User:AtterCleanser44

Pages I have worked on:

Language

 * Prefixes and Suffixes
 * Subjunctive mood
 * Irregular verbs
 * Strong verbs
 * Weak verbs
 * Thou
 * Reconstructed strong verbs
 * Pronominal adverbs
 * Archaic grammar
 * Umlaut
 * Ablaut derivatives
 * Old Norse Words

Tales

 * The Nightingale

Spelling reform
Spelling reform is a popular topic among Anglishers, and I am of the opinion that a spelling reform ought to be done in stages. This has two advantages: first, it gradually makes people accustomed to a new spelling system, and second, it removes confusion that reforming orthography all at once might introduce. This is inspired by Spelling Reform 1, which was thought up by Harry Lindgren.

Note: as I am an American speaker, I have made this spelling reform with American pronunciation in mind, but much of this should be applicable to other standard dialects.

The main goals are:


 * 1) A more consistent correspondence between phonemes and their written form.
 * 2) The main change here is by writing the "long" vowels with letters actually showing their values rather than magic e.
 * 3) This also means that vowel spellings representing historical pronunciations have mostly been removed, e.g., see and sea are both spelled si.
 * 4) This is not a fully unambiguous system since there are still a few heteronyms and heterographs, e.g., pull and pool > pul, /naɪt/ > nait and knait. But on the whole, there is far more consistency.
 * 5) Retention of familiarity to speakers for the purpose of making it easier to become accustomed to.
 * 6) The use of double consonants is extended.
 * 7) Silent initial consonants are kept, e.g., kn, gn, wr.
 * 8) No new diacritics and no new letters are used. In fact, j and q are not used at all except in loanwords.
 * 9) Since this is also for Anglish, most conventions of foreign origin are done away with, e.g, ch for /tʃ/, gu for /g/.

The following are the changes for the vowels. They can be split into two groups: the "short" group and the "long" group. In the short group:


 * 1) The consonant after the vowel is always doubled, even in final position, e.g., bed > bedd, bin > binn.
 * 2) If the vowel is followed by a consonant cluster, the first consonant in the cluster is doubled, e.g., hint > hinnt, think > thinnk.
 * 3) For words with the vowel in final position, two hs are used, e.g., heh > hehh, duh > duhh, draw > drohh
 * 4) If the consonant is k, the doubled consonant is ck instead of kk, e.g., stick, neck.
 * 5) The only consonant that is not doubled is x for /ks/, e.g., fox.

In the long group, on the other hand, there is no doubling of consonants.

The following changes are made in order, and the short group is introduced before the long group. The consonant changes can be introduced gradually alongside them.

Short group:

Long group:

Schwa and vowels before r:

For compound nouns in which /ə/ is used, if the unstressed element is consciously associated with the regular word, then the unstressed element should be spelled regularly. For example:
 * 1) foreman > formann
 * 2) mainsail > meinseil

But for words in which the unstressed element is not consciously associated with the original word, they should be respelled as one new word. For example:
 * 1) breakfast > breckfest
 * 2) cupboard > kubberd
 * 3) welcome > wellkem
 * 4) woman and women > wumen and wimmen

Consonants:

Other consonant changes:

Prefixes:

Derivational suffixes:

Grammatical endings:

Notes:


 * 1) Triple consonants are allowed, e.g., misspeak > missspik.
 * 2) Technically, there is no need to write double consonants after certain vowel letters that are only ever short. However, since simple consonants are doubled before a vowel anyway (e.g., madden, rotted), the double consonants are kept for consistency.
 * 3) Though long u is used for both /u/ and /ʊ/, in practice, there should be few problems since there are few minimal pairs, e.g., pool and pull > pul.
 * 4) v and z were hardly used in Old English, but it was not a problem, since [v] and [z] were mere allophones of /f/ and /s/. However, later on, they became their own phonemes, and so they now can contrast with their voiceless equivalents, e.g., the noun house and the verb house, which are differentiated here as haus and hauz. These letters' use grew because of French words that used these letters, but since they are quite useful to distinguish the voiced sounds, I have chosen to keep them.
 * 5) The use of dh for /ð/ is an un-Anglish change, as it has never been used in English to represent the sound. Nonetheless, since I distinguish /f/-/v/ and /s/-/z/, I have chosen to distinguish /θ/ and /ð/. Ideally, these sounds would instead be represented with the obsolete letters þ and ð, respectively, but it should be noted that in Old English, the two letters were more or less interchangable, and [ð] was a mere allophone of /θ/.
 * 6) As ch and sh are foreign and thus done away with, I have chosen to use c and sc. Since Anglish Spelling uses sc and sk for /ʃ/ and /sk/, it makes sense to use c and k for /tʃ/ and /k/. In a spelling reform for regular English, one can of course ignore this and just use c/k for /k/, ch for /tʃ/, sc/sk for /sk/, and sh for /ʃ/.

For now, I have chosen to leave certain function words and proper nouns unaltered, for the most part. Generally, the function words left unaltered are those that are currently spelled with fewer than three letters such as I and in, and those that are very simple words such as few, him, and many. Since these words are of high frequency, their irregular spellings should be easy to become accustomed to.

However, this does not mean that these words are spelled exactly the same way as they are right now. For one, certain words have been affected by foreign conventions, e.g., the use of ou for historical /uː/ (now /aʊ/), the use of ce to denote /s/ in words such as fleece. Hence, function words that would otherwise keep their old spelling are altered to remove only this foreign influence, e.g., our > ure (not aur), about > abute (not ebaut). Of course, a spelling reform for regular English would not be concerned with undoing foreign influence and thus would not change the spellings on this ground.

As a consequence, it is possible for fricatives to be spelled with their voiceless forms, even if they are voiced, e.g., of, the. Since initial /ð/ appears only in function words such as the and this, this means that initial /ð/ is always spelled as th.

All cardinal numbers except one have new spellings. In other words, one keeps its old spelling, whereas two and three are now spelled tu and thri.

Example sentences:
 * 1) I am a man of my word. > I am a mann of my wurrd.
 * 2) What did you see in the sea while fishing? > Hwat did you si in the si hwail fisshinng?
 * 3) He is better at writing than I thought. > He is better at wraitinng than I thott.
 * 4) Sam's brother's wife cooked us nine wonderful meals. > Sam's bruddher's waif kuked us nain wunnderful miles.
 * 5) I acknowledge all my misdeeds. > I ekknolleccg all my missdides.
 * 6) The worker has hewn the trees. > The wurrker has hyun the tries.
 * 7) He sees three fleas on the fleece and lies about the lice. > He sies thri flies on the flis and laies abute the lais.
 * 8) Thou art shunned since thy sins are great. > Thue art scunned sinns thy sinnes are greit.
 * 9) Of these two, which month hath thirty days? > Of these tu, hwic munnth hath thurrti deies?
 * 10) Neither side has won everyone's hearts. > Neither said has wunn everyone's harrts.

Foreign words
Certain phonemes are found only in words of foreign origin. This is how they would be handled in a spelling reform for normal English, but not for Anglish.

How are they to be dealt with in Anglish? Most Anglishers accept certain loanwords, generally those representing foreign concepts, e.g., Japanese kimono. Generally speaking, speeches substitute foreign phonemes with native approximations. For example, the way in which we say ninja does not match the Japanese pronunciation. How are these sounds to be changed in loanwords and foreign names?


 * 1) /ɔɪ/, e.g., German Deutsch. Since a native sound close to this is /aɪ/, an Anglish pronunciation of Deutsch may be /daɪtʃ/.
 * 2) Initial /dʒ/, e.g., Italian Geppetto. Since /dʒ/ is simply the voiced equivalent of /tʃ/, and there are a few Middle English instances of ch replacing j in French loanwords (e.g., chelous for jelous), an Anglish pronunciation of Geppetto may be /tʃəˈpɛtoʊ/.
 * 3) /ʒ/, e.g., French Jacques. Since /ʒ/ is simply the voiced equivalent of /ʃ/, an Anglish pronunciation of Jacques may then be /ʃɑk/.

The letters j and q are kept as part of the Latin alphabet, but they are used only in loanwords. Hence, je ne sais quoi keeps its spelling.

Pronouns
Notes:


 * Ha is from an ME dialectal variant of the feminine he from OE hēo; the variant arose as a weak form of he. I have adopted it, as its homophony with the masculine would be troublesome, and she itself is dubious in its origin. Here, ha is usually pronounced as /hɑ/.
 * All the plural forms for the third person are the native ones; the th- set is from Norse.
 * Hy is regularly gotten from the OE nominative hī.
 * Hem is from OE heom, and in fact, it survives up to this day as 'em, which was later reanalyzed as a weak form of them.
 * Hare is from an ME dialectal variant of her from OE heora; the variant itself can be traced back to OE heara. I have adopted it instead of her (the form used in Chaucer's works) to avoid homophony with the feminine her. Here, hare is usually pronounced as /hɛr/.

Verbs
In my ideal Anglish, this is how verbs are conjugated.

Abbreviations:


 * 1) ind. - indicative
 * 2) subj. - subjunctive

The endings -st and -th become -est and -eth after sibliants and final consonants identical to the ending, e.g., kiss > kissest/kisseth, burst > burstest/burstth, unearth > unearthst/uneartheth.

Archaic forms include:


 * 1) sind for the plural present ind. of be
 * 2) sie for the present subj. of be
 * 3) -en for the infinitive
 * 4) -en for the plural present and past ind. and subj.
 * 5) -eth for the plural imperative
 * 6) -end for the present participle
 * 7) y- for the past participle

Irregular verbs
For irregular verbs, I generally stick with the forms currently used. The list below is how I would change the overall state of irregular verbs, however.

Here, all verbs of foreign or unknown root are not included. This includes Norse verbs such as take and fling. Since the currently strong forms of hang were ultimately due to influence from Norse hengja, the reflexes of the native forms are used instead. The native verbs stick, dive, and saw are now regular. All strong verbs' past participles now consistently end with -en.

All new forms are in bold. Innovative forms are labeled (I) as well. If a verb is reconstructed, or a current verb has a new meaning, then it is glossed.

Many weak verbs of Class 5, lean, and clothe are now regular verbs.