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
 * West Germanic cognates

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Note: as I am an American speaker, I originally made this spelling reform with American pronunciation in mind, but I later adapted it to fit British English, such that it became a compromise between standard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 (which generally appear in final position only in interjections), two hs are used, e.g., heh > hehh, duh > duhh.
 * 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. A word ending in a long vowel may use one h if need be (mainly in interjections), e.g., ooh > uh.

Note that this spelling reform is best suited for native English words, as well as Old Norse borrowings.

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. The minimal pairs between /ʊ/ and /u/, on the other hand, are far fewer and thus pose a smaller problem, whence /ʊ/ is shown with long u instead.
 * 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 both the actual long vowel and /ʊ/. Generally, which sound a word with long u has to be learned by rote. This generally poses few problems since there are few minimal pairs, but in case there is potential ambiguity, the vowel can be written with as uu or uh afterwards to clearly indicate /u(ː)/, e.g., pool > puul, whereas pull > pul.
 * 3) 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 mit.
 * 4) Long a represents a few special developments of ENE /a/.
 * 5) 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). The a is doubled here because it is before two consonants (see below for more).
 * 6) ENE /a/ before /lm/ regularly became /ɑ(ː)/, with natural loss of /l/.
 * 7) Words that currently use the all spelling generally use the awl spelling here, e.g., hall > hawl. Exceptionally, shall shows /æ/ and is thus spelled scall.

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 > 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 > wumen and wimmen

So far, the double consonants do not look that weird, since we are already used to seeing double consonants in certain forms. However, what shall we do about words in which the vowel goes before two consonants, e.g., gild, death? My solution is to double the vowel to show that it is a long vowel, e.g., hundred is unchanged, but wound is now wuund.

Before v, the vowel must be doubled, e.g., behoove > behuuv.

The doubling of the vowel to show that it is long works for every vowel letter, except for i, since ii may be somewhat hard to read. Hence, the second i is made into j instead; this is the only use of j, and the digraph ij was used in some Middle English texts for /iː/. Examples of the new spelling:


 * leave > lijv
 * least > lijst.
 * yeast > yijst.
 * field > fijld.

Now, the general rule is that a vowel before two consonants is short. We see that in kill and kiln, both the ll and ln serve the role of showing the vowel's short length.

Two disadvantages of this use of vowel letters, however, are:


 * 1) 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 ambiguities are an acceptable enough cost for a spelling system that pleases the eye more.
 * 2) One way to differentiate the two values of long u is no longer possible, since uu before two consonants can theoretically represent /u/ or /ʊ/. Of course, we can still use uh to clearly mark /u/, so roost can be written as ruust or ruhst, and the noun wound as wuund or wuhnd.

The double consonant remains in compounds, derivatives, and inflections, e.g., bedroom > beddrum, deadly > deddli, thou saidst > thau seddst (since said is now sedd).

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:


 * I saw three dogs.
 * I saw three cats.
 * I saw three churches.

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


 * I saw thri doggz.
 * I saw thri katts.
 * I saw thri 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/.


 * I saw thri dogges.
 * I saw thri kattes.
 * I saw thri 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.

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 > ecknolledg (the ck is to show that the k is not silent; the word is also no longer recognized as a derivative of know using the obsolete suffix -ledge)
 * 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) /tu/
 * 11) to > tu
 * 12) too > tuu
 * 13) two > tuh
 * 14) /fɔr/
 * 15) for (unchanged)
 * 16) fore > foor (representing its historical pronunciation)
 * 17) four (unchanged, representing its historical pronunciation)
 * 18) wee > wij (to help differentiate it from we, now wi)
 * 19) yew and ewe > yuu (to help differentiate it from you, now yu)
 * 20) eat > ijt (to separate it from the pronoun it)
 * 21) bee > bij (to seperate it from the verb be, now bi)
 * 22) bean > bijn (to seperate it from the participle been, now bin)
 * 23) noon > nuun (to seperate it from the pronoun none, now nun)

Notes:


 * 1) Triple consonants are allowed, e.g., misspeak > missspik.
 * 2) Though x for /ks/ is replaced with ks, confusion with the grammatical ending -s is avoided since the latter is represented here as -es.
 * 3) If a word consists of only /i/ or /u/, the vowel should be doubled in the spelling, since it would be quite odd to see a normal word spelled with only one letter, e.g., the modern reflex of OE ǣ (law), which would currently be spelled as ea and would have ij as the new spelling.
 * 4) /dʒ/ in native words never appears in initial position, so dg never appears in the beginning of a word. For foreign words such as judge and jar, see the Foreign words section.
 * 5) For adverbial forms of -y adjectives such as happy, the spelling of the base word should remain the same. For example, happy > happi, and so happily > happili.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) 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/.
 * 8) 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. 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.

In been (now bin), the vowel reflects the British pronunciation, which makes its tie to the infinitive clearer.

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 ki).

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, aur(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, hum, hus
 * 11) a(n), the (unchanged)
 * 12) this, these, that, those > thiss, thijs, that, thous
 * 13) either, neither > ijdher, nijdher
 * 14) any > enni
 * 15) one > wun
 * 16) no, none > nou, nun
 * 17) each, every > ijch, everi
 * 18) both, all > bouth, awl
 * 19) few, fewer, fewest > fyu, fyuer, fyuest
 * 20) little, less, least > littel, less, lijst
 * 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 (the plural of the noun have is hafes)
 * 4) do, does, dost, doth, did, didst, done > du, dus, dust, duth, did, didst, dun (the plural of the noun do is dues)
 * 5) can, canst, could, couldst > kann, kannst, kud, kudst
 * 6) may, mayst, might, mightst > mei, meist, mait, maitst
 * 7) will, wilt, would, wouldst > will, willt, wud, wudst
 * 8) shall, shalt, should, shouldst > shall, shalt, shud, shudst
 * 9) must (unchanged)
 * 10) ought, oughtst > awt, awtst

Adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions:


 * 1) not (unchanged)
 * 2) too > tuu
 * 3) also > alsou
 * 4) at, of, on, from, after, off, in, under, up, upon (unchanged)
 * 5) to, into, onto > tu, intu, ontu
 * 6) down > daun
 * 7) out > aut
 * 8) with, within, without > with, within, withaut
 * 9) between, beyond, before, behind, beneath > betwin, beyond, befoor, behaind
 * 10) beneath, underneath > benith, undernith
 * 11) about, above, against, along, among > ebaut, ebuv, egenst, elong, emung
 * 12) over > ouver
 * 13) by > bai
 * 14) through > thru
 * 15) away > ewei
 * 16) like > laik
 * 17) nigh, near > nai, nir
 * 18) toward > toword
 * 19) here, there, where > hir, their, hweir
 * 20) hither, thither, whither > hidher, thidher, hwidher
 * 21) hence, thence, whence > hens, thens, hwens
 * 22) when, why, how > hwen, hwai, hau
 * 23) and, but, or, nor, for, yet (unchanged)
 * 24) so > sou
 * 25) since > sins
 * 26) while > hwail
 * 27) than, then (unchanged)
 * 28) if > iff
 * 29) whether > hwedher
 * 30) unless (unchanged)
 * 31) lest (unchanged)
 * 32) though, although > thou, althou
 * 33) once > wuns
 * 34) until, till > untill, till
 * 35) 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 si in the si hwail fishing?
 * 3) He is better at writing than I thought. > Hi is better at wraiting than ai thawt.
 * 4) Sam's brother's wife cooked us nine wonderful meals. > Sam's brudher's waif kuked us nain wunderful miles.
 * 5) I shall acknowledge all my misdeeds. > Ai shall ecknollecg awl mai missdijdes.
 * 6) The worker has hewn the trees by himself. > The werker has hyun the tries bai himself.
 * 7) He sees three fleas on the fleece and lies about the lice. > Hi sies thri flies on the flis and laies ebaut the lais.
 * 8) Thou art shunned since thy sins are great. > Thau art shunned sins thai sinnes ar greit.
 * 9) Of these two, which month hath thirty days? > Of thijs tuh, hwich munth hath therti deies?
 * 10) Neither side has won everyone's hearts. > Nijdher said has wunn everiwun's hartes.
 * 11) Ye gods, this is too much for me to bear! > Yi goddes, thiss is tuu much for mi tu beir!
 * 12) I have drawn my greatest work at last. > Ai haf drawn mai greitest werk at last.
 * 13) We have to leave the house at once. > Wi haf to lijv the haus at wuns.
 * 14) This box was full of clayey earth. > Thiss bocks wos ful of cleii erth.
 * 15) One should mind one's own business. > Wun shud maind wun's oun biznes.
 * 16) The good old priest was wholly holy. > The gud ould prijst wos houlli houli.

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 Freud. Since a native sound close to this is /aɪ/, an Anglish pronunciation of Freud may be /fraɪd/.
 * 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 q and x are kept as part of the Latin alphabet, but they are used only in loanwords. Hence, je ne sais quoi and lux keep its spelling.

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

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.

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.