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The English language is notorious as one of the most difficult in the world because it is a mixture of several archaic languages, including three old dialects of German (Angle, Saxon, Jute) plus Latin, Greek, Old Norse, Old French and Brittonic. The result is the chaos of diverse spellings and pronunciations in which written symbols juxtapose very inconsistently with the reality of spoken sounds, forcing confusion and despair on too many students. Yet stubborn linguistic traditionalists hold tight, changing a few words each century. So, let's do something about it, now. To simplify a complex language, we insert punctuation marks, like long and short signs, right and left slashes, various curves, then combine letters and change their shape, so each sound is represented by one, and only one symbol. Thus, perhaps children around the World may do their lessons without the sighs and groans we hear so often. Although this work eliminates all silent letters, capitals are too useful to get rid of without causing even more confusion, so "caps" are in and "silents" are out. John Talbot Ross, April - December 2001 June 26, 2003 - As this work has slowly progressed over the past several years, a shift has occurred from a few simple reconfigurations to the creation of a series of interrelated phonetic pictographs. I discovered many English letters are closely related in sound, but not in form, so major changes were necessary to bring form and sound together; and in the process, many letters had to be replaced. The result is only a few standard letters remain without change; but once a person learns this system, English becomes a much easier language to work with (if only it could have its own dictionary). July 5, 2003 - Reviewing the work, it occurred to me that to really simplify the hard job of learning this language and be true to the principle of one symbol for one sound, there can't be a different symbol for "small" letters, but instead one symbol for both capitals and smalls. So, if you want a a capital letter, just enlarge it. That's already true of letters like s and k, so let's apply it to all the letters. From now on capitals and smalls are shaped exactly alike, no tall and short letters. That way there is no need for some to extend above or below the lines entangling letters on the lines above and below them. August 9, 2003 - To see this complete alphabet now go to: Vowels and Consonants on separate pages. There is also a Hand-drawn Summary. August 13, 2003 - A further discovery is that even a phonetic alphabet can be carried to extremes, so much so that the first priority can be lost - to make it easier for children to learn English. For example, if letter U is rendered phonetic as long E and long OO combined we have a complex symbol that looks like some sort of Chinese character, and then how to depict the sound of short U? It's simpler to stay with standard long and short U, even if it's not perfectly phonetic. Each vowel in each of its variations must look similar, even if they don't sound similar, because the vowels must be a distinctly different and cohesive group from consonants, phonetically pure or not. Vowels are open-ended soft sounds waiting to be connected to the mostly hard sounds of the consonants. That's how the language works. To assign each and every letter its individual phonetic symbol without accomodating their inter-relationships would really be more confusing than the old alphabet, which would be the opposite of my purpose - to make learning English easier for children. |
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VOWELS CONSONANTS HAND-DRAWN SUMMARY Back to Contents IPA Phonetic Alphabet Angelfire Home Pages |