Frith's Plot for an Anglish Spelling

This is an Anglish spelling reform that I hope will get wide use. I disagree with the philosophy of zero use of innovation used by Yose and Hurlebatte, as I think it creates an artificially archaic system with a mixture of older systems (in our timeline replaced by a foreign system) that likely would have been replaced by another native system without foreign influence. As such, I add in a small number of innovations to create a highly elegant symmetrical system. Nevertheless, it is fairly similar to Hurlebatte's and Edwin's systems. A variant I find interesting is replacing ee with é_e and oo with ó_e (or e_e and o_e, with ea and oa becoming æ_e/ä_e and å_e instead).

Palatalization: c, g, j, ch
Old	New	When	Examples
‹c›	‹s›	[s]	cinder > sinder, hence > hense, once > oanse
‹k› and ‹ck›	‹c› or ‹cc›	[k]	kin > cin, sky > scy, back > bac, backing > baccing, bake > bace, baking > bacing
‹gu›	‹g›	[g]	guest > gest, guild > gild, tongue > tung
‹ch› and ‹tch›	‹ch› or ‹tc›	[tʃ]	chin > chin, latch > latc, latching > latcing, each > eche, bench > bench
‹j›	‹gh›	[dʒ]	jade > ghade, jot > ghot, major > maghor
‹dge› and ‹ge›	‹gh› or ‹dg›	[dʒ]	edge > edg, edging > edging, cringe > cringh, cringing > cringhing
Fricatives: f, v, th, s, z, gh
Old	New	When	Examples
‹gh›	‹h›	Ø	might > miht, though > ðoh, through > ðruh, thought > ðoht
‹gh›	‹f›	[f]	draught > draft, tough > tuf, cough > cof, coughing > coffing
‹th›	‹ð›	[θ] or [ð]	the > ðe, other > uðer, writhe > wriðe, wither > wiðer
‹v›	‹f› or ‹ff›	[v]	give > gif, giving > giffing, never > nefer, over > ofer, vane > fane
‹z›	‹s› or ‹ss›	[z]	dizzy > dissy, graze > grase, buzz > bus, buzzing > bussing, zoom > soom
Vowels: ou, ie, u
Old	New	When	Examples
‹ie›	‹ee›	[i]	thief 🡆 theef, field > feeld (or feld?) (lied > lied)
‹ou› and ‹ow›	‹ue›, ‹u_e›, or ‹u›	[aʊ]	loud > lude, cow > cue, plough > pluh, hound > hund
‹oo› and ‹ou›	‹ue›, ‹u_e›, or ‹u›	[u:] in ME	room > rume, brook > bruke, soup > supe
‹ou›	‹oo›	(irregular) [u]	ouzel > oosel, couth > cooð
‹o›	‹u›	[ʌ]	some 🡆 sum, come > cum, son > sun (done > doen)
‹u› and ‹ue› and ‹u_e›	‹eu›, ‹ew› or ‹yoo›	[ju]	hue > hew, yule > yool, rue > rew, ruing > rewing
‹ea›	‹e›	[ε]	dead > ded, death > deð, meadow > meddow (meddw?)
‹ea›	‹e_e›	[i], [e]	beat > bete, beaten > beten, speak > speke, break > breke
‹oa›	‹o_e›	almost always	boat > bote, boating > boting, foam > fome
Other: qu, le
Old	New	When	Examples
‹qu›	‹cw›	[kw]	queen > cween, quell > cwell
‹le›	‹el›	final [ɫ̩] or [əl]	beadle > beadel, nettle > nettel, simple > simpel (simply > simply)

Notes

• sh is maintained due to k being dropped from spelling. cg/gc are unfounded spellings that did not make sense during Old English (should have been gg) and were probably based on cc for ch, which is now used to make short vowels after /k/.
• To make words shorter, ea and oa are written as e_e and o_e when possible. Alternatively, ee, ea, oo, and oa could all be assigned their own letter for use with silent e, probably with ea and oa getting the unaccented e and o. The acute accent represents a higher tongue position than the lack thereof, and ee and oo are rarer than ea and oa. This would create some more consistency in the vowel system. Using silent e for ea is ideal because many modern ea come from lengthened short e (whereas ee from lengthened short i is not very common), and pairs like "speak" and "spoke" where the k shifts position between related words are undesirable, but more common in the current system with ea than ee. In any case, "we", "be", "to", and "do" should probably be left without accents. Long vowels do not need to be marked in any system when they come at the end of a word, as short vowels are not allowed (except interjections like "uh") at the ends of words in English.
• It is still difficult to say what to do with long vowels that come before two consonants, which are marked very irregularly in current English ("roast" and "most" rhyme but are written different). It'd be reasonable to continue using digraphs for these, such as "least" and "moast" for least and most. Alternatively, silent e could be used, but that leads to problems with the derivational endings -ed and -ing. "once" (now "onse") is a particular issue, since one is spelled with a long u, but an e generally always follows an s ending a cluster to show it is not a plural form.
• Long u is pronounced /u:/, or /o:/ before r with the poor-pour merger, when after y, or before k, f, p, or m (so "brook" can be written as bruke). However, it would also be reasonable, but slightly less etymological, to drop this distinction, although it appears to be maintained in Scots.
• Most irregularities are removed, although these were already fairly rare in native words. A few remain, mostly relating to an ambiguity between ee/ea and oo/oa (such as to vs do, which are kept the same), keeping very common words short ("this" and "if" are maintained with -s and -f instead of -ss and -ff, "body" as body (this could even be generalized, if oa is extended further), and "even" as efen or éfen - words with a long vowel before a consonant and a reduced syllable are fairly rare, as they tended to resist open syllable lengthening. "beetle" is another, but could be written as bétel).
• Vowels following w followed some regular, but narrow shifts. It would be reasonable to reintroduce ‹wu›, as along with the spelling changes to "some" and "come", it was only removed to make words look more legible in older fonts. Some other regular, but narrow shifts (such as the long u quasi-irregularity discussed above) could be maintained in spelling as well.
• A few other etymological changes could be considered, such as splitting ey/ei and ay/ai, as well as phonetic changes, like changes said to sed, or length-reduction changes, such as all/will to al/wil, but these are not listed.
• All doubled letters are used to denote vowel length (as opposed to fricative voicing, as in French for ‹s› and ‹ss›, Potentially, there could be an exception for fricatives at the ends of words: -s could be voiced, and -ss unvoiced, and similarly for -f and -ff. There are no such pairs for -ð, so this would probably never be doubled except to show vowel length.
  • give, gave, given, giving, gives, and gift: gif, gafe, giffen, giffing, gifs
  • rise, rose, risen, rising, rises: rise, rose, rissen, rising
  • live, alive, life, living, lived: lif, alife, life, liffing, liffed
  • other, wither, hover, love, loving, puff, puffing uðer, wiðer, hufer (or huffer), luf, luffing, puff, puffing
• /k/ and /tʃ/ have been fully separated into ‹k› and ‹c› (although doing "ck" for "kk" and "tc" for "cc" would be fine). This is because English clearly has and had been drifting in favor of ‹k›, and probably would have completed this like every other Germanic language has if not for the imposition of the Norman soft/hard c distinction. Further, splitting up ‹c› and ‹k› makes related words like "cat" and "kitten" or "can", "ken", and "know" look unrelated, which is undesirable. Also, Welsh started off using ‹k›, but switched due to English influence. Using false vowels would be possible, but also less like non-Romance languages and more confusing. Additionally, the rule ‹c› can't appear at the end of morphemes seems to have no basis.
• ‹gh› is probably based on ‹ȝh›, a spinoff of using ‹ȝ› for /x/, a spelling convention linked to the Norman invasion. However, dropping the historical /x/ results in many words merging completely and destroys etymology, which wouldn't be ideal. Thus, a native, shorter, alternative for /x/ should be used: ‹g› or ‹h›. However, most ‹g› became /j/ or /w/ instead, and using it would make writing some loanwords impossible. As such, ‹h› is preferable. Despite this, in the interest of regularity, the minority of ‹gh› words that now have an /f/ should probably be changed to use f, although to keep the etymology, a ‹fh› or ‹hf› could potentially be used.
• With the loss of ‹hr› and ‹hl›, ‹hw› being changed to ‹wh› to match ‹wr› and ‹wl› is aesthetically pleasing, and fits the timeline of English sound changes. This could be reconsidered if ‹hr› (or ‹rh›) and ‹hl› (or ‹lh›) were put back into English spelling.
• Unlike ‹j›, ‹dg› seems to be unrelated to foreign influence, and matches the use of ‹tc› for the unvoiced version of the affricate.
• ‹ƿ› and ‹þ› are runic letters that don't fit well into the Latin alphabet, looking too much like p and b (with þ being an unusually tall letter). In fact, ‹w› and ‹th› were used in English orthography before French influence. ‹j› could be totally removed from English, and replaced with ‹dg›, potentially: "jaw" becomes "dgaw", and "singe" becomes "sindg(e)". Similarly, ‹tc› could replace ‹ch› and ‹tch›, if the use of ‹k› (in favor of ‹c› for /k/) is highly undesirable.
• ‹ð› seems to have lost out to ‹þ› a century or two before ‹þ› lost out to ‹th›. However, ‹ð› fits better in the Latin alphabet. Icelandic only uses ‹þ› initially, aside from a handful of loanwords, and Faroese has no ‹þ› at all. English has voiced many of its initial dental fricatives, so using ‹ð› makes even more sense.
• ‹sc› could be a good alternative to ‹sh›, but ‹sh› is slightly less confusing, and it doesn't appear to be caused by French influence.
• Potentially ‹æ› (or ‹ä›) and ‹å› vowel pairs could be reintroduced (no -> nå, dead -> dæd, mead -> mæde), but it changes texts to look increasingly un-English. Some have proposed only using them for the descendants of OE long vowels, but this adds a lot of complexity, and the main benefit to their use would be the existence of a short ‹ä›, writing "dead" as "däd". But that has very marginal benefit if ‹ea> is written as ‹e_e›.
• I also recommend reversing the ei/ai merger (day stays day, but way becomes wey), and reverting other miscellaneous unetymological spellings.
• I don't oppose spellings to introduce perfect phoneticism, like "wun" for "one", "too" for "two", and "stopt" for "stopped", but have left them out as I don't think English benefits from changing them either.

Evidence

See Anglish Spelling.

Miscellaneous Changes

Old	New	Influencer
whore	hore/hoar	None
whole	hole/hoal	None
hole	holl	None
scythe	siðe	Italic
island	iland	Italic
accursed	akursed	Italic
allay	alay	Italic
afford	aford	Italic
affright	afriht	Italic
anneal	aneal	Italic
tongue	tung	Italic
Rhine	Rine	Greek
rhyme	rime	Greek
ghost	goast	Flemish

Common Respelled Words

Out of date.

Old	New	Reason
the	ðe	Shorter, consistency with f
to	tó	oo becomes ó
you	yu	Shorter, etymology
that	ðat	Shorter, consistency with f
are	ar	Shorter, phonetic
with	wið	Shorter, consistency with f
they	ðey	Shorter, consistency with f
be	bé	ee becomes oo
have	haf	Shorter, etymology
ðis	ðis	Shorter. Regular version: ðiss
some	sum	Shorter, etymology
we	wé	ee becomes é
can	kan	Etymology, avoid useless letters
out	ute	Etymology, avoid unused long u
other	uðer	Phonetic. Possibly uððer or óðer
were	wer	Shorter, phonetic
all	al	Shorter, two l's can be used for /æl/
there	ðere	Shorter, consistency with f
use	euse	(Loanword) Phonetic
your	yure	Etymology
how	hu	Etymology. Common, so ignores three letter rule
thou	ðu	Etymology. Common, so ignores three letter rule
each	ece	Simplification of c/k, ea -> eCe
which	whic	Simplification of c/k
do	dó	oo becomes ó
their	ðeir	Shorter, consistency with f
will	wil	Shorter
about	abute	Etymology
many	meny	Phonetic
then	ðen	Shorter, consistency with f
them	ðem	Shorter, consistency with f
would	wold	Shorter. Or phonetic wóde
thing	ðing	Shorter, consistency with f
could	kóde	Shorter, phonetic, etymology
come	kum	Shorter, simplification of c/k
sound	sund	Shorter, etymology
most	moste	Consistency with "more"
people	pépel	(Loanword) Phonetic
over	ofer	Etymology
water	watter	Phonetic
call	kal	Simplification of c/k, no useless letters
who	hó	Shorter, consistency with how -> hu
down	dune	Etymology
now	nu	Etymology. Common, so ignores three letter rule
any	eny	Phonetic
work	werk	Etymology
place	plase	(Loanword) Phonetic
live	lif	Shorter, etymology
back	bak	Shorter, phonetic
little	littel	Phonetic, etymology
only	onely	Phonetic, etymology
round	rund	(Loanword) Phonetic
year	yére	Split up ear/eer depending on pronunciation
came	kame	Simplification of c/k
every	efry	Etymology
give	gif	Shorter, etymology
our	ure	Etymology
through	ðruh	Etymology
hinge	hindg?	Phonetic, no soft consonants
edge	edg?	Shorter, no soft consonants
much	muc	Simplification of c/k
right	riht	Etymology
even	éfen	Etymology
here	hére	Etymology
high	hih	Etymology
done	dóen	Etymology, consistency with does
gone	goen	Etymology, consistency with goes

Example

Ðe Norð Wind and ðe Sun wer scwabbeling abute whitc was ðe stronger, when a weyfarer came along wrapped in a warm shrude. Ðey setteled ðat ðe one ho first ofercame in macing ðe weyfarer tace his shrude off shuld be seen as stronger ðan ðe uðer. Ðen ðe Norð Wind blew as hard as he cood, but ðe more he blew, ðe more tihtly did ðe weyfarer fold his shrude abute him; and at last ðe Norð Wind gafe up þé bid. Ðen ðe Sun shone ute warmly, and at onse ðe weyfarer tooc off his shrude. And so ðe Norð Wind was bund too acnolledg ðat ðe Sun was ðe stronger of ðe two.