English spelt phonetically? [cf Truespel]

Tue Mar 3 13:54:21 UTC 2009

Is there _anything_ anyone can say to make this full, er, fool, stop kicking his dead horse?
dh

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----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Received: 3/3/2009 6:13:41 AM
Subject: Re: English spelt phonetically? [cf Truespel]

>Thanks Russ,

>

>Good points all.  A healthy skeptacism is a good thing.  Please note that truespel is
>merely a phonetic notaton just like any dictionary key.  It merely uses the 26 letters
>of the alphabet to foespel (phonetically spell) the 40 sounds of the English foenubet
>(English set of phonemes).  Avoiding special symbols makes this notation email and
>computer friendly, a huge advantage.  It's also simple enough to be learned by kids.
>The phonetic spellings of the truespel.com converter represent the spoken accents
>of the American Heritage Talking Dictionary and m-w.com mainly, not my accent.
>But as far as accents is concerned, it can be used to show accent differences and
>for phonemic awareness drills.

>

>No one before has come up with such a phonetic system for English because
>truespel not only uses only letters of the alphabet but also shows stress and glottal
>stops.  Thus it is a true dictionary key pronunciation guide notation that is as English
>friendly as can be and that uses notation least conflicting with tradspel (traditional
>spelling).

>

>The converter is not smart enough to handle all phonetic situations.  For instance
>"the" needs to be pronounced ~thee in front of a word beginning with a vowel and
>the word "for" is more often pronounced ~fer in USA.  So teacher guidance is
>needed for these.

>

>Using ~fool and ~pool to foespel "full" and "pull" is a hard backward knock on
>tradspel which is unfortunate.  This vowel sound is historically described as "short
>oo" as in tradwerdz "wood, good, wool" and these are truespeld
>~wood,good,wool~.  The tradstreeng (letters in sequence in tradspel) "oo" more
>often represents "short o" than "long o".  Thus ~ool pops up in truespel for lots of
>word endings (double,social,gamble = ~dubool,~soeshool,~gambool).  Some would
>use "l" alone here, so "social" becomes soeshl.  The problem here is "socialize" should
>not be ~soeshliez (2 syl) but ~soeshooliez (3 syl).

>

>Check out IBM's Writing to Read system that was evaluated by ETS and CAL.  It was
>a huge experiment that showed that phonetic spelling is useful for kids in K-1 who
>learned to write as they learned to read (they used keyboards prior to learning
>cursive).  They had no trouble later reverting to tradspel, at least no more than
>usual considering the task of remembering all the "sight words" of tradspel.

>

>Regarding foespeleeng "on topic" as ~aan taapik~, the letter "o" is often used for
>this sound.  Interestingly, it's most often used to spell the sound of short u, as in
>"uh" from frequency data of truespel book 4.  The letter "o" is too duplicitous in
>tradspel to spell a sound by itself.  If you see "o" your not sure how it's pronounced,
>for instance words "to,go,for,on,off".  So to avoid backward confusion with tradspel
>~aa was chosen to tradspel the "ah" sound.  It has good aplication to other
>languages.

>

>I've researched this area over the years and jumped in only after years of trial and
>error investigating all such systems in the past.  Truespel is my best shot at creating
>an English friendly foespel with least backward knocks to tradspel.  It's learnable by
>a 3rd grader in less than an hour.  I hope you can find application for it over there in
>China.  Considering the alternative phonetic spelling systems, it has many
>advantages.

>Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>see truespel.com

>Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>see truespel.com

>
>

>
>> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 17:20:24 +0800
>> From: mcclay at TAOLODGE.COM
>> Subject: English spelt phonetically? [cf Truespel]
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Russ McClay <mcclay at TAOLODGE.COM>
>> Subject: English spelt phonetically? [cf Truespel]
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Pardon me for this somewhat off-topic post...
>>
>> I've been on the ADS-L for many years. I greatly enjoy hanging
>> out with such a fine group of scholars and academics discussing
>> the English language and its dialects.
>>
>> * * *
>>
>> Within the last couple of years the list acquired a rather disruptive
>> layman who's mission on the list seems to be constant promotion
>> of his eccentric spelling system.
>>
>> Today I decided to see what a google search would bring up on
>> "Truespel". The results returned were almost all self-promotional,
>> but one exception was this post to Yahoo Answers:
>>
>>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>~~
>>
>> English spelt phonetically? ?
>> -----------------------------
>> Well, since long ago the debate was settled and they decided to maintain
>> a system that maintained the historic spellings (regardless that words
>> were no longer pronounced the same way, etc)...I was wondering if anyone
>> has ever devised a system of writing English in which words were spelt
>> as they were pronounced?
>>
>> * 4 months ago
>>
>> Additional Details
>>
>> and where could i view some samples or something?
>>
>> --
>>
>> Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
>>
>> There have been many over the years. George Bernard Shaw was prominent
>> in one movement. Noah Webster, the dictionary man, is single-handedly
>> responsible for most of the U.S./British differences. They and many
>> others are covered in the Wikipedia article on English spelling reform
>> at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform . That article
>> also
>> explains WHY the decision to not radically reform spelling has been
>> effectively made.
>>
>> To find more recent schemes you can Web search on
>>
>> "phonetic spelling" English -ipa
>>
>> (I added -ipa to reduce the hits for the linguists' official
>> transcriptions as much as possible, since I didn't believe that's what
>> you wanted. If you DO want those, search on "international phonetic
>> alphabet" English instead.)
>>
>> As one example, and only for laughs, you can check out Truespel at
>> http://www.truespel.com/ , which will respell whole webpages for you.
>>
>> This renders "bubble" as 'bubool', which is nonsense--in standard US and
>> British English, at most there's a schwa in the second syllable, and in
>> connected speech it's usually just a syllabic L.
>>
>> Truespel also shows "on topic" as 'aan taapik', with the first two
>> vowels identical, and "all" as 'aul,' with a different A-vowel. This is
>> wrong for Utah rural speech, among many others, where all three vowels
>> are the same, and wrong for my own speech, which is 'aun taapik' and
>> 'aal', though it's possibly correct for the East coast. I'll have to
>> listen carefully to discover what Broadcast Anchorman is. (It usually
>> but NOT always matches my speech--or vice versa.)
>>
>> There may be other problems with Truespel, but I noticed those in just
>> about the first sentence I looked at, and stopped there.
>>
>> * 4 months ago
>> --
>> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081028180538AA71mPB
>>
>> * * *
>>
>> There is no mention of Truespel on this Wiki page about English
>> spelling reform:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
>>
>> * * *
>>
>> Incidentally, I'm an American who has been living in Taiwan for over
>> twenty years. My children are native Chinese speakers, but they've also
>> learned English as a second language and I shudder to think of them
>> having been subjected to the absurd system Mr. Z has so "painstakenly"
>> devised. Instead they used what most students of English use here: the
>> Kenyon and Knott system, which, while a bit dated, is still in wide
>> use on the island.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyon_and_Knott
>>
>> * * *
>>
>> Sorry, Tom. This is a bit personal I'm afraid.
>>
>> Russ
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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