English spelt phonetically? [cf Truespel]

[Russ McClay]

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

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