history-SR.htm   Chronology of Spelling  www.spellingsociety.org
   Ken Ives  |  Written Dialects, 1970  
 HISTORY OF SPELLING REFORM
  Activities in the UK and US since the mid 1870's  

C O N T E N T S              

• 1768 Benjamin Franklin develops a better (phonetic) alphabet for English

• 1789 Webster endorses Franklin's plan in his Dissertations on fhe English Language

• 1806 & 1828  Webster publishes his dictionaries with reformed spellings
  AEA endorses a variant of Webster's diacritic based extended alphabet

• 1870 PSC Phonetic Spelling Council established in the UK (see Chronology)

• 1870  The Chicago Tribune starts to use many regularized spellings.  The owner,
           Medill, was a member of the SRA.  McCormick extends the initiative (1934-1975).
  1886
   

  Some Trib. reformed spellings:  agast, ameba, burocrat, crum,   missil, subpena,bazar, hemloc, herse, intern, rime, sherif, staf

  Some (maroon coded) have become variant spellings in the dictionary
   

• 1876  A banner year:  APA endorses 11 respellings 

• 1876  Centennial:  Int'l. Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography

• 1876  SRA formed   British SRA founded in 1879

• 1906  SSB founded - Simplified Spelling published - TR's executive order

• 1908  SSS founded in the UK patterned after the SSB

• 1908 - 1926  New Spelling adopted as a house stile for many SSS publications.
  
  LINKS

• Spelling timeline - Chronology -  Early Alphabets to Modern English
• SpelCon - International Conference on World English Spelling
• Spelling Reform   Sweet: Principles of Spelling Reform
• Sweet, Absurdities of English Spelling based on A.Ellis, Plea for Phonetic Spelling
• David Barnsdale's Spelling Reform page
• Mencken on Simplified Spelling and the American Language

This is a history about spelling reform efforts in the U.S. and Britain since the mid-1870s.
There were attempts at spelling reform earlier but they never resulted in the formation of s society of supporters.  Bulokar and Hart did not recruit converts or initiate a movement.

Most of this information can be found in Ken Ives' book titled Written Dialects. and in Abraham Tauber's Columbia Dissertation on spelling reform.

Activities prior to 1870:  The Chronology lists some of the important reforms and events that were taking place before 1870.  1755, of course, was the date of publication of Johnson's influential dictionary.  The dictionary provided a lexical standard or one spelling per word.  No attempt was made to establish one spelling per sound.

APA   In 1876, the American Philological Association adopted 11 new spellings, and began promoting their use: ar catalog definit gard giv hav infinit liv tho thru wisht* 

SRA  "Also in 1876, an `International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography' was held in Philadelphia, during the Centennial Exposition. This developed into the Spelling Reform Association."   SRA 

BSRA  In 1879, the British Spelling Reform Association was founded. In 1886, the American Philological Association (which had earlier proposed 11 new spellings) came out with a list of 3500 re-spellings.

NEA  In 1898, the (American) National Education Association began promoting a list of 12 spellings. They were:  tho altho thru thruout thoro thoroly thorofare program prolog catalog pedagog decalog*  (*see note at end) 

2006 is the bicentennial for a high point in the history of Simplified Spelling.

SSB  The Simplified Spelling Board (SSB) was founded in the U.S. in 1906, and had a list of 300-plus spellings. One of the founding members was Andrew Carnegie, who donated more than $250,000 over the next several years. The Simplified Spelling Society was founded in the U.K. in 1908, as a "sister" organization. (Some more on the Simplified Spelling Society, which is still operating, a number of paragraphs down.)  The SSS received one unsolicited grant of $10,000  from Carnegie along with a letter explaining why he would not be sending any more.

Also in 1906, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was recruited by Brander Matthews an became an enthusiastic supporter of  simpler spellings. Initially, he ordered the Government Printing Office to use the Simplified Spelling Board's 300 or so proposed spellings. This order was issued on August 27, 1906 (while the U.S. Congress was in recess). There was resistance from the Government Printing Office and others who were to carry it out, and when Congress re-adjourned that fall, they set to revoke Roosevelt's order and never appropriated any funds to cover it.  Roosevelt rescinded the order but some of the changes still made their way into the GPO style guide. From ("Our Times," Volume 3, by Mark Sullivan, Scribner, 1937), we find:

Congress ... voted, 142 to 24, that "no money appropriated in this act shall be used (for) printing documents ... unless same shall conform to the orthography ... in ... generally accepted dictionaries."

I think that this is an important statement (SB).  It suggests that the first task is to get the new spelling into the dictionary.  In one sense, the phonemic spelling is already in the dictionary and over 2000 alternative variant spellings are in some dictionaries.  The Funk & Wagnalls dictionary of 19... endorsed most of the reformed spellings on the list of 300 and became the source of the new spellings found in the Chicago Tribune. 

Thus, it ended up that simplified spellings were used only in written items coming from the White House itself, and at that, only 12 were used. (I don't know if these were the same 12 that the NEA was promoting.)

The National Education Association continued promoting their list until 1921. The Simplified Spelling Board had a fair amount of activity until about 1920, and this had been aided by the donations from Andrew Carnegie. However, Carnegie did not provide any money in his will for the Spelling Board.

Continuing from Ken Ives' research:

With the end of Carnegie funds in 1920, the Simplified Spelling Board became inactive, and the Spelling Reform Association was reactivated, by many of the same people. It aimed at a more thorogoing reform. In 1930, the SRA published its phonemic alphabet.

A few continued to carry the torch for the Simplified Spelling Board, in name at least. The remaining Simplified Spelling Board and the Spelling Reform Association were merged in 1946, and now there is a group with a different name and an additional aim. An organization today called the American Literacy Council, a group as concerned with the teaching of reading and writing as it is with spelling reform, essentially is the outgrowth of the Spelling Reform Association and the Simplified Spelling Board. The American Literacy Council has a Web site .

This next part, concerning the "Chicago Tribune," was written by Ken Ives:

As early as the 1870s, the Chicago Tribune began using reformed spellings. Joseph Medill, editor and owner, was a member of the Council of the Spelling Reform Association. In 1880 the Chicago Spelling Reform Association met at the Sherman House and read letters approving the Tribune's efforts.

(end of passage from Ken Ives)

In the decades following this, the "Chicago Tribune" removed more words from this list. By the end of the 1960s, "tarif," "sodder," "clew," and "frate" were among those dropped. They used "thru" and "tho" until 1975, when they basically stopped using simplified spellings. The newspaper continued to use the "-log" for "-logue" spellings for a while after that, but then went back to the "-logue" forms.

The Simplified Spelling Board's list had, as stated, about 300 words, and one U.S. dictionary maker, for a number of years, listed these alongside the conventional spellings. "Funk & Wagnalls" dictionaries, at least the larger volumes, did this for at least a few decades until sometime in the 1950s. In a "Funk & Wagnalls" unabridged from 1945 that I've seen, entries read such as:

Thus, "ruf" was listed in boldface flush with the margin directly below "rough"; "det" was equally aligned with "debt," etc.

Writer George Bernard Shaw also expressed support for changing English spelling. In his will, Shaw provided for a "contest" to design a new, "phonetic" (meaning based on the speech of England's late King George V) alphabet for English. The contest was held during 1958. The alphabet chosen, which is referred to as the "Shavian" alphabet, has 48 characters, which are different looking from Roman letters; the designer's name is Kingsley Read.

The U.K. group, the Simplified Spelling Society, has been operating since 1908. They have promoted a few phonetic schemes over the years. In the 1960s, some British schools agreed to use an idea conceived by one of their members, called the "Initial Teaching Alphabet." (The person behind it was James Pitman; this was a compromise made with the Minister of Education after an earlier bill had been withdrawn from Parliament.) Basically, children were taught to read and write first using a totally phonetic system, then later shifted to conventional spelling. This method was also used in a few schools in the U.S. at the time. (I don't know if anyone still uses the Initial Teaching Alphabet.)

At present, the Simplified Spelling Society is officially a forum for discussing the problems of spelling and different solutions. They aren't officially promoting just one particular scheme now, but there is a scheme at the forefront of their work called "Cut Spelling." This plan calls for removing certain letters from words. The Society has a Web site.

BETSS  Better Education thru Simplified Spelling, founded in the U.S. in 1978, has been trying to get reform started by encouraging people to use "tho," "thru," and "hav." (There was talk of dropping "hav," and making a "first stage" with "tho" and "thru" and a second one with "lite" and "nite.") This group is not an outgrowth of any earlier one, but they have ties with the Simplified Spelling Society and the American Literacy Council. (contact-  )

One item to note is that Charles Darwin and Lord Tennyson gave support to the British Spelling Reform Association founded in 1879. In the U.S., Mark Twain, in addition to Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, voiced support for the Simplified Spelling Board founded in 1906.

This last section looks first at items before the 1870s -- Noah Webster's proposals, at least later ones (Webster's earlier ideas called for more spelling reforms) -- and changes since then.

Webster's plan for reforming English spelling centered on 10 word classes: 1.   "-our" to "-or" 2.   "-re" to "-er" 3.   dropping final "k" in "publick," etc. 4.   changing "-ence" to "-ense" in "defence," etc. 5.   Do not use a double consonant in an unstressed suffix:       Use a single l in inflected forms such as traveled (not travelled)       The dbl consonant can be retained in fulfill and fulfilled. 6.   use "-or" for "-er" where done so in Latin, e.g. "instructor," "visitor" 7.   drop final (useless) "e" to give: ax, determin, definit, infinit,       envelop, medicin, opposit, famin, (others) 8.   use single "f" at end of words like "pontif," "plaintif" 9.   change "-ise" to "-ize" wherever this can be traced       back to Latin and Greek (where a "z"/zeta *was* used       in the spellings) or a more recent coining which       uses the suffix "-ize" (from Greek "-izein") Webster published his first dictionary in 1805 and a 2 volume  Compendious Dictionary in 1828 which sold for $20.  Neither was a commercial success altho 5,000 copies of the second were sold.  It wasn't until the rights were purchased by MW and brought out in an edition which sold for less than $10 that it became a commercial success.

The U.S. Government Printing Office adopted almost all of the words in categories 1 thru 7 and category 10 in 1864, and these forms -- color, center, offense, traveled, organize, etc. -- have been the ones used in all U.S. government documents since. Many other Americans were already using these spellings by that time.

Items in category 8 have generally not become the accepted forms in American English, and the closest case would be a word like "ax/axe," where the two spellings are equal variants in American usage.

The words promoted by the Simplified Spelling Board beginning in 1906 were noted by a set of "rules," each for a certain type of change.

Some rules simply reaffirmed the changes which Webster had set down in his dictionary and which had been adopted by the U.S. Government in 1864. One called for writing "-or" instead of "-our," thus "color," "harbor." Another covered using "-er" for "-re" as in "center" and "fiber." These spellings were already the preferred forms in many U.S. publications by 1906, but a few Americans were still putting "centre" etc. into print.

Among the additional rules, a couple called for removing silent "b's," thus "det," "dout," "lam," etc. A couple more changed some final "-rr" and "-ll" to single consonants, giving "bur," "pur," "distil."

One of the items concerned respelling "ough" when pronounced as long "o" or as the "oo" of "room." There was a section for respelling "ph" with "f," while a couple of other rules called for dropping final letters such as "-ue" or "-me."

As of 1906, "phantasy" was the more common spelling, with "fantasy" a variant. "Fantasy" then became the more common, standard spelling in the U.S. and Britain. "Programme" was the preferred, dominant spelling in the U.S. as well as other English-speaking countries at the turn of the century. "Program," one of the spellings promoted by the (U.S.) National Education Association and others at the time, went on to become the standard U.S. spelling by the middle of the 20th century. (Further "program" is standard in all English-speaking countries for the computer sense.) "Catalog," another word promoted in these movements, has become the preferred form in U.S. publishing over the past few decades.

Of the other words promoted by the (U.S.) National Education Association, "thru," "tho," "altho," "prolog," and "decalog/Decalog" are listed in American English dictionaries as acceptable variants, and "thoro" and "pedagog" can sometimes be found listed as informal or variant forms.

 (from: The Adventure of English – The Biography of a Language; Melvyn Bragg; Sceptre 2003; pp. 168f.)  60 million copies of Webster's speller sold

The visionary, Noah Webster, was a schoolteacher who wrote a little book, known as the American Spelling Book or the Blue Backed Speller. It sold in general stores at fourteen cents a copy and in its first hundred years it sold sixty million copies, more than any book in America with the exception of the Bible. It is one of the most influential books in the development of English.

She fed the old hen.

The cow was in the lot.

She has a new hat.

He sits on a tin box.

A.L. – al P.H.A. – pha B.E.T. – bet I.C. – ic. Alphabetic.

C.E.M. – cem E. – e T.E.R. – ter Y. – y. Cemetery.

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Other sources (all published in the U.S.): H.L. Mencken, "The American Language" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1977; there are many printings of this), pages 479-497; David Grambs, "Death By Spelling" (Harper & Row, 1989), pages 55-59; "Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage" (1989), pages 864-866, 906; Also, a doctoral thesis from Columbia University: Abraham Tauber, "Spelling Reform in the United States" (1958).

See too the entry for "spelling reform" in the "Oxford Companion to the English Language."

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*Notes Regarding the 1876 and 1898 Lists of Words:

I have found two slightly different lists of what the 12 words were that the U.S. National Education Association began promoting in 1898, and have also found more than one set given as being what the American Philological Association adopted in 1876. I checked this against a few more sources beyond those just noted, and for the record, here are the differences:

Per H.L. Mencken's "The American Language," (see below) "Compton's Encyclopedia Online," and David Grambs' "Death By Spelling," the 12 words which the (American) National Education Association selected and began promoting in 1898 were: tho altho thru thruout thoro thoroly thorofare program prolog catalog pedagog decalog

Per Ken Ives' "Written Dialects" and Abraham Tauber's "Spelling Reform in the United States," the 12 words were: tho altho thru thruout thoro thorofare program prolog catalog pedagog decalog demagog Thus, the first list contains "thoroly" but doesn't have "demagog"; this second list has "demagog," but not "thoroly." Additionally, Tauber shows "Decalog" with a capital "d."

Further, to the second list of words, we have this from "The Greatest Good Fortune," a biography of Andrew Carnegie written by Simon Goodenough (Macdonalds, Edinburgh, 1985): "Fifty distinguished Americans were approached who would agree to adopt the simplified spelling of several commonly used words, altho, catalog, decalog, demagog, pedagog, prolog, tho, thoro, thorofare, thru, and thruout."

The organization currently known as the National Education Association in the U.S. was called the National Educational Association in 1898. This organization was founded in 1857 as the National Teachers Association, became the National Educational Association in 1870, then the National Education Association in 1906.  ??

PDF file on Saaspel: http://www.saispel.com/HomepageSaispel/Unterseiten/Frameseiten/international-frame.html
History of SR mostly by Paul Fletcher:   

NOTE

According to H.L. Mencken and David Grambs, the American Philological Association adopted 11 words in 1876. These words were: ar catalog definit gard giv hav infinit liv tho thru wisht

Per Ken Ives, 10 words were adopted by the APA at that time: ar catalog definit gard giv hav liv tho thru wisht

Per Abraham Tauber, the APA chose 11 words, and they were: ar catalog definit gard giv hav infinit liv tho thru wich

Also, if you read H.L. Mencken's "The American Language" you will find that January 28, 1935 is given as the date that the "Chicago Tribune" made the first in its series of announcements of simplified spellings, while the source I note above gives it as January 28, 1934. I have a copy of this first announcement which I made from microfilm of the "Chicago Tribune," and it is indeed 1934 and not 1935. --by Cornell Kimball 

 Valerie's Beautiful Princess story   - high frequency irregular words not respelled
Once upon a tìme, the bùtiful dauter of a gràte magisian wonted mor perls tu put amung her tresùrs. "Luuk thru the senter of the  moon wen it is blu," sed her royal mother in anser tu her qestion. "U mìte fìnd yur harts dezìre." The fair prinsess lafd, becaus she douted thòse wurds. Insted, she ùsed her imajinàtion, and mùvd intu the fotoggrafy biznes, and took pictùrs of the moon in culer. "I persève mòst sertinly that it is aulmòst hòly whìte," she thaut. She aulso found that she could màke enuf muny in àte months to bì herself tuw lovly hùje nù jùels too.

From H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Mencken-American Language
http://www.bartleby.com/185/pages/page243.html

The current movement toward a general reform of English-American spelling is of American origin, and its chief supporters are Americans today. Its actual father was Webster, for it was the long controversy over his simplified spellings that brought the dons of the American Philological Association to a serious investigation of the subject. In 1875 they appointed a committee to inquire into the possibility of reform, and in 1876 this committee reported favorably. During the same year there was an International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography at Philadelphia, with several delegates from England present, and out of it grew the Spelling Reform Association. 35 In 1878 a committee of American philologists began preparing a list of proposed new spellings, and two years later the Philological Society of England joined in the work. In 1883 a joint manifesto was issued, recommending various general simplifications. Among those enlisted in the movement were Charles Darwin, Lord Tennyson, Sir John Lubbock and Sir J. A. H. Murray. In 1886 the American Philological Association issued independently a list of recommendations affecting about 3,500 words, and falling under ten headings. Practically all of the changes proposed had been put forward 80 years before by Webster, and some of them had entered into unquestioned American usage in the meantime, e. g., the deletion of the u from the -our words, the substitution of er for re at the end of words, and the reduction of traveller to traveler.

The trouble with the others was that they were either too uncouth to be adopted without a long struggle or likely to cause errors in pronunciation. To the first class belonged tung for tounge, ruf for rough, batl for battleand abuv for above, and to the second such forms as cach for catch and troble for trouble. The result was that the whole reform received a set-back: the public dismissed the reformers as a pack of dreamers. Twelve years later the National Education Association received the movement with a proposal that a beginning be made with a very short list of reformed spellings, and nominated the following by way of experiment: tho, altho, thru, through, thoro, thoroly, thorofare, program, prolog, catalog, pedagog and decalog. This scheme of gradual changes was sound in principle, and in a short time at least two of the recommended spellings, program and catalog, were in general use. Then, in 1906, came the organization of the Simplified Spelling Board, with an endowment of $15,000 a year from Andrew Carnegie, and a formidable list of members and collaborators, including Henry Bradley, F. I. Furnivall, C. H> Grandgent, W. W. Skeat, T. R. Lounsbury and F. A. March. The board at once issued a list of 300 revised spellings, new and old, and in August, 1906, President Roosevelt ordered their adoption by the Government Printing Office. But this unwise effort to hasten matters, combined with the buffoonery characteristically thrown about the matter by Roosevelt, served only to raise up enemies, and then, though it has prudently gone back to more discreet endeavors and now lays main stress upon the original 12 words of the National Education Association, the board has not made a great deal of progress. 36 From time to time it issues impressive lists of newspapers and periodicals that have made them optional, but an inspection of these lists shows that very few publications of any importance have been converted and that most of the great universities still hesitate. 37 It has, however, greatly reinforced the authority behind many of Webster’s spellings, and aided by the Chemical.

Note 35. Accounts of earlier proposals of reform in English spelling are to be found in Sayce’s Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. i, p. 330 et seq., and White’s Everyday English, p. 152 et seq. The best general treatment of the subject is in Lounsbury’s English Spelling and Spelling Reform; New York, 1909. A radical innovation, involving the complete abandonment of the present alphabet and the substitution of a series of symbols with vowel points, is proposed in Peetickay, by Wilfrid Perrett; Cambridge (England), 1920. Mr. Perrett’s book is written in a lively style, and includes much curious matter. He criticises the current schemes of spelling reform very acutely. Nearly all of them, he says, suffer from the defect of seeking to represent all the sounds of English by the present alphabet. This he calls “one more reshuffle of a prehistoric pack, one more attempt to deal out 26 cards to some 40 players.” [back]

Note 36. Its second list was published on January 28, 1908, its third on Janurary 25, 1909, and its fourth on March 24, 1913, and since then there have been several others. But most its literature is devoted to the 12 words and to certain reformed spellings of Webster, already in general use.
Note 37. In April, 1919, it claimed 556 newspapers and periodicals, with a circulation of 18,000,000, and 460 universities, colleges and normal schools.

Easy as ABC?	The Spelling Society's Guide to   Better English Spelling
contents	Edited by Steve Bett, Ph.D. and Valerie Yule, Ph.D.
Most written languages are as easy as ABC but not English. This is  because the sound-signs "ABC" represent more than one sound.  This makes written English an unreliable guide to speech ...  A can represent 5 different sounds, b can be silent, c = s or k . .
Let's make English as easy as A B C.

• Is Spelling still important?
  Matching Johnson's 1775 spelling is probably not all that important. It is more of a courtesy to speed readers.  Publishers follow a written norm but writers can use any spelling that conveys meaning.  When the pronunciation of words changed, there should have been a change in the way they were spelled.  The consequence is that English letters no longer have a fixed value as they should in a alphabetical writing system.  time used to represent the pronunciation /'teem-uh/   Frito still represents /'free-toe/  so the Latin letter values are still found in a few words such as <visa>.  Webster remarked, .   
   
• Can English spelling be taught?  Is it as easy as ABC?
  You can certainly teach phonemic awareness and the most likely spelling patterns.
  You can teach strategies for recalling which pattern is used in a particular word.
  You can list the 50 high frequency irregular spellings.
  Only truly alphabetic or phonemic writing systems are as easy as ABC.
•  
• The dominant spelling patterns in traditional English
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/
• The dominant ways to represent spoken English
  5 spelling patterns will account for 85% of the spellings of a phoneme found in the dictionary. Typically 2 patterns will account for over 50%. 
• The 36 pure phonemes found in dictionary pronunciation guides
  The minimum number of speech sounds [phonemes] for English is typically placed at 40 because a few combinations have to be included such as /aI/ for <eye>.  /eI/ for the sound in <day> is typically pronounced as a diphthong or combinations but it would be understood if pronounced as a monopthong /e/ as in <resume> or <delay>.
• The various ways to assign characters to these speech sounds.
  The writing system known as New Spelling was seen as better than IPA because it retained more of the familiar spelling patterns.  dei di: dai doU du:  became dae dee die doe doo. IPA was also criticized because it contained non ASCII and non ANSI characters.  Webster used a large number of accents in order to retain familiar spellings.  ANSI-bets use dá dé dí dó dú. 
   
• The history of English Spelling
  Barnsdale's page
• Why English is no longer spelled the way it is spoken
  At one time, written English was as consistent and phonemic as the writing systems for other European languages.  The consistency as compromised by the Norman scribes but Middle English [1200-1450] still retained most of the Latin sound system. In the 16th Century, the pronunciation of the long vowels in most words changed but the spelling remained the same. After 1600, there were at least two ways to spell the same sound: do re mi fa sol and doe ray mee fah soul. /dó rá mé fà sól/
   
• What dialect is represented by written English?
  The spelling dialect no longer represents the dialect of any English speaker but it is closest the the dialect of Northern England.
• What dialect should be represented?
  Scholars in Spain and Italy were able to choose a dialect, the king's pronunciation, and represent it with maximum consistency and the minimum number of symbols.  Although among the first to recognize the problem and set up a Royal Society, the English were never been able to select the dialect that the writing system was supposed to represent. The problem is still with us.  No Englishman wants a spelling system based on the American dialect.
   
• Does spelling reform make sense?
  Spelling reform means using something close to a dictionary pronunciation guide spelling as the written norm.  Those who have acquired the traditional spelling system as a logography or a system of word signs will see change as an inconvenience. Some will argue that there is no evidence that improving the consistency of the writing system will expedite learning and literacy.
   
• Does the benefit to the next generation offset the inconvenience? 
  If you want to be able to teach reading and writing in 3 months rather than 3 to 10 years, regularization of the written code makes sense.
   
• Is our writing system vicious and unfit for a practical people?
   
• Why does there have to be a connection between the written and spoken word? There doesn't have to be a connection it just makes literacy easier to achieve.
   
• What is wrong with a logographic writing system
  Nothing other than the extra time & effort required to master such a code.
• Are 200 exception rules enough to make traditional English spelling predictable?  About 200 sequentially applied exception rules should make 85% of the traditional spellings predictable but the computer program has yet to be written that would demonstrate this.
• The costs associated with improving the representation of English speech.
  Those who oppose reform say it would be prohibitive and would cut people off from their history by making old literature unreadable.  Proponents of SR say that most of our printed materials are republished every few years so the only added cost would be running the text thru a converter.  Those who learned only the new spelling system would find the old spelling somewhat difficult to read.  However, there would be a greater number of readers and about 50% would go on to learn the more complex writing system.
• The costs associated with keeping the present inefficient and overly complex code.  The present writing system tends to limit the number of people who can read and write at a high level of proficiency.  Some see this as a positive thing.  Others think that mass literacy is essential for continued economic growth and would endorse any program that would improve proficiency.
   
• Most written codes are hybrids:  usually a mix of alphabetic & syllabic sound signs [phonograms] and arbitrary meaning signs [semagrams] [logograms].
   
• About half of the spellings in English contain semagrams and markers
   
• Phonemic writing systems include a restricted number of semagrams, e.g., numbers.  They could include some markers but the point would be to not have any ambiguous symbols.

Spanglish Spanglish is a more anglocentric version of Dr. Mont Follick's Spanish inspired orthography for English.  It is one of many possible regularized forms of written English.  Most of them are easy enough to read.  Altho easier to spell in the sense of having fewer orthographic possibilities than traditional English, none of the new spelling systems are easy and predictable for tradspel adepts.  Continental [Latin] long vowels:  é  í  aI  ó   ss=saxon spanglish,    italics=traditional       14  Pure [uncombined] Vowels    Short Vowels  1. a. ae as in add 2. e  in elefant 3. i as in itch 4a. o  cost /ô/ /O/ 4b. o. otter /ä/ 5. w  in book 6. u. in upper /û/ 0. a  as in ago /è/  Free Vowels  1. aa as in father /ä/ 2. ei as in vein /á/ /eI/ 3. ie as in field /é/ /ï/ 4. aw in taught /ô/ /O:/ 5. ow as in oat /ó/ /oU/ 6. uu as in zulu /ü/ 7. ur  in murder /ûr/ 8. er as in offer /èr/ Diphthongs: ai as in aisle, Saigon, ou as in out, oi as in oil There are 14 pure [uncombined] vowels in English.  The o in otter and bother is the same as the a in father in GA. The other o sound is the British short o.  SAMPA /Q/. In informal Spanglish, o is ambiguous. o = {Q A O}. Spanglish is a response to the view that a system that used Latin or the most common sound associates for the Roman letters would be appealing to English readers.  I'm not to sure about the level of appeal but most people have no trouble reading Spanglish.

Anglocentric Representation           14 Vowels + 8 combinations    /a/ batter, back, that /ah/ father, palm, spa (see note) /ar/ far, mark [not ahr] /arr/ marry, arrow, paragraph /aw/ flaw, caught, moss /ay/ bake, rain. vein, tame /e/ less, men /ee/ eel, easy, ski /err/ their, software, air, error /i/ trip, hit, little /i:/ life, sky, buy, tie /o/ otter, block (see note) /oh/ flow, sew, so, silo /oo/ loot, through, do, to /or/ more, door, or /ow/ out, foul, how, towel /oy/ boy, oyster, coin /uh/ but, some, other /u/ put, foot, book, wool /ur/ urgent, earn, urn, her /y/ yet, young [schwi-y] very /yoo/ few, chew, union, beauty /[y]oo/ new - y optional

Red lion 86 from Saundspel
   

---

The anci-bets are not too far apart.  Any chance that someone could compromise?
I would like to have an ansi-scheme to promote as the saundspel approved standard.
--Steve

 

 14 words  representing the 14 pure vowels  
ago ax  etch  in ox up hook pull surfer - urge arm age eel awl oaks hoop pool canoe 
                       [7 free vowels]
TS  -- urge arm  age eel  awl  owe  hoop  pull pool  canoe  
WEBSTR-&rj  ärm  áj  él   ôl   ó    hüp   pul  pül   k&nü
ANCI-- ûrj  ärm  áj  él   ôl   ó    hüp   pul  pül   kìnü/kènü
TH  -- urj  àrm  áj  él   awl  ó    húp   pul  púl   kenú/kanú

SRS -- urj  arm  áj  él   aul? ó    húp   p_l  púl   kunú

Ingliz-erj  arm  áj  él   ol   ó    húp   pül  púl   canu

TS  -- urge  arm age eel  awl  owe  hoop  pull pool  canoe 

DRE -- urj  àrm  aje eel  awl  ówe  hoóp  pûll poól  canùe
WLM -- urj  arm  ayj iyl  awl  o    huep  pool puwl  knhue
WMM -- êrj  ârm  aij eel  ôl   ó    xuep  pûl  puel  kanú

LSD -  urj  arm  aej eel  aul  oe   hoop       pool  cunu
RR -   urj  arm  aej eel  aul  oe   hoop       pool  cunu

TS  -- urge  arm  age eel   awl  owe  hoop  pull pool  canoe 
Iqliz3-'rj   am   ej  il    ol   o    hup   pul  pul   canu

SPAN - urj   arm  ell i(a)l ol   o    huap  pul  pual  canu

SPANG- urj   aarm ej  iel   ol   ow   huup  pwl  puul  canu
 

The Spanish orthography as presented in Inglés para Dummies
uses LL for /dZ/ <J> and a variety of letters for schwa.  The orthography cannot
distinguish hit and heat.  both are represented with /i/.  hit.  hiat sometimes used.

 

 English written in a Spanish orthography:
 

Juer can ai eks-cheinch moni?  j=h in Spanish
Du iu ekscheinch foren curenci jiar?

Teik dis / zis roud for tu bloks.

Ai iusiuali teik jaiuey eiti tu salt leik citi.

Turn rait at ferst striit.  (no obscure vowel in Spanish er=air)
Chi uent da rong uey sou chi turnd araund

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