When words are spelled the way they sound, readers can "see" in the spellings how the words are pronounced. That's not what you're seeing right now. You're looking at words whose spellings do not actually represent the sounds of speech. For example, in "When," the "h" is silent. The proper spelling would be "wen." Then, "words" uses an "or" spelling for an /er/ speech sound, so the proper spellings should be "werds." Next, the spelling "are" uses a three-letter vowel-consonant-e sequences which ordinarily is the magic-e, a convention that makes the short vowel symbol before the consonant represent a long vowel speeech sound. Not true in this case. Then, there are two silent letters in "spelled." Both should be dropped to spell the word the way it sounds, making the proper spelling "speld;" which just happens to be congruent with "geld" and "weld," which it should be. Congruency is a major factor in representing speech, because it tells the user what the speech sounds are, which is the sole function of the written word. [More on congruency later on.]
So, four out of five words in the first sentence of this file are misspelled, and it's not over yet. The "ay" in "way" and the "ey" in "they" represent the same speech sound. That shouldn't be. No two symbols should represent the same speech sound, and in Inglish they will not. Six of the first eight words misspelled; 75% error. That shouldn't be, and it needn't be. With the Inglish symbol set, we can spell all words properly.
Among the 26 characters in the English symbol set, the "b," "d," "j," "k," "l," "m," "p," "q," "r," "v," and "w" presently represent an individual speech sound, while the "a," "c," "e," "f," "g," "h," "i," "n," "o," "s," "t," "u," "x," "y," and "z" each represent more than one. In the Inglish symbol set, the speech sounds of the "c," "f," "g," "n," "s," "t," "y," and "z" will be reduced to a single speech sound, as in "cat," "dun," "fun," "get," "nuts," "so," "top," "yet," and "zebra," the short vowel symbols will each represent two speech sounds, one stressed, the other unstressed, the "h" will represent two speech sounds, one at the start of a syllable and the other at the end, and the "th" will represent two speech spounds, one voiced, the other unvoiced, and identified by placing an "h" before the "th" to 'rob' it of its voice by taking the tongue away from the teeth. The "x" is then discarded, and will be replaced by the "c," "cs," "ecs," "gz," or "z," whichever more appropriately represents the desired speech sound.
There's a problem with the "c," "k," and "q," in that all three represent the same speech sound, another no-no when representing speech unambiguously. Because the "q" is used only about half as often as the "k," and the "k" is used only about one tenth as often as the "c", the "c" is the obvious choice, and gives the emended texts more continuity than the "k" would have. [We originally chose the "k," believing it was most apt to appeal to the linguists among us. We changed our minds when we saw that the emended spellings departed too far from the traditional look.] Note also that, in keeping with the one-sound-one symbol aim of the Inglish orthography, the "c," which so often represented an /s/ speech sound in the traditional spellings, will henceforth represent only the speech sound heard in "cab," "cactus," "cop," et al.
In English, the short vowel symbols were allowed to represent one speech sound when the vowel stood alone or ended a syllable, another when it started or was embedded within a syllable, a long vowel speech sound in word endings and as part of a magic-e sequence, and often the long vowel speech sound with no clue that it was doing so, as in "acorn," "egress," "icon," "both," "usual," et al. Inglish will no longer permit either their random use, their use to represent long vowel speech sounds in word endings, nor their use as part of the magic-e. Inglish will happily get rid of the magic-e and all the gimmickry associated with it, and will use the "ae," "ee," "ie," "oe," and "ue" or "eu" digraphs throughout the lexicon to represent the long vowel speech sounds.
To differentiate between the two speech sounds of the short vowels, Inglish will insert a middle dot (·) before and after the vowel when it stands alone within a word, before the vowel symbol when the speech sound starts a syllable other than the first syllable, and after the vowel symbol when the vowel speech sound ends a syllable other than the last syllable, as in "ab·a·cus," "ab·acseeul," "sila·bul," etc.
The h represents one speech sound at the start of a syllable, and another when it ends a syllable, so its speech sounds do not present a problem. The th, however, represents two different speech sounds, one voiced, the other unvoiced. In Inglish, the difference is keyed by placing an h before the th to move the tongue away from the teeth and take away the voice when the th is to be unvoiced.
The y anamoly in the English spellings is removed by limiting the y to its consonant speech sound.
Of the 67 two-letter combinations in the English symbol set, some of which originally represented two speech sounds, many now represent only the sound of one of the characters, the other being silent. Because silent letters are a no-no, Inglish will drop the "bb," "bh," "cc," "ck," "dd," "dh," "ff," "gg," "gh," "gn," "kh," "kk," "kn," "lh," "ll," "mm," "mn," "nn," "pn," "pp," "ps," "rh," "rr," "sc," "ts," "tt," "wr," and "zz" without losing a single speech sound. It will also drop those symbols whose speech sounds are more appropriately represented by other symbols, the "ao," "ay," "ci," "ea," "eau," "ei," "eo," "ew," "ey," "oa," "oy," "si," "ti," "ts," and "ui," (see Table 1 for their successors.) Among the remaining symbols, the "au," "aw," and "oi" already represent only one speech sound. To limit the speech sounds of the remaining symbols, the "aa" gets a new speech sound, that needed in "caary," "paara·lel," et al, and the speech sounds represented by the "ai," "au, "ch," "eu," "oo," and "ou" are reduced to a single speech sound, as is also indicated in Table 1. Note that the "au" and "aw" represent similar but distinctly different speech sounds, the difference being the semi-vowel sound that is part of the "aw."
The symbol set is completed by resurrecting the zh for the speech sound heard in "leisure," et al, e.g., "leezher," etc. As Table 3 demonstrates, the Inglish symbol set uses 42 symbols in 49 different ways to represent the 49 distinct sounds of English speech.
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