ENgliS: Da ENgliS qlfabet qnd letar nAmz   Chart
 
ENgliS is a simple 40 letter phonemic alphabet
ENgliS iz a simpl 40 letr fOnEmik qlfabet

ENgliS uses 36 keys for the 36 uncombined phonemes in spoken English.  A few phoneme combinations are represented with a single letters bringing the total number of symbols to 40.
J for /dZ/ and C for /tS/, Y for /aI/ [ai/ci] , U for iu/yu. 

ENgliS can be used as a dictionary key and is quite close to the one used by Webster ( www.m-w.com ).  The difference is that ENgliS is does not use digraphs and accents to augment the alphabet.  Webster does. 

Webster has a schwa-& instead of the schwa-a of ENgliS.
The stressed & is used for /V/, the sound in up.  EngliS uses <u>.

Since the traditional writing system uses digraphs (or 2 letter symbols), some ENgliS sound signs can be hard to recognize: e.g., C=ch, S=sh, N=ng, D=dh/th, T=th.  

The traditional English writing system uses over 100 symbols and on the average each of these symbols represents two distinct sounds.  (see pictography.htm)  Each of the five English vowel letters represent 4 different sounds or phonemes. 

A= (age, as, alms, ago, all) = (Aj, qz, cmz, agO, ol )
E = (eel, edge, elephant, other)  = (El, ej, elafant, uDar)
I = (ice-eyes, pin, pencil, sir) = (Ys-Yz, pin, pensal, sR)
O = (oak, odd-olive, all-law, minor) = (Ok, Qd, ol-lo, minar) U = ( use-ewe-you, choose, hook, up, urge )
      = (Uz-EW-yW, CWz, hVk, up, Rj)
owl = owl qvl,    oil = oil,    few = fU, fEW

This suggests that for children ENgliS would be 5 times as easy to learn as the traditional writing system. 40 symbols for 40 sounds instead of over 400 (Dewey, 1971; Hanna et al. 1965). 

85% of the spellings of a particular phoneme in English
Phonemes are spelled one of five ways 85% of the time.  To master English you have to learn all five ways.  With ENgliS you only learn one of them. 

Not only is ENgliS five times easier than the traditional writing system, when you learn ENgliS you usually learn one of the five traditional ways to spell a sound.  You are 20% of the way to your goal of literacy in the traditional system.

The i/t/a research documented that just using the phonemic alphabet to transcribe a controlled vocabulary reader resulted in a two fold improvement.  Just reducing the ambiguity of the sound spelling allowed the i/t/a readers to complete the 5 books in their basal reading series twice as fast as the control group.

Being able to read 300 words is not the same as being code literate.  The i/t/a program never determined how many students could spell words that were not in their readers.  Only the children that were code literate would be able to do this.  When 50% of the class failed to over-learn the i/t/a code, they failed to meet the conditions of Downings transfer of training hypothesis.

When children are challenged to write in the sound-code, then they quickly over-learn it.  Most teachers don't see how this could work. Preschoolers, they say, are not ready for writing and many are not reading ready either. 

The University of Chicago  lab school experiments (ca. 1950) challenge this point of view.  There, preschool children mastered Unifon (a code very similar to ENgliS) in a writing to read program.  Not only did they master the phonemic code in 3 months, they transitioned to reading comic books and by the end of the year were reading third grade readers.  Unlike the slow i/t/a basal reading program which lasted 2 years, the quick Unifon writing to read program actually accelerated traditional literacy and saved two years of schooling. ( www.unifon.org )

The purpose of ENgliS is to accelerate literacy by teaching the easy_code_first.  The easy code is the dictionary pronunciation guide.  There is 5 times less to learn so the dictionary key can be learned 5 times as fast.  Once the basic code is learned, children can begin to deal with the ambiguities of the more complex traditional writing system.  They now have a way of talking about speech sounds and this is a great advantage.  We can now say that the letter A represents these five sounds (age, as, alms, ago, all)and that the first of these sounds (a as in age) can be spelled a dozen different ways (a, ae, a..e, ai, ay, ei, ey, ei..e, ...). 

ENgliS represents shifted vowels rather than Latin vowels.  In Latin and the IPA, similar sounds have similar letter shapes.  Age-edge = ej Ej.  Eel-ill = il Il. Seat-sit = sit sIt.   In a nomic notation there is a shape-sound divergence:  Aj-ej, El-il, sEt-sit.  

The recommendation is to teach the easy code first and then introduce the alternatives and code overlaps. It only takes 3 months for children to learn ENgliS. 

To augment the alphabet from 26 to 40 symbols, ENgliS uses the redundant upper case letters to represent additional sounds. To replace the grammatical marker, ENgliS uses ^ to mark proper nouns.  ^tw ogment Da qlfabet, ^ENgliS Uzaz (^).

ENgliS is a keyboard map for rapid typing of any phonemic notation. It could be used to write PMF or IPA. The keyboard spelling is UZUaly rEdabal wiTowt a kE.  Unifon: YZYclE rEdcbcl wiTqt c kE

ENgliS is another mixed cap notation similar to Unifon which uses a schwa-a instead of a schwa-c.  oi is spelled oi with o assigned to /O/ as in awe rather than to /A/ as in General American <odd>.  See www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/englis-short.htm


There are at least three vowel letters in Unifon that combine sounds:  I = oi, Q = xi, q = aC.  They could be represented as combinations in a unigraphic notation. The IPA is unigraphic and does not have symbols for these combined sounds.
J = dZ, CH = tS, the sound in out = aU, and so on.
 
Malone thought that a transitional alphabet (or initial teaching medium) should use AEIO yU for the long vowels rather than the IPA e i aI o ju    or as they are generally pronounced in English, eI  i  aI  oU  ju

The hardest part about ENgliS is learning to sound spell.  English readers and writers do not build sound spelling skills because the traditional orthography is so unreliable. [more]

Traditional spelling [tradspel] is usually learned by memorizing visual patterns and eye rhymes. There is a basic sound code as proponents of phonics are quick to point out, but it only works about 50% of the time.  You can, however, memorize the four most likely spellings for a given sound and be right 85% of the time, provided you get four tries. Most people go thru the options and pick the spelling that looks right. Visual memory is a key component of good spelling. [more]   Here is a quick test:

Spell sapEna in tradspel: ____________________
The word means under penalty and refers to a writ commanding a person to appear in court. An order to appear in court is used enough on TV to be in everyone's ear vocabulary, but few have any idea how to spell it. It is not that hard to sound spell and the sound spelling is easy enough to read and convey meaning. <sapEna> <suh-pee-nuh>  [problems with spelling]

HINT:  It sounds like sapEna but it contains two silent letters. In ENgliS the vowels y and schwa-a are always unstressed. 

wiD a litL prqktis,  you can sound spell any word in your vocabulary correctly the first time. After less than three weeks of practice, you will be able to spell words in ENgliS with twice the accuracy of your conventional spellings.

First year students of German are able to spell German words with greater accuracy than they can English words.  English speaking students of German make less than half the spelling errors in German than they do in English [Upward, 1994].  German often has two ways to spell a particular sound but English has an average of nearly 14 ways.  While 4 of these ways account for about 85% of the spellings in the dictionary, the ambiguity is still too much for predictable spelling.

Most forms of regularized English are much easier to spell because they remove silent letters and extra letters such as double consonants when they do not mark a stressed short vowel.

Advocates of phonics will say that the sound in AXE is spelled only one way ignoring such spellings as plaid, have, half, laugh, dahlia, guarantee. AXE is spelled one way in ENgliS <ax> but this means that many words are respelled: plad, hav, laf, dalia, garantE. 

Sound spelling is about the only way to attain a highly predictable spelling system.  Unlike the traditional system, where one sound might be spelled 30 different ways, in ENgliS it is spelled only one.  Words that rhyme are spelled the same. wRdz Dqt rYm cr speld Da sAm.  Learn the ENgliS alphabet and you can spell any word you can correctly pronounce.  

To achieve a highly predictable spelling, the unstressed vowels must also be spelled.  ENgliS adds two new letters for this purpose the schwa a as in ago and the schwi y as in very.

The schwi y is an allophone of E except for being unstressed. For native speakers VerE is sufficient.  For ESL students, stress should be indicated  / Very /  or / 'VerE /

Stress is phonemic in English and 40% of the multi-syllable words have irregular stress.  Regular stress in English is on the first syllable.  

dEzYnd for fqst fOnEmik tYpiN

ENgliS is designed for fast phonemic typing on a standard QWERTY keyboard.  It contains no diacritics or special characters in its ASCII form, but can be converted when an extended character set is available.  

The most important conversion is probably q to a and c to ä.

ENgliS purports to be the best unigraphic ASCII  restricted notation for the English language
It is 99% phonemic, contains no digraphs and no exception rules, and has a high level of backward compatible.  It can be read without an instruction book or code key by anyone familiar with English. Accurate pronunciation may require a familiarity with the GP-Table. This version is for NBC-English.  It is not the best notation typographically nor the closest to tradspel.  Typographers may prefer a script without midword caps and with traditional caps marking the beginning of a sentence.  

ENgliS could be used as an i.t.a. altho it is not very close to tradspel.  Spanglish might be a little better since it is digraphic and tries to mimic the marking practices found in English spelling.

Could have a chat similar to the one for italian.
Is this chart readable?  Some have trouble with the compact tabular layout and would prefer a linear array such as
 

7 short vowels
6 checked, 1 free
8 r comb-
inations
7 Long vowels
2 diphthongs
a as in agO
q as in qks  (axe)
e as in elf
i as in pin
Q as in Qliv olive
u as in up
V as in hvk  hook
ar as in uDar other
cr as in kcr car
qr as in kqr care
qr as in kqrE
er as in error
ir as in mirror
or as in for
Or as in ore
c as in spc  (spa) 
A as in Ap (ape)
E as in El   (eel)
O as in Ot (oat)
W as in tW (two)
o as in ol   (all)
           lo   (law)
R as in uRj (urge)
ow as in owl
oi as in oil
owr as in our
Ur as in your
Y as in Yz (eyes)
U as in Uz (use)

could use x X for la law  CJ available.
 

a 
ago agO
a q
axe qks
e
elafant
i
pin ill
il
o Q c
olive odd
u
up hull
v w
hvk wvl
 
hook
wool
c ä aar
spä cär spc  kcr
A á ey
ápe they
E  é ie
eel very
Y ý ai
eyes  Yz
O ó ow
oat  Ot
U iu view vU
pure pUr
W ü uu
pool pwl
ar
sRfar
R  ur
urge uRj
Ar eir
air error
oi
oil boy
aw   or
tawt or
jvrE ow owl 
out cow
b boot d dig D  the J dZ judge g  gag z  zip Z azure
p pedal t  tip T  thug C tS church k corner s  sip S ship
v valley ng  sing uthr m prizm y   yel jw view ia  via
f  flag h  horse litl prizn wel wh hwer x ks ekstra
(page 3 of 5 )
  ENgliS    1    2    3    4    5  

ENgliS is an augmented alphabet for the representation of the sounds of spoken English.

It is basically a dictionary key that can be easily typed.  Most dictionary keys contain special characters.  EngliS does not.

The schwa sound, the most common sound in English speech, is assigned to <a>. 

In addition to being used as the dictionary key in a children's dictionary, ENgliS also serves as an initial teaching alphabet.

The letters that most preschoolers are familiar with retain their name values: AEIOU. This is sufficient to write Ace, East, Ice, mOst, and Use.
As, Est, Is, mOst, Us.

Mixed cap spelling can be very annoying to literate adults but not to novices. The notation is annoying to adults because it can destroy the "eye rhyme" or shape of the sight-word.
As does not look like ace.

No dictionary key spelling looks like the traditional spelling more than half the time. ace = /ás/ or /eIs/

Unlike the traditional writing system, most children can master ENgliS or any simple phonemic writing system in 3 months.

Dr. Laubach (1962) claimed that his teachers could teach an illiterate to read a newspaper in 3 months in any highly phonemic written language. This claim excluded French & English but included nearly 300 others.

ENgliS is a highly phonemic written code for spoken English.  Thus it too can be mastered in 3 months.

After 3 months of practice, children can write over 2000 words and read aloud a newspaper transcribed into ENgliS.

Reading aloud does not mean full understanding. If the children do not understand a word in conversation, they will not understand it when they read it aloud.  Decoding is important but not the only skill involved in reading comprehension.

The goal in school is to learn to read the traditional writing system. Learning a dictionary key first seems to many like a detour.  It isn't.

It is a way to make sure that every child has a solid foundation in phonemic awareness with a minimum amount of drill.

Children are eager to learn to write and communicate with their peers and teaching the easy code first enables them to do what they like to do almost immediately.  Some students pick up the code very quickly.  They become the teachers of their friends. In this writing to read program, every child reaches the minimum performance standard. No one is left behind as they so often are in a traditional class.

Once one becomes literate in any code, becoming literate in a more complex code is much simpler.  Some have said that you only become literate once. Once you build confidence in your ability to decode sound signs and once you get the big picture, the second time around is a cake walk.

Many famous writers (Twain, Shaw, Wells, Dickens, Steinbeck, Asimov, ..) have called for a phono-graphic alphabet and a phonemic writing system for English. 

ENgliS is one solution to the alphabet problem.  There are hundreds of others.  The main advantage for ENgliS is that is easy to type.

ENgliS is pronounced <ing-glish> where E=/i:/  This is not a new pronunciation, just a new spelling that clearly indicates a broadcast English dialect.  

• keyboard friendly
• email friendly
• font friendly
• learner friendly
 rekognYzabl  rEspeliNz 

ENgliS is keyboard friendly, and email friendly since it uses only
ASCII characters

IPA requires one to use of a shared font or Unicode While your browser can interpret Unicode, many email programs cannot.  Typically they corrupt messages containing Unicode and reduce them to gibberish.

ENgliS is also learner friendly since it does not have any traps or silent letters.

ENgliS can be typed or keyboarded rapidly. There are less than 6 arbitrary sound assignments.  e.g., V for hook and W for /u/.

V used to signify /u/ in Latin and it looks like a hook [the letter name contains the sound] so it is not entirely arbitrary.

ENgliS can be used as the keyboard map for any phonemic writing system that does not use monographs or unigraphs for diphthongs and glides.

ENgliS is not particularly transition friendly due primarily to the odd sound assignments: eg, axe=qx
However, text transcribed into ENgliS can be read without a key

While it can be read without a key it takes time to adjust to mixed caps sight-words.  The cap convention is eye-rhyme disruptive. 


Description
: Unigraphic- 1 symbol per phoneme.  shifted vowels represented as upper case letters: AEYOU. Digraphs represented as upper case letters: Ch  Dh Th  Sh Zh
ASCII restricted,

Since 60% of the words in English are not spelled as they are pronounced, 60% of the words are going to be respelled in any consistent phonemic writing system.

 rekognYzabl  rEspeliNz 

The challenge is to do this while making the spellings recognizable to those adept in tradspel.  

The challenj iz tu du this wail meiking the spelingz recognaizabl tu thowz adept in tradspel.

Da Cqlanj iz tw dw Dis 
WY
l mAkiN Da speliNz rekognYzabl tw DOz 
adept in trqdspel.


ENglis was developed
by Steve Bett as a possible
update of Unifon.

There are no points for originality in orthographic design. ENgliS borrows ideas from many others systems. See http://www.m-w.com/ for a very similar orthography used as a pronunciation guide in a dictionary.

Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences     

ENgliS defines the upper case AEYOU as shifted pronunciations of the long vowels.  The letter names are AEIOU and except for changing "wai" to "ai" the letter sounds are the same as their names.

Y looks more like an "eye" and is a more distinctive shape than the capital I. It looks more natural in words such as FLY than FLI. The letter name for the Y shape should be "ai" or i: rather than wai. The nearest Greek letter in terms of shape is the upsilon. j can be used for yod.

6k                                      
Links

 

In many ways, Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, which first appeared in 1755, followed the same pattern as the Spanish dictionary, using quotations from canonical figures to put a word's usage in the proper context. In his introduction, Dr. Johnson noted that language was in constant mutation. Still, he said, his mission was to honor his country so "that we may no longer yield the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent" and to give "longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal."


Der  cr  hundradz  uv  wAz  tw  regUlarYz  ENgliS

Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence Chart for ENgliS and Spanglish
Every phonemic description of the English language has the same cells and usually 85% of the same letter assignment.  The obscure vowels [a & v] and the free vowels [AEIOU] have the highest variability. 45 Soundsigns.  

a 
ago agO
a q
axe qks
e
elefant
i
pin ill
il
o Q c
olive
u
up hull
w v
hvk wvl
 
hook
wool
aa ä ar
c ox car
A á ei-ey
ape they
E  é ie
eel very
Y ý ai
eye  isle
O ó ow
oat  old
U iu view
yule 
pure
W ü uu
pool
zuulu
R ur-er
murder
ow owl 
out cow
Ar eir err
air error
oy
oil oyl boy
aw   or
tawt or
R  ur
urge uRj
vr  jvry
tour, poor
b boot d dig D  the J dZ judge g  gag z  zip Z azure
p pedal t  tip T  thug C tS church k corner s  sip S ship
v valley ng  sing uthr m prizm y   yel jw view ia  via
f  flag h  horse litl prizn wel wh hwer x ks ekstra

This chart can be used for both ENgliS & Spanglish
Spanglish uses digrafs & 10 rules while ENgliS uses unigrafs, 3 rules,
and substitutions such as c=
aa q=æ, W=uu, R=ur, D=th.
In SS, o and a are ambivalent.


Spanglish has one substitution, v for the obscure vowel /U/ which is spelled 5 ways in tradspel. .dW U nO how tW plA Dis kcrd gAm? =
Du yu no how tu pley this card geim?

Spanglish returns to the Saxon alphabet used for Middle English while ENgliS uses the shifted values AEYOUW. Spanglish is as phonemic as Spanish. ENglis is about as phonemic as Finnish but not as easy to read for TO adepts.

The goals for any new orthography for English are: phonemic, consistent, compact, keyboard friendly, and learner friendly [easy to teach and learn]. The new script should be readable by tradspel adepts witout a key.  Anyone can read Spanglish but not without a little effort.  It takes more effort to read a system like ENgliS which uses "caps" as a diacritic.  A somewhat less keyboard friendly version can be created by using another diacritic - accents.
AEYOUW becomes áéíóúü.

"Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana"  [present day spelling]
Team-a flees leek an arroU, but fruit flees leek a banana
[pronounced as spelled]
Taim flaiz laik an arro, but fruut flaiz laik a bananna.
[spelled as pronounced]  SS 
.tYm flYz lYk an arO, but frwt flYz lYk a banana. [spelled as pronounced]  ENgliS 
Note:   Handwritten and printed ENgliS use short caps & diacritics instead of capital letters.
.tým flýz lýk an aró, but früt flýz lýk a banana. [spelled as pronounced]   ENgliS 
 

The   ENgliS   GP [grapheme-phoneme] or symbol-sound table

EN -  ENgliS    

6 Short Vowels
EN Sampa   examples NBC  [BBC]
i  /I/  bit, bitar   <bitter> [bitə]
e  /e/ bet, betar <better> [bet
ə]
q  /{/ bat, bqtar <batter>
u  /V/ bût, bûtar <butter>
c  /A/ got, bcDar <bother> [NBC]
Q /Q/ gQt, bQDa  [BBC-English]
v  /U/ lvk, shvd wvd, kvd <could>

8 Free Vowels

a  /ə/ Alian, bûtar, Da < the > 
y  /i/  very byfor  < before > 
R /3:/ wRTh, bRdan <earth burden>
           hR, Rjant, her urgent

A /eI/ kAnz, lAdi, grA
E /i:/ rEl, fEl, pEpal, pEtsa, 
c: /A:/ fcdher, lcf

o /O:/ awe, /bot/ bought, taut
O /əU/ lO, gO, tO   /oU/
w  /u:/ trw, blw, shw

3 Diphthongs
Y   /aI/ rYt, wYt, sYt, lYk
oi /OI/ boy, toy
ow  /au/ out cow house /hows/

Combinations
U  /yu/ you fuel, sure, measure

r-combinations  @=ə
/aU@/ owr, powar BBC owə powə
/I@/ hir, Chir        BBC hiə  Ciə
/E@/ Der, wer, Weər <where>
/U@/ Shvr <sure>, bvr <boor>
/o@/  Sor, ror, dor / Soə, ro
ə

22 Consonants + y

see the blue cells on the right
bCdfghjklmnprsStDTVWzZ

y is a 95% vowel and semi consonant at the beginning of a word such as in 
yir <year> and yEst <yeast>.

w is a vowel and a semi consonant at the beginning of a word. ww <woo>
wwzy wzy <woozy uzi>

In the IPA, J and C are not considered to be pure phonemes.  The IPA uses dZ and tS respectively.  They may not be pure phonemes, but they are important enough to have their own symbol.

English is great for writing dialect but the only dialect it tries to represent is NBC or broadcast-English.

Phonemic spelling for email and SMS messaging


ENgliS is a simple phonemic transcription systems that uses only ASCII and QWERTY keyboard characters.  It is an attempt to create a 36 phoneme English writing system that is consistent, compact, and relatively easy to read without a code book or key.

Every letter should have one and only one pronunciation and every sound should be associated with one and only one letter.  This is the phonemic ideal.  ENgliS gets very close.  

Technically, there is no consonant w or y in the system but the wy vowels can act like semi-consonants at the beginning of a word.  yir yEst  There are not enough words like Wwzy wzy [woozy oozie] to justify having another letter added to the system. 

The alphabet is augmented from 23 characters to 52 by reassigning the upper case letters and two of the three redundant letters cqx.  AEIOIU become shifted vowels with the values ei, ie, ai, ou, yu.  R = 3, ar=shwa+r
are = cr, C DT SZ W for the h combinations: Ch, Dh-Th, Sh-Zh,  Wh.

The only problem character in the first six is the letter assigned for schwa - a instead of ə. The a is the standard character that most resembles the turned e or schwa character.  The italic a, when available, is used for the ae or ash sound. When not available the letter axe is represented with a reassigned q.

There are only 36 pure sounds on uncombined phonemes in English.  The J and Ch have been added to the list of important sounds needing a single symbol and the consonant w and y have been subtracted and do not have a unique symbol. 5 R-combinations are included in the chart below [coded orange]. 2 diphthongs and 2 combinations have also been added bringing the total to 45.  36-2+2+5+2+2 = 45.  [j] is available for use as a true consonant yod as in IPA.  W is available for the true consonant w but is usually used to indicate Wh.

 45 Phonograms including  some r combinations
The complete English alphabet or phonobet

a ago ar ə q  axe owl c  ah alms kcr  car Ap  ape
bwt boot C Church d dig mud e elefant er  air
E eel   y flqg  flag gws  goose hors horse in  pin
ir  irrigate Y  eye jump juj kik  kick levar lever
mavnd nOz nose  c ah ma o  awe or  oar
oy oyster O  owe pYp  pipe R herder hRdar ər
rAk rake sYz  size Sip  ship tip Da  the
Tin thin up sub pwl  pool tvr tour Uz use
ValV aV-of Wen hwen yEst yeast zig zag qZar azure

*Diphthongs - 2 sound glide or blend Y ai, ow, oy, U yw
 6 -r combinations:  ar- ər, cr-aar, er-air, ir-ear, or, wr.

ocean     now written OSan     
machine   "      "       
ma'SEn
racial       "       "      
rASal

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http://www.iqliz.com /analysis.htm

http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej25/m2.html Cobuild

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