spelling essay recommendation for TZ

[Tom Zurinskas]

At the risk of actually engaging AW on a topic

You say
> your system (truespel) doesn't
> have the advantage that the IPA does of expressing sounds in terms of
> *articulation*

Please explain that.
Note that truespel is more accurate than the IPA.  It spells out all schwas, - not to mention being English friendly, computer friendly, capitalization friendly and punctuation friendly.
I'd gladly compare the results of using truespel versus IPA for teaching, for example, Russian pronunciation to native English speakers.  Lets see how they do with only one hour training.  Take 12 kids, teach them both methods, do IPA first 6 times and truespel first 6 times.  Test them on a paragraph with a typical phoneme frequency distribution.
I'll guarantee 12 out of 12 will prefer truespel.

You say
> your system ...
> would only confuse learners because they
> eventually have to make the shift to standard spelling.

Do you have any evidence, or is this a WAG?
The opposite is true.  Check out IBM's massive study on their "Writing to Read" method.  It used English friendly phonetics to teach thousands of k-1 kids to write and read at the same time using keyboards (PC Juniors in the 80's) prior to their learning cursive.  No problem switching to tradspel.


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


>
> At the risk of actually engaging TZ on the topic,
>
> I just read Edward Carney's brief and clear essay "English Spelling
> is Katastroffik" in Bauer and Trudgill's _Language Myths_ collection.
> I strongly recommend it: it explains the basic reasons for English
> spelling patterns and the problems with a strictly phonetic system.
> For further reading, Carney's _A Survey of English Spelling_ is
> recommended. While I recognize that you are proposing your system for
> dictionary pronunciations and English learners, your system doesn't
> have the advantage that the IPA does of expressing sounds in terms of
> *articulation*, and would only confuse learners because they
> eventually have to make the shift to standard spelling.
>
> ---Amy West
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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