SPELLING PRONUNCIATION KEY
Draft for Discussion -- These might be used as a pronunciation guide for Basic English Words

    Your webmaster uses a modern, mass-market college dictionary. The pronunciation guide inside the front cover identifies 45 sounds. It is one of the simplest I've run across, that is, the phonetic spelling is usually recognizable as the word it describes. This seems useful. In fact, spelling reform could use the phonetic spelling as the reformed spelling.
    The following table attempts to further simplify the Wiley chart, which, I might note, is a great simplification of the International Phonetic Association table of sixty symbols. The logic used to make these suggestions follow the table.

In fact, why not use these phonetic spellings for Spelling Reform ?

a at, cap, parrot ä cot, father, heart (a- double dot or dieresis.) a ago, agent, collect, focus (was backwards e, ǝ or schwa) ā ape, play, sail (long a, a-bar e ten, wealth, merry ē even, feet, money (long-e, e-bar) i is, stick, mirror ī ice, high, sky (long i, i-bar) o could, look, pull (was oo) ô all, law, horn ö boot, crew, tune (was oo-bar) ō go, open, tone (long o, o-bar) oi boy, oil, royal ou cow, out, sour u mud, ton, blood, trouble ü or ur her, sir, word : hur, sur, wurd (other than with r?) û cure, furious ū cute, few, use (long u or u-bar) 'l, -le cattle, paddle 'n, -en sudden, sweeten (not needed) e + n) 'r, -er her, sir, fur

b bed, table, rib c replaced by k, hence available. ch chew, nature, punch d dog, middle, sad f for, phone, cough g get, wiggle, dog h hat, hope, ahead j joy, badge, agent k kill, cat, quiet l let, yellow, ball m meet, number, time n net, candle, ton ng ring, anger, drink (eng, ŋ) p put, sample, escape q,qu replaced by kw, hence available r red, wrong, born s sit, castle, office sh shell, machine, bush zh beige, measure, seizure (sh, zh ; little difference) t top, letter, cat th, thin, nothing, truth ħ then, other, bathe (th, ħ ; Not enough difference.) v voice, every, love w wet, always, quart wh which, white x replaced by eks. Most x words are pronounced zī. See discussion below y yes, canyon, onion z zoo, misery, rise


Background :
    Naive as I am about the intricacies and exceptions of phonetic spelling practice, I think the spelling appearance of English can be improved as to English-lookingness of the typical pronouncing dictionary guide. The esteemed "Oxford Companion to the English Language" (which no teacher should be without) lists 24 symbols in addition to 24 letters, and 12 combinations of letters and symbols to represent sounds from the International Phonetic Association -- so you can see why the Wiley dictionary guide is an advantage, even though it retains some IPA excesses. We need not be overly discriminating for pronunciation of an international second language or an introduction to English to get commonly recognized speaking-sounds of words. In fact, there does not seem to be much need within the Institute, except among committees preparing the vocal media from which the learner will get his standards of pronunciation. Ogden simplified English for international Basic ; we hope to simplify spelling to more nearly agree with conventional pronunciation.

The principles are :
1 . Every school kid learns a 31 letter alphabet, the 26 usual letters plus the putting of a bar over a long vowel to "make the letter say its name."
2 . Where a letter can be associated with a sound, use it, modified as required, yet retain its recognizable form.
3 . Sounds that are two letters combined should use the most common two letters.
4 . Neglect the accent marks is writing and the result is spelling reform.
5 . The suggestion has 15 vowels and 18 consonants for 33 letters.

The Vowels :
1 . The handling of a, e, i, seem reasonable. So is the long-o and o-hat.
    The short-vowel can be indicated with a breves, curve above, but is the default and therefore is not required to be displayed.
    The next three "o" sounds need work.
2 . The sound of 'could, look, pull' seem like a short o.
3 . boot, crew, tune is a bit broader, we give it an o-double dot
4 . The sounds of 'oi' and 'ou' seem okay, along with the "u". Yet, some things just seem to be dumb.
5 . There is no "long u", rather "yoo" with a bar over the oo. Lets use a "long u" to express a "long u."
6 . The "u" of "cure, furious" which the normally reasonable dictionary people assigns three letters, "yoo" (no bars) where it seems like it could be a "u" with a hat to retain its u-ness.
7 . The vowel in " her, sir, word" needs a solution. The dictionary uses a "u" with a strike-out through it, which looks like an editorial strikeout, -- too confusing. We agree on a signed 'u' of some sort, perhaps a 'u-double dot' or other accent, just not a strikeout. But in all the examples the vowel is followed by 'r ' ; would "ur " work?
8 . The vowel of "ago, agent, collect, focus", the neutral sound or schwa, is most nearly a brief, short 'a', perhaps an italic 'a' as derived elsewhere.
9 . More things that seem strange : sounds for "le" and "en" are assigned newly created contractions of " 'l " and " 'n ". Why not define "le" as "le" and "en" as "en" and allow the contraction form in common usage?
10. These are supposed to be the 20 vowel sounds in English with long and short sounds making up the most significant ten of them. Our suggestion adds only five rather than ten as by Wiley.

Consonant Sounds :
1 . An "ng" is assigned a symbol, eng, ŋ, (Unicode 331, ŋ ) whereas retaining 'ng' makes an -ing ending clear, briŋ, diŋ fliŋ piŋ, riŋ.
2 . Most of us can not distinguish any significant difference between the "th" in "thin" from the "th" in "then". See the note later in this page.
3 . Nor is there a sufficient difference between the "sh" of shell and the idea of a "zh" for "beige". Make both "sh".
4 . The "wh" sounds are represented in IPA by "hw"; Good grief ! Why not keep "wh" ?

Questions.
    The additions to letters, called diacritical marks, that I have called -double dot, -hat, and -bar are more formally called : dieresis or umlaut , circumflex , and macron, (The acute mark can be a stress symbol.) My selections are for ease of recognition only. The right-hand single apostrophe is conventionally reserved for indicating stress on a syllable.
    What to do with the three unnecessary letters -- c, q, x ? Do they just become special characters on a keyboard and retain use in proper nouns? Easiest would be to retain them, but then two letters have the same sound and does not represent reform.
Help. Is there any international convention for the use of such symbols in the sequence of voicing ? If not there should be. The different vowels come from the place in the throat/larynx and placement of mouth/tongue and lips from which the sound is considered to come. Thus a sequence from the short u, through u2, u3, to the long u. Where we know the end points, u and u-bar, ū, and the progression of short-vowel, v2, v3, long-vowel needs to be standardized somehow, as : u-plain, u-double dot, u-hat, u-bar. Somebody who knows this, please give help. Link voice

    Schwā . A special case can be made for the neutral vowel, the most popular vowel sound that is made with all vocal parts at midpoint positions : tongue neither forward nor back or raised nor lowered and the lips neither spread nor rounded, and unstressed, hence, "neutral". Perhaps it is most common because the mouth is in transition between other sounds in rapid, everyday speech. The letter "A" is pronunced "ā" when meaning one, but when used as an indefinate article is pronounced "uh", "ǝ".
It is represented by 'schwa', which in turn is represented by an upside down, backwards, (or rotated) lowercase 'e', as 'ǝ' ( Unicode 601, ǝ ) or upper case as Ə ( Unicode 399, Ə ) . Think of it as a vocally lax or short duration sound of which the nearest defined vowel is an indistinct short ' a ' as in : above, again, suppose, photograph, scenery, sofa.  America starts and ends with this neutral sound.   Humm, how about an italicized 'a '? It even looks a little like a schwa. Someone should probably look for a frequency count of the underlying letter to confirm which italic vowel to use.   Best, of course, is to introduce Schwa to the English alphabet. As a start, re-map the keyboard from a little used letter, such as 'x', to 'ǝ'.  'X' would be retained in the symbol table.

    This exercise tries to avoid grave, acute, tilde because they are too easily confused with a bar over a vowel. Other symbols are available. The double-dot and hat seem more clearly visible to me, but any system with good logic might be adopted.

    If one is opposed to new symbols, including overhead symbols, all of which require circumlocutions on a keyboard, then double letters or letter-symbol combinations are an alternative : u, u2, u3, ū.

    Does there have to be a tie-breaker symbol ? Some languages with the same spelling of different words, homophones, multiple meaning words, use an accent mark to distinguish. To resume an activity or to write a resumé , a homograph. Reform with create more homonyms. Such multiple meaning is a characteristic of English, hence of Basic, which is of much concern to teachers. I guess the approach is to teach the meaning intended and let alternate meanings come later. There is no possibility of making each English meaning a unique word, except with a tie-breaker(s), but that would not be English, yet might be in a reformed English.   I am willing to overlook or postpone this topic.

Three letters are not used.
    'C' is replaced with 'k'. I don't see any harm to gradually convert c's to k's so as to ease the transition. Catsup becomes Katsup over time. Advertisers might already lead the way. But 'c' seems needed for the 'ch' sound?
    'Q', or "qu", is sounded as "kw", no surprise ; this is among the least used letters anyway. No rush to change in common usage. Except maybe to drop the always present, hence redundant, "u".
    'X' is replaced by 'eks' by our reference, but many times "x" is pronounced "z", as in Xylophone, or "zīlefōn". In fact, the phonetic spelling of every word beginning with "x" in my Webster begins with a "z". I am inclined to keep the letter x as an extra letter because 'xtra" is so much more simpler than 'ekstra'. There is no need to replace the symbol for capital 'X', such as in "X-ray".

Note on "Th", Ћ . A single symbol for "th" was used in a Mensa publication back where printing was done with real type, i.e., before digital. The symbol was a T with a leg or an H with a cross. The symbol "h-stroke", ħ (Unicode 295 , ħ ) and "t-leg", ћ (Unicode 1115 , ћ ) appear as the same in Unicode and are not as clear as we would like . The capital "T with a leg", "Ћ" (Unicode 1035 , Ћ ) is better, but not perfect. The combination "th" is the most used 2-letters in English and results in significant space savings. From experience, the effect is excellently readable in print, not as well on a screen, ħan ħis is. Ћough ħis is in ħe right direction.

    Eng, ŋ, In fairness, the IPA symbol "ŋ" for "ng" ( Unicode 331, ŋ; ) seems to be an attempt to look-like itself. Obviously, '-ing' is a popular combination that could be replaced with '-iŋ' :  "going" becomes "goiŋ". The capital Eng, Ŋ, is not suitable, but then no English words begin with "Ng . . ."   Although I like the idea of combined letters in print, it is a separate subject from this proposal.

    This draft gives some suggestions for discussion. There seems to be no immediate need of the Institute for a phonetic, although it would make the pronouncing portion of "The Basic Words" by Ogden much easier to display. The system he used is a proprietary font and costs way too much, although I think there is now a Unicode equivalent to almost everything, but, not all symbols are displayed by all browsers. Our draft uses no symbols other than some accents over the vowels and uses Unicode as a way to be displayed on the web.

    Miscellaneous Rules. The word-end forms of the -le, -en, and -er have a quite short, indeterminate vowel sound, schwa. To avoid using the contraction symbol or a schwa, they will be spelled with a simple, l, n, and r will be pronounce as if standard (old) English -le, -en, -er. Proper nouns -- names of persons, places, titles, and events -- will be spelled as in customary in English-speaking countries and with first letter of principle words capitalized.
  How will it work in practice ? Standard English does not use the available long vowel bar in everyday use. Therefore we should not expect to see accent marks in daily practice ; this proposal will make only the changes of letters to be more reflective of the pronunciation. Therefore text will look less strange and not involve new, larger keywords.¹ We can expect some confusing results to be decided in favor of the traditional. It will be an improvement, but not perfection -- "Best is the enemy of better."
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1 . The existence of accent marks (diacritical) is a reason that French and German texts have little representation on this website.

    To do : Create some examples in a Basic Spelling Reform draft, comparing it to the same example in English and in IPA format. Because this will entail significant effort to look up each word, to make a Unicode translation, and to enter Unicode into the page display, it will not be done anytime soon. Are there any volunteers to turn this paragraph or any other short or long examples into phonetics?

Examples of the above sentence.
Basic draft :
    To do : Krēāt sum xampals in ā Bāsik Speling Riform draft, kampering it to thē sām egzampal in Inglish and in IPA fôrmat.  Bēkôz ћis wil entāl signifakant efart to lok up ēch würd, to māk ā Ūnakōd translāshan, and to entar Ūnakōd into thē pāj displā, it wil nät bē dun enētīm sön. Ar ћer enē välantirs to türn ћis paragraf ôr enē uћar shôrt ôr lôŋ xampals intū fōnetiks?
Common use (without overscript):
    To do : Kreat sum xampals in a Basik Speling Riform draft, kampering it to the sam xampal in Inglish and in IPA format. Bekoz this wil ental signifakant efart to lok up ech wurd, to mak a Unakod translashan, and to entar Unakod into the paj displa, it wil nat be dun enetime son. Ar ther ene valantirs to turn this paragraf or ene uthar short or long xampals intu fonetiks?

IPA : [too much for me to attempt right now, your contribution will be accepted.]

Kleer English v 0.3b :
    "Tu du : Creaet sum xampls in a Baesik Speling Reeform draft, kompaering it tu tha saem xample in English and in IPA foermat. Beecuz this wil entael signifikant efart tu look up eech word, to maek a Unicode translaeshun, and tu entr Unicode intu tha paej displae, it wil not be dun aneetiem soon. Ar ther ane volunteers tu tern this paragraf or ane othr short or long xampls intu fanetiks?"

Other : [Your submissions accepted.]


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Here is Merriam-Webster Online Pronunciation Symbols.   Wiley's is much simpler, more English-like. at top of page.

\ Ə \ as a in abut \ ╹Ə ▮Ə \ as u in abut \ Ə \ as e in kitten \ Ər \ as ur/er in further \ a \ as a in ash \ ā \ as a in ace \ ä \ as o in mop \ aŮ \ as ou in out \ b \ as in baby \ ch \ as ch in chin <latin ch together> \ d \ as d in did \ e \ as e in bet \ ╹ē ▮ē \ as ea in easy \ ē \ as y in easy \ f \ as f in fifty	\ g \ as g in go \ h \ as h in hat \ i \ as i in hit \ ī \ as i in ice \ j \ as j in job \ k \ as k in kin \ k \ as ch in ich dien \ l \ as l in lily \ m \ as m in murmur \ n \ as n in own \ ŋ \ as ng in sing \ ō \ as o in go \ ȯ \ as aw in law \ ȯi \ as oy in boy \ p \ as p in pepper	\ r \ as r in red \ s \ as s in less \ sh \ as sh in shy \ t \ as t in tie \ th \ as th in thin \ th \ as th in the \ ü \ as oo in loot \ Ů \ as oo in foot \ v \ as v in vivid \ w \ as w in away \ y \ as y in yet \ yü \ as you in youth \ yŮ \ as u in curable \ z \ as z in zone \ zh \ as si in vision
Your webmaster is not pleased with the M-W key and its use of graphic symbols, upper case, and underscores. And he certainly does not like IPA.

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References : Unicode for this spelling reform suggestion   ;   Full Unicode Tables   ;   Unicode Charts   mycopy
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About this Page : phonekey.html - Phonetic spelling key for possible description of Basic Words. And a clue to Spelling Reform?
See also: simple spelling ; spelling ; phonetic Unicode
Last updated : October 21, 2011.   add Nu English 3b.
September 24, 2011.   add New English.
April 1, 2008.   M-W key. Reference to phonetic lesson.
September 7, 2004.   Add Unicode. Add Ћ
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