On English written language

Recently, I saw this Fixing the Alphabet video, which reminded me of an older and more comprehensive Why The English Alphabet Is Stupid video. I mostly agree with the first one, completely with the other one and I want to take it a step further here. But first I will answer the important question of “Why bother?”.
The biggest benefit is lessening the difference between spoken and written English, which has such oddities as words which are written the same but spoken differently (like “read” and its past forms) or words which sound the same but are written differently. Fixing these inconsistencies would mean less exceptions to remember, easier usage and learning of the language and no more spelling competitions. And because the speaking part is the same and no words are lost, I don’t think the language would loose anything important in the process.

The rest of the text relies on you having similar pronunciation of words as me, so you may not hear the sounds I write about here or hear something different instead, but I hope the text will be understandable enough anyway.

The C problem

In both videos they correctly spotted the tendency of C to masquerade as K and S. However, there is more to C than that. Combined with H it does a unique sound, like in the word “check”. Also, if you look into other languages, you can find that C itself has a unique sound there, which sounds like the combination TS (for example the tsetse fly, you can hear it in the second “tse”). So I say we have two options here:

  1. Get rid of C entirely and replace CH with KH. Replace C with K and S as you would say them when reading.
  2. Leave C in but use it only as the combination CH and as a replacement for TS. In the rest of the cases C will get replaced by K and S as you would say them when reading.

I think that the second option will be easier to get used to.

Totally useless letters

The letter W just makes a V sound. Take words like “worry” and “very”, the first letter sounds the same. I don’t see anything useful that W could do, so I can’t say anything other than just stop using it.

Maybe useless letters

The letters F, Q and X all make a sound that can be reproduced with a combination of other letters. For F it is PH like in the word “fan”, for Q it is KV like in the word “quick”, and for the X it is KS like in the word “box”. So, three options:

  1. Get rid of them.
  2. Always use them instead of their same sounding combination.
  3. Use them interchangeably.

The third option should work fine I think, as long as we keep saying them the same – X should not be copying Z and so on.

The J detour

Just a quick note about J. Its unique sound can be heard in “juice”. However, sometimes G likes to copy J, like in the name “George”, despite it having its own sound like in the word “gamble”. So tell G to mind its own business and use J where you hear it.

Silent letters

Just why? If you don’t hear it, don’t write it.
But apart from the obvious examples, like K in “knee”, take a look at the word “letter”. Now, how many times do you say T when you say that word? You say it only once, the other T is practically silent (and the second E too for that matter).

Vowels

Uniqueness

Here we get into a real mess. The vowels are A E I O U Y and are pronounced differently based on what word we are saying. Like when you say “keg” and then you say “can”, the A sounds very similar to the E. So what is the actual unique sound each letter makes? I think they are these:

I propose to use the vowels only in cases which match this one unique sound they make, except for Y which would be used only as a consonant.

How long to make them?

Another thing about vowels is that sometimes we make their sound for longer than other times. Like when you say “lid”, the I is quite short, but when you say “read”, the I you hear in it goes on for longer. I can’t provide a consistent replacement rule for this, so you just need to take a guess and double up the vowel where it seems appropriate - “read” becomes “riid”.

Summary

So, to sum up the changes.

  1. When you say “cat” and “cent”,
    you write “kat” and “sent” - replacing C with correct letter.
  2. When you say “wind”, you write “vind” - because W is useless.
  3. When you say “George”, you write “Jeorje” - replacing G where it sounds like J.
  4. When you say “tsetse fly”, “alpha”, “quick” and “socks”,
    you can write “cece fly”, “alfa”, “quick” and “sox”,
    or you can write “tsetse fly”, “alpha”, “kvuick” and “socks” - these are interchangeable because they sound the same.
  5. Get rid of silent letters – when you say “knee”, you write “nee”.
  6. Keep the vowels consistent, double up where they are long and don’t use Y as a vowel:
    say “mystery”, write “misteri”
    say “dream”, write “driim”
    say “cat”, write “ket”
    say “wood”, write “vud”
    say “run”, write “ran”
    say “what”, write “vot”
    and so on, write it as you hear it

It is quite a lot to take in, but it covers most if not all of the problems in English writing. You may not like all the proposed changes, but I think most people would be fine with the obvious fixes regarding C or W.

Ay vont YUU tu fix d Inglish lengvij!

Lux horibl dasnt it? Es vif evrifin nyuu, it riqayrs sam taym getin yuusd tu.

Lisn ap dou. If yuu layk eni of diis chenjis, yuu ken meyk dem hapn. Ool d lingvists and piipl layk dem onli stadi d lengvij, dey dont meynteyn it. Sou, ool yuu niid tu du is tu staart vraytin difrntli, konvins sam piipl dat it is betr den d noorml vey sou dey spred it and ivenchuli d tiichrs vil jast shrag, sey “Lengvij is oolveyz ivolvin.” and staart tiichin dis in skuuls es d gramatikli korekt Inglish.

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