Groucho Marxism

In a previous blog post I set out the case for reforming English spelling and sketched out a proposal for such a reform. As that post received more likes than any other post on this blog (four likes!) I thought I should set out a more detailed reform proposal. The basic idea was to start with the Latin alphabet and to assign each letter a unique sound. This is straightforward for the letters a, b, d, e, f, g, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, w, and z, all of which have a clear default sound assigned to them under current English spelling which matches or closely matches the sound assigned in the International Phonetic Alphabet. On the other hand, the digraph th represents two different phonemes in English, one unvoiced and the other voiced; it makes sense to use th for the first and dh for the latter.

Similarly the letter u represents two vowel phonemes, one rounded and the other unrounded. It makes sense to use u for the former, but not for the latter – the so-called ‘schwa’ sound – as that can be spelled using either o or u in stressed position, and any vowel letter in unstressed position. The only vowel letter left is y, so I suggest using this for the unrounded version. This would make English consistent with several other languages that use y for the schwa sound (such as Welsh). That gives us representations for all six short vowels: a as in trap, e as in dress, i as in kit, o as in lot, u as in foot (fut), and y as in strut (stryt). Of course this means we can’t use y to represent the semivowel at the start of yes, so I suggest using j for this instead, as in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Long vowels can be represented by a following h: ah as in palm (pahm), and oh as in thought (thoht). The h may be dropped if the long vowel is followed by an r which is not then followed by another vowel, as in start, force (fors), and nurse (nyrs). Closing diphthongs can be represented by a vowel plus a following j or w: aj as in price (prajs), aw as in mouth (mawth), ej as in face (fejs), ij as in fleece (flijs), oj as in oil (ojl), uw as in goose (guws), and yw as in goat (gywt). Conversely, opening diphthongs can be represented by a closing diphthong plus a following r: ajr as in hire (hajr), awr as in flour (flawr), ejr as in wear (wejr), ijr as in near (nijr), ojr as in coir (kojr), and uwr as in cure (kjuwr). The closing diphthong that would be represented by ywr has been replaced by ohr in most English accents.

The fact that we are using j to represent the semivowel at the start of yes means that we can’t use it to represent the consonant at the start of jive, so I suggest using the digraph dj for this sound instead. For consistency I suggest also using sj and tj for the sounds currently transcribed as sh and ch, as in shy and China. These conventions potentially create an issue for accents that distinguish between dew and jew, or between dual and jewel. But nowadays most English speakers either pronounce these words the same way, in which case it there is no problem with spelling both as djuw; or, they pronounce the first as duw and the second as djuw, in which case there is again no problem as these speakers can simply use whichever spelling is appropriate.

How might we mark stress in our proposed system? Stress is not marked at all in current English orthography, although it is phonemic in English. In fact there are usually considered to be two types of stress in English: primary and secondary stress. In our system only the vowels i, u, and y – what might be labelled the ‘high’ vowels – can be unstressed, whereas the vowels a, e, o  – what might be labelled the ‘low’ vowels – always carry either primary or secondary stress. This means that if a word contains only one low vowel and no other vowels, this vowel must carry the primary stress, as a word cannot have only secondary stress. If a word contains more than one vowel, primary stress will generally fall on the first syllable with a low vowel unless marked otherwise.

If a word contains no low vowels, stress will generally fall on the (high) vowel which is followed by more than one consonant. If there is more than one such vowel, primary stress will generally fall on the first such vowel unless marked otherwise. If there is no such vowel then the word will generally be unstressed unless marked otherwise. These rules mean that in general it is not necessary to mark stress in our proposed orthography; if stress does need to be marked it can be done (for example) with an acute accent. Note that the digraphs dh, th, dj, sj, tj, zj, and ng count as single consonants for the purposes of these rules.

Syw dhejr juw hav it. Y njúw ynd kymplíjt speling riform prypywzyl fyr dhij Ingglisj langwidj. Wot dy juw think?