Month: March 2021

So, that’s it for the consonants. If you like IPA, the consonants of English are:

spelling	IPA	as in …
p	p	pen, spin, tip
b	b	but, web
t	t	two, sting, bet
d	d	do, odd
ch	tʃ	chair, nature, teach
j (g before [ei])	dʒ	gin, joy, edge
k (c before [^ei], q before w)	k	cat, kill, skin, queen, thick
gh (g before [^ei])	ɡ	go, get, beg
f	f	fool, enough, leaf
v	v	voice, have
th	θ	thing, teeth
dh	ð	this, breathe, father
s (c before [ei])	s	see, city, pass
z	z	zoo, rose
sh	ʃ	she, sure, emotion, leash
zh	ʒ	pleasure, beige
h	h	ham
m	m	man, ham
n	n	no, tin
ng	ŋ	ringer, sing, drink
l	l	left, bell
r	ɹ	run, very
w	w	we
y	j	yes
wh	ʍ	what
x	ks	hexagon

If we are going outside English into adjacent languages, we might also like these. Let’s take them, just in case.

spelling	IPA	as in …
kh	x	loch, ankh (in Scottish)
lh	ɬ	Llanelli (in Welsh)
jh	ɣ	voiced version of kh (in Old English)

That’s nearly it!

The last thing we need is some way of spelling words where these various digraphs appear, but are pronounced separately, as in ‘jachammer’ (the rule for ‘c’ make this the spelling of ‘jackhammer’), ‘longhorn,’ ‘carthorse,’ ‘redhanded,’ ‘mishap,’ ‘hogzhed’ (how we will spell ‘hogshead’), ‘ungainly’ or ‘engine,’ ‘foolhardy’ and ‘hejhog’ (the new ‘hedgehog’). These are mostly at syllable boundaries, which is why the ambiguity in spelling doesn’t matter so much. But we have to do better—a word is a word—so we need some sort of separator to keep them apart. We won’t be using the regular apostrophe any more, as that is a feature of spelling that has no pronunciation, so we can reuse it. But just for idiosyncratic fun, let’s point it other way typographically, and use the left quote instead the right quote. So these words become ‘jac‘hammer,’ ‘long‘horn,’ ‘cart‘horse,’ ‘red‘handed,’ ‘mis‘hap,’ ‘hogz‘hed,’ ‘un‘gainly,’ ‘en‘gine,’ ‘fool‘hardy’ and ‘hej‘hog.’

Wow. Next, the vowels.

One more consonant remains, ‘x.’

Every rational spelling of English acknowledges that ‘x’ is redundant, and should be spelled ‘ks.’ Let’s ignore the fact that according to the rules we have so far, it would be ‘cs,’ and instead embrace it. Here’s the rule: wherever the sounds ‘k,’ ‘s’ occur in order, they are written ‘x.’ Always!

You might think that this would lead to many funny spellings, but it doesn’t kick in that often. We get, for example, ‘sox,’ ‘hax’ and ‘sux,’ and more interesting examples like ‘suxeed,’ ‘blaxmith’ and ‘oxidental,’ which all look amusing rather than ugly. So this is obviously the right decision.

That’s a Hebrew letter yod. It’s a sort of joke.

So, yod coalescence is a thing that even has its own page on Wikipædia. No-one says ‘action’ as ‘ac-tee-on’, though some may say ‘question’ as ‘kwes-tee-on.’ True, dat. Many people say ‘duke’ as ‘jook,’ though also many say it as ‘dook.’ These are all instances of yod coalescence, which is a pronunciation feature of some people that converts consonants into other consonants when they are written before ‘e’ or ‘i’ (and the tense sound of ‘u’ counts as ‘i-oo’ for this purpose), like this: ‘d’ → ‘j,’ ‘s’ → ‘sh,’ ‘t’ → ‘ch’ or ‘sh’ and ‘z’ → ‘zh.’

Examples are ‘duke,’ ‘fission,’ ‘christian,’ ‘action,’ ‘fusion’ which become, if you like, ‘jook,’ ‘fishon,’ ‘chrischan,’ ‘acshon,’ ‘fuzhon.’ The problem is knowing where to stop. I’m sure some people do say ‘chrischan,’ though a lot more probably say ‘chris-tee-an’. Even more may alternate between the 2, without being aware of it much.

The one certainty is that no-one says ‘ac-tee-on’. Let’s commit! The rule will be yod coalescence everywhere. It’s weird! It has to be done! After ‘dh,’ ‘z,’ ‘gh,’ and ‘zh’ as described above, probably no-one will even notice.

How could we forget q? It’s just the way you write the hard ‘k’ sound when it’s before a ‘w’ sound. So here we go for ‘qween,’ ‘qwick’ and ‘conqwest.’ (We haven’t mentioned vowels yet, but it seems clear that after a ‘q,’ a ‘u’ is going to be written ‘w,’ as it’s obviously a consonant there.) The only weirdness here is that to retain the 1–1 correspondence between written and spoken forms, every ‘k’ before a ‘w’ must be written as a ‘q’—else how would you know?

So that gives us ‘awqward,’ ‘baqwards’ and ‘booqworm.’ These are strange combinations that occur at syllable boundaries, but of course, we can’t just arbitrarily say that syllable boundaries have special status—at least not without some hint in the spelling. If it’s a word, it’s a word. End of story. So ruthlessness prevails.

We have one more sound that has no unambiguous representation in English, and we are going to have to resort to invention again. Boo! (Or is it hooray!?)

It’s the consonant sound in ‘fusion,’ ‘Asian’ and ‘beige.’ Since it differs from the sound in ‘ship,’ ‘shop’ and ‘shall’ in voice, it makes sense to use the voiced version of ‘sh,’ which would be ‘zh.’ So we get ‘fuzhon,’ ‘Azhan’ and ‘beizhe.’ Nice, or nasty? Whichever it is, I see no alternative. So that’s where we are.

For some people, ‘w’ and ‘wh’ are 2 different sounds. They differ in the same way that ‘t’ and ‘d’ differ: by voice. Unadorned ‘w’ is voiced, but ‘wh’ is more like a whisper. Which makes that word an onomatopœia. How about that?

It‘s true that for most people, the difference is lost. But there must be 1 person—maybe more—who still pronounce those words differently. So let’s commit to them!

Another reason to do that is that the spellings are so evocative. When you see a word starting ‘wh,’ you know it’s a question. Or a relative. Or something like that. It’s cute. It would be sad to lose it. So the decision is that the English we are respelling is one from before the wine-whine merger. If you can’t hear it, use your imagination. Let’s do it!

These two letters have the same relationship as ‘s’ and ‘c’. Specifically, ‘g’ before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is pronounced as a ‘j,’ (a “soft” ‘g’) and elsewhere as a “hard” ‘g.’

Except there is no equivalant of ‘k,’ no letter which is always pronounced hard. This is especially bad because there are so many common words which are exceptions to the rule, with a hard ‘g’ before an ‘e’ or an ‘i,’ like ‘give’ and ‘get.’ (This is often because they come to us through German, rather than French, which is where the soft/hard rule comes from.) So, let’s invent a letter! Since we already have so many digraphs ending in ‘h,’ and since ‘gh’ is already pronounced ‘g’ in words like ‘ghost’ and ‘ghetto,’ we can use that. Then we can adopt exactly the same rules for j/g/gh as for s/c/k, like this: ‘g’ before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is pronounced ‘j’, otherwise ‘gh,’ and the other side of the coin: the sound ‘j’ before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is always spelled ‘g;’ the sound ‘gh’ not before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is also always spelled ‘g.’ More funny looking words! ‘Gelly,’ ‘gester’ and ‘gigsaw’ for example, and also ‘ghive’ and ‘ghet’.

This is going well. Are we done with consonants yet?

All English spelling reforms are bad. That’s OK, this is not a spelling reform, it’s a jeu d’ésprit.

They all have a big decision to make: what to do about ‘c’? It can be replaced by ‘s’ or ‘k’ everywhere except in ‘ch.’ But no-one really likes the letter ‘k,’ either, so that’s not very appealing. There is a rule for how to pronounce ‘c,’ though it’s broken so often that many English speakers don’t even know what it is. Here it is: ‘c’ before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is pronounced ‘s’, otherwise ‘k.’ That rule lets us pronounce a word if we know how to spell it, but it doesn’t help with spelling a word if we know the pronunciation. For that we need a new rule, which will also add some weirdness to the mix: the sound ‘s’ before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is always spelled ‘c;’ the sound ‘k’ not before ‘e’ or ‘i’ is also always spelled ‘c.’ This gives us some funny-looking words like ‘cing’ (but still ‘sang,’ ‘sung’), ‘cilly’ and ‘cexy,’ as well as ‘cosher,’ ‘corea’ and ‘King Cong.’ No problem.

Plurals in English are formed with ‘-s,’ as a rule. But this ‘s’ is sometimes pronounced as an ‘s’, sometimes as a ‘z.’ This might not be too obvious, but ‘clogs,’ ‘bangs’ and ‘whims’ all sound ‘z,’ even though they are spelled ‘s.’ ‘Laps,’ ‘hats’ and ‘clocks,’ on the other hand, sound ‘s.’

Unfortunately, the letter ‘z’ looks unfamiliar to readers of English. But, no compromise! So we are going to have ‘clogz,’ ‘bangz’ and ‘whimz.’ It’s ugly. Oh well.

The main obstacle is that here are far more sounds than letters, and some sounds have no letters at all. This is particularly true in the vowels, where there are about 18 vowel sounds, and only 5 letters to write them with. But it’s true for consonants, too. That means that we are going to have to invent some completely new spellings, which is in direct opposition to the goal that regularly spelled words should be unchanged. But the first 2 principles are more important, so let’s bite the bullet.

There are 2 sounds that share the spelling ‘th’. There’s ‘th’ as in ‘thing’, ‘thought’, ‘thigh’ and ‘th’ as in ‘the’, ‘there’, ‘thy.’ Indeed, the last of these, ‘thigh’ and ‘thy,’ differ in no other way. So we need to make up a completely new spelling. Ick. Since we need voiced and unvoiced ‘th,’ we should use the voiced and unvoiced pair ‘t’, ‘d,’ which gives us ‘thing’, ‘thought’, ‘thigh,’ ‘dhe,’ ‘dhere,’ ‘dhy.’ Already, after only a single thought, this is starting to look very ugly. But let’s soldier on.