User:AtterCleanser44

Pages I have worked on:

Language

 * Prefixes and Suffixes
 * Pronouns
 * Subjunctive mood
 * Irregular verbs
 * Strong verbs
 * Weak verbs
 * Thou
 * Reconstructed strong verbs
 * Pronominal adverbs
 * Archaic grammar
 * Umlaut
 * Ablaut derivatives
 * Old Norse Words
 * West Germanic cognates
 * Archaic case & gender

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Note: as I am an American speaker, I originally made this spelling reform with American pronunciation in mind, but I later adapted it to fit British English, such that it became a compromise between standard American and British pronunciations.

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) Most silent consonants have been eliminated.
 * 4) This is not a fully unambiguous system, e.g., /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) No new diacritics and no new letters are used. In fact, q and x are not used at all except in loanwords and proper nouns.

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 doubled, even in final position, e.g., bed > bedd, bin > binn.
 * 2) For short vowels in final position (only in interjections or words mainly used as such), an h is used, e.g., duh, heh, gah.
 * 3) If the consonant is k, the doubled consonant is ck instead of kk, e.g., stick, neck.
 * 4) The only exception to this is v, which is never doubled. This is to prevent confusion with w, especially in handwriting.

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

The general rule for short vowels is that they are always followed by two consonants, e.g., kill, kiln. As we can see, ll and ln both do the job of showing that the vowel is short.

Note that this spelling reform is best suited for native English words, as well as borrowings from Old Norse, Middle Dutch, and Middle Low German.

Short group:

Explanations:


 * 1) Short e and i regularly come from ENE /ɛ/ and /ɪ/.
 * 2) Short u is slightly trickier. If all words with ENE /ʊ/ had remained unchanged, then short u would simply be reserved for /ʊ/, and long u for /uː/. However, a sound change called the foot-strut split later happened, which led to a new phoneme /ʌ/ in many words formerly with /ʊ/. There are quite a few common minimal pairs between /ʊ/ and /ʌ/, e.g., look-luck, book-buck. Hence, /ʊ/ is not shown by short u.
 * 3) Short a is from ENE /a/. The trap-bath split, one of the defining features of RP, is ignored, so RP speakers have to learn by rote whether a word with short a has /æ/ or /ɑː/.

Short o deserves special mention for being the trickiest to deal with, since there is no neat correspondence between GA and RP here. One reason is the lot-cloth split, which is in GA, but is no longer present in RP.

The current sets of correspondences between open back vowels:

Historically, the words from Set 1 and Set 3 simply had /ɔ/ in ENE. Using this fact, we ignore the lot-cloth split in GA, and the two sets are combined into one. Short o is used for this.

As for Set 2, the words had /ɔː/ in ENE, and the set includes words such as draw and saw. As aw is a clear enough representation of the sound, we can mark this set with aw. The w is treated as a silent letter, and aw never causes doubling of the following consonant.

Lastly, for Set 4, the words simply had /a/ in ENE. The vowel developed into /ɑː/ if it were followed by /lm/, e.g., palm. To represent this, we use long a.

In the end, our sets are represented thus:

This arrangement favors RP speakers; American speakers who have the lot-cloth split will have to remember which letter /ɔ/ is shown by in a word. Also, American speakers who have the cot-caught merger will have to remember whether a word uses short o, aw, or long a. And all American speakers have to remember whether a word with /ɑ/ is written with short o or long a (essentially the difference between bomb and balm).

Long group:

Explanations:


 * 1) The spellings for the diphthongs are more or less straightforward representations of their actual values.
 * 2) Long u is from ENE /uː/ and covers the long vowel. The use of ue is from French and is found in words like hue and rue.
 * 3) The other long u is from ENE /ʊ/ and later shortenings of /uː/. The spelling u is a somewhat arbitrary choice, but is made to distinguish it from ue. Though not a long vowel or a diphthong, it is grouped here to avoid ambiguity with short u, which stands for /ʌ/.
 * 4) If a word has both /uː/ and /ʊ/ as possible pronunciations, the older pronunciation with /uː/ is preferred as the basis of the spelling, e.g., soot > suet, room > ruem.
 * 5) Long i is from ENE /iː/ and /eː/. No attempt to distinguish the two historically different sounds is made, so meet and meat are both spelled miet. The use of ie for the sound is from French and is found in words like field and thief.
 * 6) Long a represents a few special developments of ENE /a/.
 * 7) The word father is quite unusual in its development. In ENE, the vowel was /a/, and its development into /ɑː/ in RP is not too unusual. However, in GA, it has /ɑ/ instead of /æ/ (separating it from gather).
 * 8) ENE /a/ before /lm/ regularly became /ɑ(ː)/, with natural loss of /l/.
 * 9) Words that currently use the all spelling generally use the awl spelling here, e.g., hall > hawl. Exceptionally, shall shows /æ/ and is thus kept as shall. The other main exception is when /l/ is followed by a vowel, e.g., fallow (now fallou).

Note that there are a few cases in which a, e, i, o, and u are used instead of aa, ei, ie, ou, and ue.


 * 1) In final position of certain function words, e.g.., you > yu, we > wi.
 * 2) In unstressed final position (for i only), e.g., eighty > eiti, body > boddi.
 * 3) In foreign words, e.g., Japanese tsunami, kimono.

Schwa and vowels before r:

Notes:


 * 1) Though the regular letter for schwa is e, there are a few rules regarding this:
 * 2) Schwa in final position is generally spelled a instead of e, e.g., kinda > kainda. This is shown in our pronounciation of final a in foreign words and names such as camera and Rosa.
 * 3) If there is variation between /ə/ and /ɪ/ in a suffix, it is shown with e, e.g., reddest, stillness.
 * 4) Schwa is not always distinct, which means that an unstressed syllable with single e before a consonant cluster may have /ɛ/ or /ə/. For example, in breckfest (breakfast), does fest have /ɛ/ or /ə/? Also, /ɜː(r)/ and /ə(r)/ are both ambiguously spelled er, though the spelling for /ɛr/ as in merri (merry) is unambiguous since r is always doubled. However, these potential ambiguities are an acceptable enough cost.

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 > foormann
 * 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) woman and women > wuumen and wimmen

Consonants:

Other consonant changes:

Inseparable prefixes:

Derivational suffixes:

Many of the spellings reflect their (historically) stressed pronunciations, e.g., -ful, which may be pronounced as the regular word or with a schwa.

Grammatical endings:

So far, we have cleanly separated /s/ and /z/ by reserving s for the former and z for the latter. However, things become complicated when we try to rewrite the following sentences:


 * The man saw three dogs.
 * The man saw three cats.
 * The man saw three churches.

How do we rewrite the grammatical ending -s? We could simply try respelling the ending by how it sounds.


 * The mann saw thrie doggz.
 * The mann saw thrie katts.
 * The mann saw thrie cherchez.

But this would lead to the problem of making it harder to recognize that z, s, and ez are all simply variants of the same ending. The same problem would arise if we tried to respell the ending -ed, which we consistently spell as such to make it clear that it is an ending and not part of the stem.

Currently, there is an inconsistency in how we spell -s and -ed. For the former, we never change the consonant, but we add an e when it is pronounced separately. But for the latter, not only do we never change the consonant, but we also never drop the e, even if it is not pronounced. The latter approach has the advantage of helping the reader recognize the ending, so the same approach is done for -s, i.e., the ending is always spelled as -es, even if it is pronounced /s/ or /z/.


 * The mann saw thrie dogges.
 * The mann saw thrie kattes.
 * The mann saw thrie cherches.

For cases in which -ed is actually pronounced as a separate syllable even when the stem does not require it, or in which it is part of the stem itself (e.g., the adjectives blessed and naked), -ed is spelled the same way, which leaves -ed ambiguous. In practice, this is limited to a few words only and so should not be a great problem.

Note that for words ending in ie and ue, the full ending is added in the spelling. Hence:


 * fleece > flies
 * flees > fliees
 * goose > gues
 * goos > guees

As the endings -en, -est (verb), and -eth (verb) never change their consonant, they can simply be kept as -n, -st, and -th. An e is added if the ending is meant to be pronounced separately.

Exceptional spellings for words:
 * 1) England, English > Ingland, Inglish
 * 2) acknowledge > aknolledg
 * 3) length
 * 4) strength
 * 5) say, says, sayest, saith, said, saidst > sei, ses, sest, seth, sedd, seddst (the plural of the noun say is seies)
 * 6) often (/t/ may be silent)
 * 7) welcome > welkumm (based on its historical strong form)
 * 8) business > biznes (no longer felt to be a derivative of busy using -ness)
 * 9) laughter > laffter (clearly a derivative of laugh, now laff, even though the latter element is now an obsolete suffix)
 * 10) hoar > hour (to separate it from whore, now hoor)
 * 11) /tu/
 * 12) to > tu
 * 13) too > tuu
 * 14) two > tue
 * 15) /fɔr/
 * 16) for (unchanged)
 * 17) fore > foor
 * 18) four (unchanged, representing its historical pronunciation)

Notes:


 * 1) Triple consonants are allowed, e.g., misspeak > missspiek.
 * 2) Though included here for completion's sake, /ɔɪ/ and /ʒ/ are not native sounds, and so no native words have these phonemes. /dʒ/ also does not appear in initial position in native words. Hence, the words toy, measure, and judge are ultimately of foreign origin. For Anglish purposes, one can safely ignore them.
 * 3) Though x for /ks/ is replaced with ks, confusion with the grammatical ending -s is avoided since the latter is represented here as -es.
 * 4) For -ly derivatives of -y words such as happy and body, the spelling of the base word should remain the same, even if the vowel in the word is now /ɪ/. For example, happy > happi, and so happily > happili.
 * 5) 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.
 * 6) 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 interchangeable, and [ð] was a mere allophone of /θ/.
 * 7) The letter c is found only in the digraphs ch and ck (unless one adopts the conventions from Anglish Spelling, which see below).

Though this spelling tries to be flexible to cover differences between American and British English, there are still differences that cannot be covered with a uniform spelling. For example:


 * 1) The past tense and the past participle of learn; American English always uses learned (now lerned), but British English commonly uses learnt (now lernt) instead.
 * 2) The pronunciation of shone; American English has it rhyme with bone, whereas British English has it rhyme with gone. Thus, the American spelling is shoun, and the British spelling shonn.

These differences reflect actual differences in form; spelling differences that show the same pronounciation such as plough/plow are removed, so both American and British English spell it as plau.

Function words
The spelling rules for function words are somewhat different. For one, most words do not use double consonants, even if their vowels are short. Also, some long vowels in final position or before r are shown with only one letter, e.g., so (instead of sou, the spelling for the verb sow), or (instead of oor, the spelling for oar and ore). Moreover, the fricatives are 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. The letters for the voiced forms may appear in medial position, e.g., over > ouver. If s or f represents only the voiced form in a word, it is never doubled.

For have, the new spelling is haf. The lone f is voiced, as in of. This is to prevent confusion with halve (now hav). Note that the noun half is spelled haff, and the plural is haves.

For either and neither, the variant with /iː/ is chosen, since it historically shows the same sound change as key (now kie).

The spellings are based on the stressed forms of the word. The exceptions are the articles, which keep their current spelling.

Spellings for function words (pronouns and determiners):


 * 1) I, me, my, mine > ai, mi, mai, main
 * 2) thou, thee, thy, thine > thau, thi, thai, thain
 * 3) he, him, his > hi, him, his
 * 4) she, her(s) > shi, her(s)
 * 5) it(s) (unchanged)
 * 6) we, us, our(s) > wi, us, auer(s)
 * 7) ye, you, your(s) > yi, yu, yur(s)
 * 8) they, them, their(s) > thei, them, their(s)
 * 9) what, which > hwot, hwich
 * 10) who, whom, whose > hu, huem, hues
 * 11) a(n), the (unchanged)
 * 12) this, these, that, those > thiss, thies, that, thous
 * 13) either, neither > iedher, niedher
 * 14) any > enni
 * 15) one > wun
 * 16) no, none > no, nun
 * 17) each, every > iech, everi
 * 18) both, all > bouth, awl
 * 19) few, fewer, fewest > fyu, fyuer, fyuest
 * 20) little, less, least > littel, less, liest
 * 21) much, many, more, most > much, menni, mor, moust
 * 22) some, such, (an)other > sum, such, (an)udher
 * 23) enough > enuff
 * 24) aught, naught > awt, nawt
 * 25) yon, yonder (unchanged)

Verbs:


 * 1) be, been > bi, bin
 * 2) am, art, is, are, was, wast, were, wert > am, art, is, ar, wos, wost, wer, wert
 * 3) have, has, hast, hath, had, hadst > haf, has, hast, hath, had, hadst
 * 4) do, does, dost, doth, did, didst, done > du, dus, dust, duth, did, didst, dun
 * 5) can, canst, could, couldst > kann, kannst, kuud, kuudst
 * 6) may, mayst, might, mightst > mei, meist, mait, maitst
 * 7) will, wilt, would, wouldst > will, wilt, wuud, wuudst
 * 8) shall, shalt, should, shouldst > shall, shalt, shuud, shuudst
 * 9) must (unchanged)
 * 10) ought, oughtst > awt, awtst

Adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions:


 * 1) not (unchanged)
 * 2) too > tuu
 * 3) also (unchanged)
 * 4) at, of, on, from, after, off, in, under, upon (unchanged)
 * 5) up (unchanged; note that the verb is spelled upp)
 * 6) to, into, onto > tu, intu, ontu
 * 7) down > daun
 * 8) out > aut
 * 9) with, within, without > with, within, withaut
 * 10) between, beyond, before, behind > betwin, beyond, befoor, behaind
 * 11) beneath, underneath > benieth, undernieth
 * 12) about, above, against, along, among > abaut, abuv, agenst, along, amung
 * 13) over > ouver
 * 14) by > bai
 * 15) through > thru
 * 16) away > ewei
 * 17) like > laik
 * 18) nigh, near > nai, nier
 * 19) toward > toword
 * 20) here, there, where > hier, their, hweir
 * 21) hither, thither, whither > hidher, thidher, hwidher
 * 22) hence, thence, whence > hens, thens, hwens
 * 23) when, why, how > hwen, hwai, hau
 * 24) and, but, or, nor, for, yet (unchanged)
 * 25) so > so
 * 26) since > sins
 * 27) while > hwail
 * 28) than, then (unchanged)
 * 29) if > iff
 * 30) whether > hwedher
 * 31) unless (unchanged)
 * 32) lest (unchanged)
 * 33) though, although > tho, altho
 * 34) once > wuns
 * 35) until, till > untill, till
 * 36) as (unchanged)

Example sentences:
 * 1) I am a man of my word. > Ai am a mann of mai werd.
 * 2) What did you see in the sea while fishing? > Hwot did yu sie in the sie hwail fishing?
 * 3) You beheld a ewe grazing by a yew tree. > Yu beheld a yue greizing bai a yue trie.
 * 4) He is better at writing than I thought. > Hi is better at wraiting than ai thawt.
 * 5) Sam's brother's wife cooked us nine wonderful meals. > Sam's brudher's waif kuuked us nain wunderfuul mieles.
 * 6) I shall acknowledge all my misdeeds. > Ai shall acknollecg awl mai missdiedes.
 * 7) The worker has hewn the trees by himself. > The werker has hyuen the triees bai himself.
 * 8) He sees three fleas on the fleece and lies about the lice. > Hi siees thrie fliees on the flies and laies abaut the lais.
 * 9) Thou art shunned since thy sins are great. > Thau art shunned sins thai sinnes ar greit.
 * 10) Of these two, which month hath thirty days? > Of thies tue, hwich munth hath therti deies?
 * 11) Neither side has won everyone's hearts. > Niedher said has wunn everiwun's hartes.
 * 12) Ye gods, this is too much for me to bear! > Yi goddes, thiss is tuu much for mi tu beir!
 * 13) I have drawn my greatest work at last. > Ai haf drawn mai greitest werk at last.
 * 14) We have to leave the house at once. > Wi haf to liev the haus at wuns.
 * 15) This box was full of clayey earth. > Thiss bocks wos fuul of cleii erth.
 * 16) One should mind one's own business. > Wun shuud maind wun's oun biznes.
 * 17) The good old priest was wholly holy. > The guud ould priest wos houlli houli.
 * 18) Their friendship ended on the steamship. > Their frendship ended on the stiemshipp.

Additional changes
To make this spelling reform adopt some of Anglish Spelling's conventions, we can do the following:

The vowel spellings are of course based on the ones currently used. Obviously, they are quite unrepresentative of their actual values.

Since Anglish Spelling uses sc and sk for /ʃ/ and /sk/, it makes sense to extend this such that c and k stand for /tʃ/ and /k/, respectively.

For /ð/, Anglish Spelling does not use ð but instead uses þ since it makes no distinction between the voiced and voiceless fricatives (though the two letters were admittedly pretty much interchangeable in Old English, and it did not matter then since [ð] was only an allophone of /θ/). However, we make the distinction here. One may choose to use þ instead of ð for function words that begin with /ð/, e.g., the > þe instead of ðe.

One additional change can be made that is not in Anglish Spelling, if one so wishes.

The use of j to represent /j/ is present in other Germanic languages, so one may find it appealing to do the same for English.

By the way, there is one consonant in Old English that is no longer present in standard English: /x/. This is the voiceless velar fricative, and it was lost sometime in Early New English, though Scottish speakers may still have this sound as shown in the Scottish pronunciation of loch. A good spelling for this sound would be ch, which is how Dutch and German represent this sound as well, though it means that ch should no longer be used for /tʃ/.

Theoretically, if /ɣ/ (the voiced form of /x/) were present, the spelling would simply be gh, since g represents the voiced form of k (and c is simply a variant of k in digraphs). In fact, the gh spelling in ghost was introduced by early printers influenced by its Middle Dutch cognate, as  in Middle Dutch could be used to show /ɣ/.

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.