Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Proposed Simplified Spelling

While we lived in Littleton Colorado, Jeanette and I had an experience with Colorow Elementary School. Debra was given the opportunity to be creative by writing a story and illustrating it. The spelling was atrocious. We were informed that it was best that we did not concentrate on the spelling because it gets in the way of being creative. We endured and wondered if Debra was ever going to learn to spell well.

Debra has evolved into one of the best students in our family. She is a student at BYU Idaho with good grades and a scholarship. Maybe there is something to this idea of creative spelling.

The first thing that I propose is that we make some simple changes that will be very innocuous.

Let us replace the letter C with S if it is a soft sound and with a K if it is a hard sound.

C ==> S (soft)
or
C ==> K (hard)

Pease will overkome us as we kommense to garner the rewards from this simplifikation. With one less letter in the alphabet, we kan kontinue with our quest.

C gone

I before E exsept after C. Well without C we will need to do something about that rule. Let us get rid of the silent E and replase the IE group with either I or E, depending on the sound that it makes. Now we kan resev the benefits of this simplifikation too. For that matter lets just eliminate all silent vowels

Silent vowels gon.

This is a good start to having pesful harmony in our simpl shangs.

Doubl konsonants hav always been a bothr. Doubl konsonants hav to go.

S somtims sounds like Z. Let's cal a Z a Z.

S ==> Z (hard S lik "is")

Doubl vowelz uzualy hav a singl sound. We wil replas dubl letrz with ther sound.

OO ==> U
EE ==> E

Q is the hardest letr to uz in SKRABL. It iz very difikult to uz Q without U. We know that the wordz that are speld with QU sound like KW, so we will just make that substitution. Whil we ar at it we ned to get rid of that TION grup that maks the SHUN sound.

QU ==> KW
Q ==> K
TION ==> SHUN

Ther ar severl groups of letrz that go togethr that hav ther very own soundz, like PH soundz like F. While we ar at it, the WH sounds like W. We should just eliminate the H in that pair.

Just to mak it a bit simplr we should just eliminat H and go bak to our Britis ruts.

And wat iz up wit puting D in wordz when you kan't hear it, te sam wit G. Wil we kan simplifi by just leavin tose wole sounz out ter iz no menin lost.

PH ==> F
WH ==> W
ND ==> N
NG ==> N
TH ==> T
G ==> J (as in "logikal")
Y ==> I
X ==> KS


We kan kontinu wit te simplifikashunz by makin a lojikal substitusun of U or V for W dependin on the soun. Ve eliminatd dubl letrz, so ve suld eliminat dubl U.

I lurnd Spanis an likd zat ze vovelz mad a singl soun. I hav alvaz ben konfuzd by vovel sounz in Englis.

EI as in say
AI as in I
E as in seed
A as in sad
AU as in sound
O as in go
UI as in hug
I as in sit
U as in true

Onli vun mor sanj tu propoz.

TH ==> Z

Vit siks fur letrz in ze alfabet, ve kan komplet aur kwest.

Zo ve kan nau uz aur exsperiensz tu simplifai aur vordz ver evn nau ve kan se ze ez uv ze impruvment uiv vot tez sanjz av duin.

Ai du belev Debrui vuiz vaiz in vot vuiz duin in skul.

Er speln vuz OK vei bak zen.

Debrui iz stil vere kreatev.

An ve av elimineitd C, Q, X, W, H, an Y.

5 comments:

  1. Vau, Lare! Jenny Long Rowser here. Ai du belev tat u av it daun 2 a sins.(science)
    I loved this post! Thanks for making me think again about our crazy language. I have a son going into 1st grade and I can't believe how many exceptions to the rules we have. Do you have a suggestion for homonyms?

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  2. I think you have a great idea but it is easier for us older people to make the young ones conform rather than try to teach a bunch of old dogs new tricks.

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  3. I am going to use this piece as a "humorous speech" for Toastmasters. Hopefully it will humorous to someone.

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  4. I did secure second place with my speech.

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