Phonetic English

Funetik English

English is the easiest of all known languages, except for its spelling. It has by far the largest vocabulary of any language, more than three times as many words as any other language. It also has the simplest and most flexible grammar, since words do not have inherent gender (which just doubles the difficulty of learning German), nor does the vocabulary change depending on the relationship between speaker and listener (this makes learning Japanese a nightmare). English is also infinitely flexible, since nouns can be given a verb form or vice versa and either can be turned into an adjective or adverb. By adding any of a large number of prepositions, a completely different meaning can be produced. English teachers (ever the upholder of the status quo) resist all such novelties, and they don't like funetik English either. But it is precisely this flexibility and large vocabulary which make English the closest thing we have to a universal language.

Assuming one already knows how to speak the language, it is easy to learn to write it, if the rules are funetik. The chief use of funetik English is to transcribe speech into readable text on a computer. The rules have to be pretty simple for that to happen, and it may still require some hand editing to get the text into funetik English. Detecting the boundaries between one word and the next is especially difficult for a machine if one speaks rapidly.

I don't propose a close translation of spoken into written English. I do not distinguish variant phonemes that only an expert can hear. A close translation would distinguish the various dialects of English, but even if that happens, there is no harm done. A doctor or speechwriter could still read his notes, and that is the important thing. Having done that, it would be simple to translate her version of funetik English into Standard English for publication. However, I shall not go into that.

Remember that the translation must go both ways. Depending on the kind of word, and place in the word, a syllable should have a unique one-to-one relationship between the spoken form and the written form. I am just going to make a few simple proposals, easily remembered, which apply to the most commonly used words. For the complete language of English, we can always fall back onto Standard English.

Spell sibilants the way they sound. The sibilants are "c,s, and z." This merely requires stopping and thinking how we actually pronounce simple words. For instance, we pronounce "is" as if it were spelled "iz," and "was" as if it were "wuz," "as" as if it were spelled "az," "has" is "haz," "words" is "werdz." "a" is normally flat: at, cat, mat, flat. The "a" sound comes in 3 forms, short as in "art," flat as in "fat," and long as in "flake."

The letter "Y" at the end of a consonant-vowel word is given the long "i" sound, and the long "e" sound at the end of every other type of word. For instance: my, by, ty, fly, cry are all long "i," while baby, ruby, ruddy, Arby, tardy, horny are all long "e." In general, several consonants together use the same rule as a single consonant.
Tranceslayshun. This is an interesting word because it shows that we must follow "c" with a silent "e" to get the sibilance of C: ice, trace, trance, rice, lice. It also shows that we must follow "a" with a silent "y" to make it a long "a" except in consonant-vowel-consonant words, where we use a silent "e" at the end to make "a,i,o" long. We make "e" long with a silent auxiliary "a." Without the silent "e," "i,o,u,e" are short and "a" is flat: hip, hop, hut, met, mat. With the silent "e," or silent "a," all become long: tile, mile, mule, male, mole, role, rule, meat, beat, seat, teak, meal, mate, grate, rate, race, raze.
Every vowel standing alone as an entire word is long. Examples: I, O, A. Thus, "oh" becomes O. This "O" usage is already found in English literature, but is rather archaic.

Too many vowel sounds.: We have more vowel sounds than we have vowels. An example is the vowel in "would, could, should, wood, and put." I suggest writing this with the capital Q, since funetik English has no need of the letter "q" or "Q." If we had umlauts in English, we could write it q-umlaut.
Special rules for R: I refer to the combinations "er," "ar" and "or" in any position of any kind of word. "er" is usually short and "or" is always long, wherever they are found. "ar" is normally short as in "art." To make it long before the "r" sound, we follow the "a" with a silent auxiliary "i." Thus, hair, air, fair, fairy. To make the "e" long, we follow it with a silent "a" as in ear, tears, fear.

Special rules for K: Whenever we use the short "i" before the "k" sound, use "CK," such as "picking, kicking, licking."

Special rules for T and ND: Whenever we have the long "i" sound before "t," we spell it "ight", as in right, might, tight, sight. Except at the beginning of a word (where "i" is short), the "i" in "ind" is always long, with no auxiliary letters required.
Consonant-Vowel Words: These are simple little words like "do, so, to, the, way," which become "du, so, tu, the, way." The use of "e" in "the" in a running sentence is short. Otherwise, the rule is finial long "o" sounds and long "u" sounds are spelled with "o" and "u." Finial long "a" sounds are spelled "ay." If you want a finial long "i" sound, as in "my," use "y," but only in this kind of word. Otherwise, a finial "y" makes the long "e" sound. "Me" becomes "mee." The long "e" sound in this kind of word is made by doubling the "e" as in "thee, mee, bee, wee, tee, see." "Bow" has the "wow" dipthong. Thus, "bough" becomes "bow," while in bow and arrows, "bow" just becomes "bo." "Boy" remains the same, for the "oy" sound: "soy, boy, toy."
Vowel-Consonant Words: these are simple little words like "it, in, on, own, out, ought, and, awl, at, axe, ate, un, eat, eke, owl" which become "it, in, on, oen, owt, and, awt, awl, at, ax, ate, un, eat, eak, owl." Listen to the sounds. Initial short "I" and "O" sounds are spelled "i" and "o." Long "o" takes a silent auxiliary "e." Initial "a" is flat. To make it short, use an auxiliary silent "w," as in "awt, awl." "Y" is here used to make the "oy" sound as in "boy." "Oen" is an unfamiliar way of making the long "o" sound, but the alternatives are worse.
Consonant-Vowel-Consonant: The natural pronounciation for "A" is flat, as in rat, fat, fad, sat, spat. If the vowel is "e", "i", "o", or "u" the natural vowel sound is short as in "met, wet, set, sit, hit, tit, tot, rot, shot, not, rut, smut, grunt, long." The vowel in consonant-vowel-consonant words shall be made long by adding an auxiliary (silent) "e" at the end of the word, except for "e," where the auxiliary "a" immediately follows "e." Examples: "fare, tale, rate, like, bike, strike, rode, mode, fore, rude, nude, prude, mead, teal, feat."
Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel: The natural sound of "a,e,i,o" for the first syllable will be short, and for "u" it will be long. We shall use "y" as the long "e" sound in the second vowel. A terminal "i" shall be long, as in semi. Remember, that "o" preceding "r" is long, and the "a" before "r" can be made long by adding "i." Examples: "gory, hairy, duty, pity, pithy, smithy." The first "i" will always be long in two special cases, one where the "i" is followed by the "t" sound (to signal this special case, we will use the auxiliary letters, "gh") and the case where the second consonant is "nd." Thus, "mighty, kindly, rind, find, bind."
Compound Words Compounding words does not change the rules for the individual words. We must distinguish compound words from true polysyllabic words.
Polysyllabic Words - Middle Letters: In the middle of a polysyllabic word "u, and i" are short, "a" is flat, and "e" is used for the "neutral" vowel, written with an upside down "e" by phoneticists. For the neutral vowel, my choice is just to omit the neutral vowel altogether, and just pronounce the consonants on either side of it, unless there is a separation between the two sounds.
Immediately following the vowel with "e" makes it long, except in the case of "a" where we follow it with "y" to make it long, and an auxiliary "h" to make it short. "Friday" is a compound word, and would be rendered "fry day." Note that "polysyllabic" is not polysyllabic. It is a compound word, "poly" and "syllabic" which the computer would render "poly silahbik."
"A" in the middle of a polysyllabic word is made long with the auxiliary y, as in "sityuwayshun." Do you recognize this as "situation?" In a polysyllabic word, "u" is made long by immediately following it with "e." Note that "u" is sometimes pronounced with a "y" sound preceding the "u," and this "y" sound is written out in phonetic English. The "yu" is always long, without requiring an auxiliary "e." The long "e" sound in the middle of a polysyllabic word is made long with the auxiliary "a," familiar in such words as "meaning." In polysyllabic words, it frequently happens that there are two vowel sounds following each other. Just write each one according to the usual rules. "Vaireaunt" is the funetik way of writing "variant." In the first syllable, "ar" is always short, so we must make it long with the auxiliary "i." In the last syllable, the long "e" sound is followed by the short "u" in "unt." So funetik English is sometimes the same as standard English, and in a few cases, it is quite a bit different.
Polysyllabic Words - Initial Letters An initial "i", "e", "a," or "o" will be naturally long. To make it short, we follow it with two consonants. Thus "identical" becomes "identikul," "emit" remains unchanged, "omit, only, onto, and omission" become "omit, only, ontu, omishun." "Elephant" becomes ellefunt, since we want the initial "e" to be short. Obsoeleat is an example where the initial "o" is made short by being followed by two consonants. "Immediately" becomes "immeadeautly."
Polysyllabic Words - Terminal Letters The rules are the same for polysyllabic words as for consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel words.

Thair, I beleav I am finished. This iz my propoezul for funetik English. It wQd be possibl tu kum up with a simpler set uv rules, but the result wQd not resembl standerd English az much az duz this paragraf.

Sum might argu that vareaunt spelings make it eazeaer tu distingwish differunt meanings. However, the huemun brane haz no diffikulteas distingwishing the vaireaus meanings uv "right" by kontext uhlone. Kumpueterz du not hav tu.

Wil the werld ever akcept funetik English? No dowt it looks like hilbily English tu English profesers. That iz beekahz the semi literut person wil natcherly revert tu funetiks. Ar my rules kunsistent? Emale mee if yu katch inkunsistenceas or kases not kuverd.