Notation	Vowel of
ar	bar
er	merger
or	for

Notation	Vowel of
arr	marry
err	cherry
orr	sorry

Notation	Vowel of
air	air
aa	alm
eer	beer
oo	moon
uu	book
oi	oil
ou/ow	out
au/aw	saw
ur	tour
uer	cure

Notation	As used in
b	bat
c/k	cat, kit
ch	chat
d	did
f	fat
g	gag
h	hat
j	jet
l	let
m	met
n	net
ng	singing
nk	ink
p	pep
q	quake
r	red
s	set
sh	shed
t	tot
th	thin
th	this
v	van
w	war
wh	why
x	box
y	yes
z	zoo
zh	azure

Exceptions and other differences

U, meaning "you", is capitalized.

There is no change in the words was, as, of, the, he, she, me, we, be, do, to, and off. Words derived from these (such as being, together, and thruout) also remain unchanged. Words ending in -ful remain unchanged.

There is no change in the plural suffix -s (as in jobs), the possessive suffix -'s (as in man's), and in the third person present singular verb suffix -s (as in he runs), even though in all these cases the s is sometimes pronounced [z].

There is no change in the digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

 th, even though it can be pronounced as voiced

Voice (phonetics)

Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...

 [ð] or unvoiced [θ]. Similarly the letter x is retained for both voiced [gz] and unvoiced [ks]. The reason may be that unvoiced occurrences outnumber the voiced 5 to 1, and words normally calling for a voiced x are understood even if pronounced unvoiced.

There are usually no changes in the spelling of short (schwa

Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...

) vowels in the unstressed syllables of words like organ, novel, pencil, and lemon, unless the spelling would otherwise indicate an overpronunciation of the word (as in mountain).

Depending on its position in the word or root, the unstressed "half ee" (as in between, detect, reform, champion, editorial, hapyer, and fifty) continues to be spelled as e, i, or y.

Double rr, as in traditional orthography, indicates that the preceding vowel is short (as in carry, merry, and sorry).

Double ll indicates that the preceding a is pronounced ɔː, as in fall, tall, and call.

The long o or long i sound at the end of a word may be written with a single letter, as in banjo, go, so, alibi, hi, fli, mi (but banjoes, alibieing, flies, etc., since the vowel is no longer at the end of the word).

A hyphen following a vowel unambiguously separates a long vowel from another vowel following, as in re-enter and co-operaet.

If two vowels—such as ea—do not match a digraph on the SoundSpel chart, then the syllable ends with the first vowel: react (ea is not a digraph), jeenius, memorial, creaetiv. In cases of more than two vowels the syllable ends with the first digraph: flooid (oo, being the first digraph, ends the syllable—it is not flo-oid), hieest, freeing, inueendo, power, continueing, paeabl, evalueaet.

The Star

It was on the ferst dae of the nue yeer the anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that the moeshun of the planet Neptune, the outermoest of all planets that wheel about the Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in the reejon of the perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found the intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that the nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum the orderly progres of the planets. – Herbert George Wells.

Britten when yung

We mae nowadaes be chairy about uezing the werd "jeenius", but we stil hav a guud iedeea whut is ment bi it. For exampl, thair ar graet numbers of verry gifted muezishans hoo ar admierd but not calld jeeniuses. But thair ar uthers, manifestly prodijus, performing offen at extraordinerrily erly aejes, a varieety of feets so complex that the muezical laeman cuud hardly imajin, eeven with the moest desperet laebor, acomplishing eny of them, whiel eeven muezishans ar astonisht and we then reech for the guud, handy, vaeg Enlietenment werd and call them jeeniuses. The list incloods Mozart and Mendelssohn; and, despiet all the limiting jujments, it incloods Benjamin Britten. – Frank Kermode

Frank Kermode

Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 ....

Oed to a Nietingael

Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paens

Mi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk,

Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draens

Wun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not thru envy of thi hapy lot,

But beeing too hapy in thien hapynes,

That thow, liet-wingèd Dryad of the trees,

In sum meloedius plot

Of beechen green, and shadoes numberles

Singest of sumer in fuul-throeted eez.
– John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

History

In 1910 philologist Alexander John Ellis

Alexander John Ellis

Alexander John Ellis FRS was an English mathematician and philologist. He changed his name from his father's name Sharpe to his mother's maiden name Ellis in 1825, based on a condition for receiving significant financial support from a relative on his mother's side.- Biography :He was born...

 played a major role in developing a system now known as "Classic New Spelling". Walter Ripman and William Archer

William Archer (critic)

William Archer , Scottish critic, was born in Perth, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. He was the son of Thomas Archer....

 wrote the first dictionary of the system, "New Spelling" (NuSpelling), which was republished in 1941 by the Simplified Spelling Society

Simplified Spelling Society

The English Spelling Society is an international organisation, based in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1908 as the Simplified Spelling Society and celebrated its Centenary Conference at Coventry University in June 2008...

.

In 1969 Godfrey Dewey

Godfrey Dewey

Dr. Godfrey Dewey was the president of the Lake Placid Organizing Committee and was largely responsible for the successful candidature of Lake Placid for the 1932 Winter Olympics. In addition to his role as the U.S. ski team manager he was chosen as the flag bearer for the 1928 Games in St...

 improved upon Ripman's and Archer's work, producing "World English Spelling". Dewey and Edward Rondthaler

Edward Rondthaler

Edward Rondthaler was a typographist as well as a simplified spelling champion and chairman of the American Literacy Council. He was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania...

, a prominent typesetter, CEO of International Typeface Corporation

International Typeface Corporation

The International Typeface Corporation was a type manufacturer founded in New York in 1970 by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin, and Edward Rondthaler. The company was one of the world's first type foundries to have no history in the production of metal type...

, corresponded from 1971.

In 1986 the book "Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling" written
by Rondthaler and Edward Lias was published by the American Language Academy. Its full title was "Dictionary of American spelling: A simplified alternative spelling for the English language : written as it sounds, pronounced as it's written". This called for improvements to spelling, with clearer rules and better grapheme/ phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

 correspondence. It was slightly less strict than Classic New Spelling, allowing "the" rather than "dhe", for example.

The system was further reformed from 1987 on and became SoundSpel.

Advantages

Compared to other proposals

• Does not introduce any new symbols, unlike Pitman's Initial Teaching Alphabet
  Initial Teaching Alphabet
  The Initial Teaching Alphabet was developed by Sir James Pitman in the early 1960s...
  
  , Unifon
  Unifon
  Unifon is a phonemic orthography for English designed in the mid-1950s by Dr. John R. Malone, a Chicago economist and newspaper equipment consultant. It was developed into a teaching aid to help children acquire reading and writing skills. Like the pronunciation key in a dictionary, Unifon matches...
  
  , and the Shavian
  Shavian alphabet
  The Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
  
   and Deseret
  Deseret alphabet
  The Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In public statements, Young claimed the...
  
   alphabets. This makes SoundSpel compatible with the current (QWERTY) keyboard.

• Relies upon familiar digraph
  Digraph (orthography)
  A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
  
  s.

• Does not assign unusual notations for sounds (ex. using q for the ng sound), except for 'uu' and 'zh'.

• Does not introduce diacritic
  Diacritic
  A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
  
  als (such as accents), which are generally not favored in English-speaking countries.

• Does not dramatically change the appearance of existing words.

• Due to above reasons, is easier to learn, and especially easier to read, for those who are familiar with traditional English spelling
  English orthography
  English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of habits to represent speech sounds in writing. In most other languages, these habits are regular enough so that they may be called rules...
  
  , than other systems, such as those mentioned above.

Shared with other proposals

• Improves consistency of writing. This would reduce learning time and reading difficulties, compared to those of traditional English spelling.

• Also promotes more precise pronunciation in speech.

• Generally decreases text length by about 4% .

Disadvantages

• SoundSpel is only one of many English spelling reform
  English spelling reform
  For hundreds of years, many groups and individuals have advocated spelling reform for English. Spelling reformers seek to make English spelling more consistent and more phonetic, so that spellings match pronunciations and follow the alphabetic principle....
  
   proposals. There is no agreement on what proposal, if any, should be adopted.

• Those already familiar with traditional spelling would need to learn a new system if it became the standard.

• Compromises and rule exceptions^*above make SoundSpel more difficult to learn than it would be if it was a purely phonetic system. Learning to write it directly would especially require effort, unless computer software is used as an aid.

See also

• List of reforms of the English language
• Spelling Reform 1 (SR1)
  SR1
  Spelling Reform 1 or Spelling Reform step 1 is an English spelling reform proposal advocated by Harry Lindgren. It calls for the short sound to always be spelt with E. For example, friend would become frend and head would become hed...
  
  
• Cut Spelling
  Cut Spelling
  Cut Spelling is a system of English-language spelling reform which reduces redundant letters and makes substitutions to improve correspondence with the spoken word. It was designed by Christopher Upward and was for a time being popularized by the Simplified Spelling Society. The resulting words are...
  
  
• Handbook of Simplified Spelling

External links

• SoundSpel
• "DoubleLine" Translator