the ‘er’ for the unstressed er in “baker,” “murderer,” and so on.  Trying to get the ‘er’ to do justice to both versions of this sound simply overtaxes[RJM8]  it and causes a great many words to appear very strange, i.e. *erban [urban] , *erjent [urgent], *perchas [purchase], *kerss [curse], *kers [curs], *perss [purse], *pers [purrs = what a cat does], when SS spellings with the traditional ‘ur’ would be more much palatable, as in “urban, urjent, purchas, curss, curs, purss, purs.”

oor /uur as heard in tour, moor / jury, rural, azure

I don’t like the idea of tampering with oor /uur to shorten it to the artificial digraph, ‘ur’:  I think that it should suffice that the oo and the uu sounds are clearly defined in SS, and that any combination of these sounds with an immediately[RJM9]  following r sound should be written in a logical, straightforward manner, as in oo + r = oor and uu + r = uur.  I also think there should be more flexibility with respect to the employment of ‘oor’ so that it could be used more often and thus preserve a more familiar appearance for words (for example, I think we really ought to look into the question of whether it is better to respell ‘your’ as “yuur” or “yoor[RJM10] ”).

aer as heard in air, hair, care, swear, where, there

I would change the special ‘air’ trigraph back to the earlier form of ‘aer’ that it had been all along in forerunner systems such as Ripman's Nue Speling, Zachrissons's Anglic, and Deweys's WES.

Since SS does not use ‘ai’ or ‘-ay’ for any other purposes I feel that there is no good reason to allow the ‘ai’ to gain any possible “toehold” by allowing it to sneak in, in just this one case.  Moreover, children would be ill served by the ‘air’ trigraph because the associated sound does not resemble that of the ‘ir’ digraph at all.

aul as heard in tall, maul, false, crawl

The use of the word “all” as a ‘word-sign’ by itself is justifiable in view of the high frequency of this word, but I don’t think that using a fixed “-all-” form across the board in all words has much to recommend it.  For one thing, typing double consonants within words is always awkward, and the ‘all’ trigraph looks even worse when put “back to back” with other ‘ascenders,’ as in *allter or *balld (having three “tall” letters all together looks strange--even stranger in cursive hand-writing).  Finally, you would have the word, *fallss, [false] which would have to be spelled that way to distinguish it from “falls,” and a double ll followed by a doubled ss is certainly not appetizing!

Instead, I would recommend such spellings as “aulter, bauld, faulss, and fauls.”  The only allowable exception should be for the specific word-sign “all,” and all other derived and inflected forms in which the original meaning of the word has not been altered.  Thus we would have SS “oever-alls,” “all-teraen veeikl,” “carry-all,” “free-for-all,” “cach-all turm,” “all waes,” and “all together,” but “aulwaes”, “aultogether,” “aulmoest,” “aulter,” and so on.

use of “of” and “off” as word signs:

I agree that it is necessary to use these word-signs in order to maintain visual compatibility with TS and especially to prevent the backward knock with traditional orthography that would happen if TS “off” were respelled as “of.”  I do not agree, however, with the notion of writing a double ff within words, as in *offer, *coffy, *offishal, *scroffuela, etc., especially in words which have absolutely nothing to do etymologically with the word “off.”  The last thing we need in SS is more doubled letters, and an ‘-of-’ syllable within a word is not going to be confused with the isolated word “of” any more than the syllables -to- and -do- in toter [totter] and doder [dodder] are going to be confused with the isolated words to and do.

The word-sign spelling “off” should only be used in words which are clearly derived from that word, as in “cast-off”, “off-hand”, “spin-off”, and the like, but not in SS “ofer, ofensiv, cofy, ofishal, scrofuela[RJM11] ,” and so on.

●  Proper names of living people and viable institutions are never formally respelled without permission.  Proper names and foreign words not respelled in SS may be indicated with italics and pronunciation indicated by (parentheses).

I decided to clarify and limit the policy which we have about not respelling proper nouns, in place of the vague reference to “words beginning with a capital letter.”  I think there are cases where respelling proper nouns is indeed justifiable, especially in “instructive” or pedagogical contexts when dealing with proper nouns that are difficult to write or pronounce, and all the more so when the word in question is so common that it can be considered to be “in the public domain.”

●    No change in to, do, no, so, go, of, off, has, as[RJM12] , is, his, her, per, wer [were], me, we, be, he, she, all, thru, -ful and their inflected forms.

I’ve added a few more words to the list for the sake of consistency, even though some of these word-signs may be covered by other rules.  (This list is hardly complete or exhaustive, but it should contain just about all the most common words of this type.)

●  No change in plural-s (jobs), possessives (man's, his), and the 3^rd person present singular (he sees), even when the s is pronounced as z (the grammatical s).  This is a "predictable generality".

I added the term, “grammatical s,” since I think it is appropriate to gather the three different uses of this letter together under one collective term.

●    ss distinguishes sinss [since] from sins, peess [peace] from pees [peas].

I am being careful to distinguish between words respelled in SS and words from TS used as examples.

●  A double consonant is generally not used to indicate a short vowel – later = latter, laeter = later.  Doubled consonants are employed in exceptional cases for specific, limited reasons, as in carry, iess [ice], off, all.

This is not a suggested change!:  I thought this would be a nice rule to add since there was space for it, and it is important to mention this feature of SS which separates it from more compromising schemes such as RITE and Cutspelng.

●  A hyphen separates adjacent letters that might otherwise be mistaken for a digraph: (th) pent-hous; (nk) man-kiend; (sh) dis-harten; (wh) cow-hand; (rr) for-runer; (ng) masheen-gun.

Another useful rule:  I copied this one directly from your book, “American Spelling” on page 299, under SYLLABLE SEPARATION

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 [RJM1]Rondthaler has TO usage strictly determining the use of c and k in SS. I, on the other hand, have developed a set of rules specifying the use of c and k in SS words, which largely mimics TO practice without requiring previous knowledge of TO. The practical effects of such a change are not great. rjm.

Note that as of 2007, ‘sc’ is not being automatically changed to ‘sk’.

 [RJM2] The set of rules for when to use and when not to use the “doubled ss” is rather involved, and would require at least a paragraph of explanations.  The justifications for the rules would require an entire article. rjm

 [RJM3]I recall one authority recommended the use of the expanded ‘oer’ trigraph for the transliteration of words such as TO “four,” which some individuals pronounce differently than TO “for.” This possibility is not currently supported by ALC SoundSpel, but might be held “in reserve” if the need arises. rjm

 [RJM4]I am aware that there are some who do not pronounce TO “hurry” the same as TO “furry.” For people who give the former the pronunciation ‘huh-ry,’ the very exceptional use of the “urr” trigraph would make sense (on analogy with arr, err, orr). As it concerns the pronunciation of a single word in a single dialect, however, the issue is too minor to bring up here. rjm

 [RJM5]The list of “word signs” and of words that take a “terminal e reduction” is not intended to be complete, only representative. Also note that forms such as ‘-off-‘ and ‘-all-‘ do not “apply” to syllables in words that bare no etymological relationship to such words. Thus SS “pae-off” but “ofis,” “oever-alls” but “aulwaes.” As of 2007, I have switched to respelling ‘was’ as “wuz.”

 [RJM6]Note that Jack Mleynek wanted to drop this feature, even though it has never once been challenged during the previous history of SS to my knowledge. To my ears the sound distinction is too important to overlook.

 [RJM7]Note that in SS Rondthaler employs the spelling *aproepryet, but I am not using the ‘y’ letter here. I could spell it “aproepri’et,” but then I would have to use an apostrophe after the ‘i.’ I am still not completely decided about whether to choose between ‘-et’ or ‘-at’ in this case. [As of 2023, the '-at' form has been definitively chosen. rjm.]

 [RJM8]Note that Rondthaler wants to spell TO ‘taxes’ as *taxses in order to indicate that the x sound here is not voiced. I say this is ridiculously awkward! We should bypass this rule for plurals and the grammatical s generally.

 [RJM9]Note that Rondthaler would respell this word as *imeedyetly. I find this too awkward here and prefer “imeediatly.” I never went over this issue with him.

 [RJM10]I am not planning on “pushing” this issue that hard, only in the event that others fluent in SS may want to take it up.

 [RJM11]This was respelled “skrofuela” in the original version of the text, due to an earlier ‘sk’ digraph rule that I have since rescinded. rjm

 [RJM12]The word “was” was initially included here as a “word sign.” I had long had doubts about the word due to the fact that the TO spelling *was misrepresents both the sound of the vowel and the terminal –s. Roberta’s alleged bad experience with a student finally led me to abandon this word sign altogether. rjm