Surprised you didn't touch on how awful those letters are, it's not clear how someone would write 'oa' quickly or with any sort of ease while still making it distinguishable from 'a', and all the h-like letters are just about indistinguishable in handwriting/from a distance/to someone with slightly poorer vision then normal.
Very true... perhaps I should have gone into more detail. I think I glossed over it in part because I was using substitute characters that were a little more distinguishable (aside from Latin alpha which in writing is the same as for the vast majority of the English speakers). It may also be due to the fact that I take much more interest in phonology, morphology, and orthography... but you're right, graphemics should have had more airtime for this reform :)
@@CasualConlanger Oh I dont think you _needed_ to mention it or anything, it's fine if it's not your focus (it isn't strictly part of the spelling reform per se). I was mostly surprised because it struck me as so bad immediately when I saw it, I don't think I could _personally_ make a video on this spelling reform without breaking script to complain about how hellish the actual letterforms are lol.
Omg this channel has the perfect theme. Please please please do a video on the Portuguese spelling reform of 1911. It's quite astonishing how much old Portuguese looks like English considering English is supposed to be a Germanic language. But it actually makes a lot of sense cos pre reform Portuguese spelling was heavily based of etymology, like English spelling. To get a sense of how drastic that reform was, they literally removed every Y from standard Portuguese, and changed every PH to an F and every RH to an R or RR. They also removed lots of Hs and silent consonants, but it did increase the complexity of accent marks in the language. And that reform was very much not final, with two big reforms happenings in scond half of the 20th century. If you want to see what a possible English spelling reform looks like, this is it. Also, the story of the reform is absurdly underrated, and most Portuguese speakers don't grasp its significance. The basis of the reform was a proposal written in 1885, and it was only adopted in Brazil in the 1940s.
Something I actually like about this particular spelling reform is the fact that long vowels normally represented with a double letter are written with a single one at the end of a word, i.e. kαnsikuentlii > kαnsikuentli; bii > bi; menii > meni; tuu > tu. This is actually a pretty neat feature that would be nice to see in other spelling reforms!
in many more conservative dialects the vowel at the end of happy is specifically short rather than long, but this does also echo middle english spelling conventions of assigning more letters to nouns, verbs, & adjectives as opposed to particles which is how we got be vs bee
"/ai̯/" and "/au̯/" are spelt differently because, in most dialects (including General American and Standard Southern British), they have different starting positions, with "/ai̯/" being closer to [ɑi̯] or [ʌi̯] and "/au̯/" often being more front [æu̯] than the standard symbols suggest. I recommend Geoff Lindsey.
Agreed. I can attest for SSB, my PRICE vowel starts back and my MOUTH starts front. However, the starting vowels of these diphthongs never contrast in this environment, so are they REALLY different phonemes? It depends on how you analyse diphthongs. If they are just the sum of their parts, in SSB for example, PRICE is short START + /j/ and MOUTH is TRAP + /w/. However, short START and TRAP never contrast ("long" START and TRAP do, consider back and bark in SSB), so they could be considered allophones of a same phoneme under this analysis. Now, this might not have been the case for Benjamin Franklin, where the first vowel in each diphthong did contrast, but it seems unlikely that he had long START at the beginning of PRICE as opposed to short START (what I mean is, a vowel of the same quality but not the same length). This might be unclear, since I'm typing on my phone I don't have easy access to the IPA and have had to use lexical sets to describe other lexical sets (which is a bit silly). I can try to clarify another time if you ask nicely :P
@@CasualConlanger In SSB, "STRUT" (for those who don't merge it with /ə/) neatly fills in the position of the "short START" you are referring to. The symbols used in English phonetics are rather misleading.
Once again, agreed. As Geoff Lindsey argues (big fan of his, btw!), the Gimsonian symbols currently used are completely inadequate when trying to accurately describe SSB, or Modern/Contemporary RP (🤮) as some authors like to call it. As you said, "short START" (which it's worth saying, doesn't really exist in SSB but I created for the sake of the argument) can be STRUT (even the lexical set names are similar, isn't that wonderful?) if we're considering PRICE vowels. All that said, I think most people consider the STRUT vowel to be more closely linked to that of FOOT, whether they have a FOOT-STRUT split or not, as a result of a certain level of phonographic symbolism caused by English spelling remaining practically static since Late Middle English (so both FOOT and STRUT are often written 'u', though, as in the case of foot, book, hood, etc. it can be 'oo'). Once again, if I could use IPA on this damn keyboard I would 😂, or small capital letters for that matter... naming lexical sets MAKES IT SEEM A BIT LIKE I'M SHOUTING. :)
Great video as always. I first came across this while I was browsing the conlanger's bible, Omniglot. I also hapened across another reform that was put forth by the Mormons in Deseret. Perhaps you could check that out sometime?
@@CasualConlanger Either. The OG and the revised one which added the schwa character. I've noticed that's a theme where English spelling reformers will exclude a schwa character which I think is a bad move.
Oh and there's also stuff like shavian and quikscript. While cool, completetly reinventing the alphabet is never going to work as a spelling reform. as jan Misali said, it's basically cheating. I actually have my own spelling reform in the works and my goal is to make one that balanced recognizability with consistency (with regard to spelling).
If it hasn't already been suggested, could you do a video on Anglish (the language reform of Modern English which returns it to its Old English roots and filters-out the Greco-Latin influence that came with the arrival of Christianity and the Bible to the English isles)?
Cool video! I'd be somewhat ok if represents /j/and /ɪ/, but since represents /iː/, it'll result in some pretty unappealing spellings, such as iiist (yeast) and iiild (yield). But I actually like how the letter for /ʃ/ is being used for postalveolar digraphs instead of the letter for /j/. With /j/, there's greater opportunity to conflate actual digraphs and separate letter representations (/t͡ʃ/ and /tj/, /ʃ/ and /sj/, etc), found in words such as resume /ɹɪˈzjum/ and Asia /ˈeɪ.ʒə/. But it's way less likely to come across /t.ʃ/, /dʃ/, and /zʃ/, despite the decreased internal consistency.
All very good points! I wish I had thought of your examples to counter my idea to improve internal consistency... alas! It really is a very good argument, I'll keep it in mind if I come across a similar case :)
Their functions aren't quite the same: one is an affix (inherently a bound morpheme), the other a verb or adjective depending on the example... which are almost always free morphemes.
well, it reminds me of what the Masoretes did with ancient Hebrew writing -- which has (for a non-english or non-russian speaker) really annoying things i.e. how vowels or whole words sound completely different when u stress a different syllable (*) so its obvious that in a phonetic spelling things change, but further than that also indicates pronunciation changes based on rhythm/intonation in a sentence (which is like if the whole sentence would be a word, and shifting the stress/position in it changes the pronunciation of the rest like aforementioned). therefore i guess in the case of "to" written and , it depends on that you emphasize "to those", but in "who wish to acquire" (at least nowadays definitively) you reduce it and actually use a shwa why some people write / instead. maybe the use of by him is to show that, since his never has an "oo"-sound, and even "who" is reduced since he wrote it which not having the context people using his alphabet might think is a "ho/hoe" xD -> /iz/ is written in pausa, since sorry guys yall native english speakers may say what u want but i hear you devoicing voiced sounds at the end of words all the time (even if yall claim Auslautverhärtung is no thing in english) if there isnt something preventing that i.e. following voiced sounds. inconveniences is followed by a comma, so, in pausa; same for difficulties, but not for etymologies hence ... but why on normal plural -s there is only round s used, i still have to ponder... but in short: i just think since this is NOT written by benjamin himself but some other, he simply made mistakes, like keeping "be" written which cant be right since it must rhyme with "way" than i.e. "bay"(?) or forgetting to double vowels where they r long e.g. for see instead of and i find the usage of the uh-vowel letter deeply disturbing, standing for [a] or whatever vowel english employs most close to it e.g. in "i", for the real uh-vowel like in "cut", and for the sir/word/hurt-vowel too?! but how to distinguish word and ward ? ... well i see one example of this vowel anywhere so maybe it has its own sign instead of using the one he also employs for [a] (*) e.g. when u dont know where to place the stress, or when suffixes change the stress e.g. démon -> démonize but demónify, the first two written vowels, "ee" and "ih" in demon become "ee" and the shwa in demonize, and shwa and the vowel in demonify
These are all very true, but I do still think that the / distinction was probably an accident, likewise for and , but it's very interesting that you mention the devoicing of voiced sounds: I wasn't sure if that was a feature in 18th-c. English, since "etymologies" was written with but inconveniences with . In the end I explained the change by saying it was a mistake by the writer... but I should've looked into it more. Looking at the rest of the reform, I think "ward" would probably be written "woard" (oa as in the ligature), but just as you pointed out, the use of "uh" is too broad.
A spelling reform that is *phonetic* can never be global. It privileges one dialect/accent over all others. Every person who speaks a non-privileged dialect will have to learn an essentially arbitrary system. English spelling, as it is, can act internationally precisely because it is not phonetic anymore. This is something that erstwhile spelling reformers never realize.
It is a bit more complicated then that. Problem with English spelling is not that it isn't phonetic. There are many systems that are either completely un-phonetic, like French and Russian or with certain irregular areas, like Latin American Spanish that on top of silent H merged Y & LL and S & Z, so now spelling is not entirely phonetic for most of us. In fact, European Spaniards are a minority of Spanish speakers. Almost all East-Asian systems have these irregularities. Yet, you won't hear as much complaints about any of these systems. You won't see proposals to re-spell Russian or French. No. The problem with English spelling is that it is arbitrary. There is no rule you can follow to read or write a word. When I see a Spanish word "llamar", I know to read it "yamar". Just as when I see Russian "корова" I know to read it "karova". How do you read "Athena" in English? Common sense suggests TH should be read like in "moTHer", but it isn't because it is a Greek loan. And there is no rule to follow, because TH in "the" should be the same as in "THink", but again it is not. So now we have a digraph that is read completely arbitrary and your guess is as good as mine on how to read it. How do you read "celtic"? Again, common sense suggests it is "seltik", but it isn't, just as "ocean" isn't read "osean". There is also H that is silent in French loans, but is pronounced in Germanic wordstock. And we didn't even touched my favourite digraph CH that represents 4 different sounds depending on etymology or GH that is either F or silent at the end of the word you are free to guess which one is it. There is also a problem of compound words. How do you read "lighthouse"? Would it be imposing my privileged dialect on unwashed plebs if we wrote "modher" instead of "mother" (there is no dialect of English for which marking both sounds with a "th" makes any sense at all)? If C was repurposed for something else entirely and we wrote "keltik" and "Kyprus"? Or would it hurt anyone to put a damn hyphen in "lighthouse"? I doubt that. Yet nobody seems to agree that common sense should prevail
@@user-mrfrog Yes, it is a good idea. It would have made texts shorter for one. But for some reason people are adamantly against those letters. People are generally against common sense when it comes to English spelling. People still think that you would need to cast all these new letter for a printing press. Not just download an update to your iPhone
the diphthongs arent as bad as you say having aɪ and aʊ spelt with different things for the a is fine, especially because in some dialects (including mine) its əɪ and aʊ. tho the ə character in oɪ is weird
@@CasualConlanger your proposal of aɪ also only happens in some dialects. aɪ would be worse for me, and əɪ would be worse for you. either way someone gets the bad option. you could work out which of əɪ and aɪ is used by more speakers, but even doing that you advantage some dialects over others. EDIT: just taking a glance at wikipedia, there seems to a lot of dialects that use ʌɪ or əɪ or ɐɪ, all of which fall under jeffersons weird letter.
I'm looking at it from the (standardised) phonemic level, which itself may be a bit biased toward "standard" accents like RP(/SSB) and GenAm, but is currently the best system available. I agree though, figuring out a mode vowel phonology (mentioned in Episode One) would be the best way forward.
@@d.l.7416 no matter how it's written, it makes diacentrism... only when it's written to represent the diphthong! if you don't write it like that (maybe ī or something) then it is no longer diacentric and it works.
I feel like Franklin missed the most fundamental point of English orthography. The whole reason that Eth, Thorn, Wynn and others were dropped and replaced by digraphs in the first place was because they appeared too similar to other letters (think of "Ye Olde"). The very existence of the letter h invalidates most of his new letters
The "ye" came from the fact that printing presses were invented by a German, and consequently didn't include thorn, with y being the closest approximation using the given letters.
@@tonydai782 William Caxton's printing press was a Flemish one - they didn't have the letter thorn, either (making extra letter casts would have been expensive - and where would they have put them in the letter cases, anyway?). Wynn was replaced by after 1200, as it was easily confused with thorn, eth fell out of use around the same time, and thorn itself had its ascender reduced by 1400, being easily mistaken for a . The letter yogh (originally the Anglo-Saxon/insular ) became basically identical to the cursive version of (hence McKenzies) and was dropped after 1450 or 1500.
I think I can help with some of the oddities in Franklin's system that you bring up. Hopefully, this helps: @ 5:38 How? It isn't. Sheridan (1753) suggests /ɐi/ or /ɒi/ (he says it's the price vowel (we'll get to it) but with a more open mouth and sharper glide). Johnson (unhelpfully) says it's pretty similar to how the individual letters sound (so a diphthong, but we don't know what sort of o he's on about). but it looks like Franklin is describing something like a triphthong. Judging from how he wrote it, perhaps /ɒɪi/, or similar? Personally, I think it was possibly a clumsy attempt to just write /ɒi/, or something similar. @ 5:45 Here mid-18th century dictionaries help a lot (many come with pronunciation guides): Mid-18th Century "standard" (read: middle and Upper-class Southeast England) pronunciation of the upper one was basically either /ʌi/ or /əi/--the latter was the conservative pronunciation. The House phoneme was--based on what Sheridan states in 1753-- this: /ɒʊ/ (older speakers perhaps still had /ɔʊ/). The former lines up perfectly with what Franklin is writing here. Actually, the table should overall, look like this: a, ɑ, ɛ ɪ, ʌi (or əi) , ɒi, e: ʊ, u, ɒʊ, o: The cut vowel was /ʌ/. Johnson also supplies ə or ɨ for cases like the e in "chicken"; Franklin likely didn't distinguish between them and the cut vowel in his proposal, hence some of the spelling used. As to the choice of IPA letters: the "all" vowel was described as being similar to the Dutch a, which was not the same as the a in "hat", which was described as being like the Italian a. Italian--mercifully--changed relatively slowly, so the a then was as it is now. Dutch has both a's, so that suggests Johnson (who goes into the specifics), is describing a back vowel. Comparison with older and newer descriptions of English then provides evidence that this was a rounded back vowel--at least for the long version; the short version might have been unrounded (or it might not have; we don't know if vowel length was the only true contrast). I know that the earliest RP recordings have unrounded pronunciations if Simon Roper is any clue. The resulting accent is...well, it's not like any modern dialect of English. It sounds modern--like something you could imagine being used on the streets today--but you wouldn't know exactly where he's from. However, a lot of people say it sounds Irish or Scottish (the latter due to the pronunciation of r: every description before 1750 favors the alveolar trill as the standard, with two allophones.) Look up A.Z.Foreman's reading of the Declaration of Independence: that's the closest I can find to what Franklin's getting at.
Oh, I forgot, coming back here: The sound of the a in "name" in the standard language was a pure vowel at the time, not a diphthong as it is now in RP or general American. Same goes for the sound of the o in "stone". These vowels don't break until c. 1800 or after.
I feel like ole Benjy gave up too easily. he got one pushback and said aight I'm out I think it was a very good first attempt. It could've used some changes but it works pretty well, no worse than some systems today. It's pretty fun to read these in their old pronunciation
I was surprised at how bad BF's proposal was. I have my own which creates a one-to-one correlation between phonemes and graphemes and keeps things simple. I call it 7M Phonemic English. It gets rid of all digraphs, maintains compatibility with cursive writing and uses simple, easy-to-write letters. It only adds 8 more characters to the existing 26 because some characters are reassigned to different speech sounds. I keep as many existing glyph-sound associations as possible. Diphthongs are spelled out (eg 'late' becomes 'leεt'). Notice that the word is not made longer by doing this.
7M Phonemic Alphabet: [uppercase]: H, U, Ŋ, G, I, N, V, ᐱ, ⴳ D, W, E, Ћ, Z, R, P, T K, L, Q, F, S, M, A, X Y, O, J, ᖶ,Ђ, B, Ů, C and Ɂ (glottal stop) [lower case]: h, u, ŋ, g, i, n, v, ʌ, ⴳ d, w, ε, ћ, z, r, p, t k, l, q, f, s, m, a, x y, o, j, e, ѣ, b, ů, c and ɂ (glottal stop) 7M to IPA to Current English Table: 7M | IPA | Current English h | h | hat, [h]at u | ə | mud, m[u]d ŋ | ŋ | sing, si[ng] g | g | get, [g]et i | ɪ | sit, s[i]t n | n | nap, [n]ap v | v | very, [v]ery ʌ | ɑ | not, n[o]t ⴳ | ʒ | measure, mea[s]ure -------------------------------------------------------- d | d | dot, [d]ot w | w | wet, [w]et ε | i | feet, f[ee]t ћ | ð | smooth, smoo[th] z | z | zip, [z]ip r | ɹ | dirt, d[ir]t p | p | pet, [p]et t | t | tub, [t]ub -------------------------------------------------------- k | k | kite, [k]ite l | l | little, [l]itt[le]* q | u | loop, l[oo]p f | f | fig, [f]ig s | s | sit, [s]it m | m | man, [m]an a | æ | cat, c[a]t x | ʃ | dish, di[sh] -------------------------------------------------------- y | j | yellow, [y]ellow o | o̞ | note, n[o]te j | d͡ʒ | judge, [j]u[dg]e e | e | get, g[e]t ѣ | θ | tooth, too[th] b | b | bed, [b]ed ů | ʊ | put, p[u]t c | t͡ʃ | chat, [ch]at and ɂ (glottal stop) crc = church *The letter /L/ represents both a consonant form & a vowel form. Ten pure vowels [no diphthongs]: 7M(U I Λ E R Q A O ᖶ Ů u i ʌ ε r q a o e ů) IPA(ə ɪ ɑ i [ɹ] u æ o̞ e ʊ) 2 additional vowels with no glyphs Dark L /ɫ/ and raised /æ/ This IPA nuttiness will clearly not work for everyday handwriting: ʊ, d͡ʒ, t͡ʃ, o̞, æ, ð, ʒ, ə, ɪ, ɚ
I must provide a demonstration. It may appear very exotic but every word is spelled according to sound and once you learn the sound associated with each letter, it's actually quite easy. Currently, we do not spell words the way that they sound, so it's our current orthography that is bizarre and inscrutable.
It's important to realize that the obstacle of rewriting printed works is now overcome by technology that didn't exist in Ben Franklin's day. Also, it is not the purpose of written language to either function as it's own history book or it's own dictionary. The purpose of written language is to make spoken language span a greater length of time and provide it with portability to a far greater audience. The written word should not be saddled, encumbered or crippled with extraneous history or dictionary duties. To focus on those things is to allow your mind to become addled with senseless priorities.
7:01 yeah and exactly that argument is why "this system wouldnt be centralized if its based on his dialect" makes no sense to say: just compare in UK english vs US english, they are completely different vowels, in the UK its an unique vowel while in the US its the same vowel as in . so people WOULD have to relearn orthography multiple times any way, or someone from america never could write a letter to someone in britain, or vice versa :D not to mention the difference IN america by state or the UK by country, soomuoon in scootland dys nât heev diphthongs !
(inhales) C is needed for CH, pairs like "specific" and "specificity", pairs like "advise" and "advice" (or just the voicelessnees of C in general), and besides C looks way better than K does. W is easier to read than U. "uit" (wit) looks likes "fruit" or "conduit", "uy" (why) looks like "buy" or "guy" X replaced with CS or KS would make words look plural how on earth do you replace the Z at the beginning of zone, zero, zeal, etc? Q is fine, although we could be without it
A cursory glance at both, yes. Shavian is already on my *super secret* list of reviews (Episode Eight, I think), and Quikscript won't come too long after :)
I totally disagree, this spelling reform, with some of its own small reforms - modifications - would do wonders for the English language, at least would be the case if such was only applied for the states, for which I cannot say for the rest of the English speaking world, however a proximal similarity to this is the situation with Norwegian, where there are two official spelling systems used.
Right? It's a great first draft. B Frank gave up too quickly. To be fair the revolution was on the horizon when he came up with it so he got preoccupied but it should've been revisited. I've shown this writing to some ESL students and they managed to read it much easier even with the new symbols
Once you do get used to it, Latin spelling with v's and i's is actually super intuitive imo. So I don't really see it becoming a problem if it were in a reform. In fact I kinda like it - then again it does specifically appeal to me as someone who has studied Latin.
how would the Ish-letter ђ for "y" be more sonsistent?? some people say as "isyu" others as "ishu", benjamin would clearly be an isyu-guy cause thats the original pronunciation, so writing would be right for his time, but all would pronounce it that way and there wouldnt be a "sh"-symbol :D furthermore, the Ish-letter is a ligature of the way u write normal long s, just with the right "leg" of an h added, since its together .. no one would think of a "y" sound back then or even now, that is ^^
yep, I regret saying that now, another comment also made this very good point of the distinction between /sj/ & /S/ (as well as /tj/ & /tS/, /dj/ & /dZ/, /zj/ & /Z/, etc.) being useful: if yod were ish, the distinction couldn't be upheld. Note: For dialects with extensive yod-coalescence, such as mine, (/S/) and (/sj/) would just be pronounced the same in many words, which is totally fine since a lot of yod-coalescence isn't universal.
If you are an English reformer getting confused or stacking again and again in the same situation, then why not look into other languages that are scientific and have been tested over thousands of years? Yes, my boy, I am suggesting Sanskirt alpha bat, in which you can find or make all the sounds in the universe, e.g. for sh, shaa, si, se ...we have this many letters. श श्क श्ख श्ग श्घ श्ङ श्च श्छ श्ज श्झ श्ञ श्ट श्ठ श्ड श्ढ श्ण श्त श्थ श्द श्ध श्न श्प श्फ श्ब श्भ श्म श्य श्र श्ल श्व श्श श्ष श्स श्ह श्ळ ष ष्क ष्ख ष्ग ष्घ ष्ङ ष्च ष्छ ष्ज ष्झ ष्ञ ष्ट ष्ठ ष्ड ष्ढ ष्ण ष्त ष्थ ष्द ष्ध ष्न ष्प ष्फ ष्ब ष्भ ष्म ष्य ष्र ष्ल ष्व ष्श ष्ष ष्स ष्ह ष्ळ स स्क स्ख स्ग स्घ स्ङ स्च स्छ स्ज स्झ स्ञ स्ट स्ठ स्ड स्ढ स्ण स्त स्थ स्द स्ध स्न स्प स्फ स्ब स्भ स्म स्य स्र स्ल स्व स्श स्ष स्स स्ह स्ळ
/ɔː/ (as shown on the left by /ᴘʜᴏɴᴇᴍᴇ/). My bad for the pronunciation, but it's fine since [ɔː] and [o̞ːo̟] aren't contrastive and the latter is my idiolectal emphatic pronunciation of what's typically transcribed as /ɔː/, and /oː/ when transcribing RP or SSB [o̞ː].
@@CasualConlanger I'm sorry, it's just that I often feel like historical IPA transcriptions are becoming like a new established orthography which is hard to break away from
Ben Franklin: y is dumb and pointless, let's get rid of it. Also /ʌ/ needs a letter, so I'm gonna create a letter that looks almost identical to y for it Me: -_- Also since I can't find another comment addressing this, does it bug anyone else that he created new letters for /ð/ and /θ/ but didn't brinɡ back Ð or Þ?
@@illogical1421 I mean y didn't have to look exactly the way it does now. Insular Y looks exactly the same as the letter we're using to stand in for the letter I'm making fun of for instance. As for Ð and Þ, what's wrong with them?
@@tfan2222 Agreed, though ð would have been useful for Franklin's purposes of one letter for one sound. But then there is a reason why /θ/ and /ð/ have always been written using the same method.
Super interesting ! I remember first finding out that English doesn't do spelling reforms because of people saying it is too complicated to do so. The Dutch language has them all the time! This makes for quite easy spelling rules. I think Dutch writing is a great blend of the spelling reflecting the pronunciation, without harming consistency and morphology. Of course, with every spelling reforms there are small controversies, but that is in its nature. I read this Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Dutch_orthography#The_spelling_reform_of_2006_(The_Netherlands_and_Flanders) and it's very interesting. Thank you for reminding me!
the vowels honestly baffle me if i understand it correctly, why did he just not use oo and o for ɔː and ɒ why did he need a new letter for that if anything that shouldve been reserved for the FATHER vowel and/or the central mid vowels while “a” would be for the TRAP vowel and idk if it was an older english thing but like, couldnt he have made long-short pairs for the two close vowels? why is it only “i” that has a single+double; why is there not also literal double u
I created my own spelling system that matches the way the English language is pronounced, here is an example: *ORIGINAL* _Since then advocacy of the abolition of a monarchy or respectively of republics has been called republicanism, while the advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. As such republics have become the opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy, despite some having seen infringements through lifelong or even hereditary heads of state, such as in North Korea._ *MY PROPOSAL* _Sins dhen ạdvukusee uv dhu ạbulishun uv ei manarkee or rispektivlee uv reepubliks hạz bin kold ripublikunizum, wail dhu ạdvukusee uv manarkeez iz kold manarkizum. Ạz such reepubliks hạv bikum dhu upoụzing eund oltṛnutiv form uv guvṛnmunt too manarkee, dispait sum hạving seen infrinjmunts throo laiflong or eevin hṛeduteree hedz uv steit, such ạz in North Koreeu._ I also created one for Spanish: *ORIGINAL* _Desde entonces, la defensa de la abolición de una monarquía o, respectivamente, de repúblicas se ha llamado republicanismo, mientras que la defensa de las monarquías se llama monarquismo. Como tales, las repúblicas se han convertido en la forma de gobierno opuesta y alternativa a la monarquía, a pesar de que algunas han visto infracciones a través de jefes de Estado de por vida o incluso hereditarios, como en Corea del Norte._ *MY PROPOSAL* _Désde entónses, la defénsa de la abolisyón de úna monarrkía o, rrespektíbaménte, de rrepúblikas se a llamádo rrepublikanísmo, myéntras ke la defénsa de las monarrkías se lláma monarrkísmo. Kómo táles, las rrepúblikas se an komberrtído en la fórrma de gobyérrno opwésta i alterrnatíba a la monarrkía, a pesárr de ke algúnas an bísto infraksyónes a trabés de jéfes de Estádo de porr bída o inklúso ereditáryos, kómo en Koréa del Nórrte._
@@EngelProgrammings haiku, adieu, emu, gnu, flu all have the LONG "u" sound. "Koreeu" looks like it has a long "u" sound. schwa is most commonly a, e, or o. as in affect, allow, drama, Korea, era, enough, quicken, happen, attention, mission.
@@notwithouttext I think I didn't understand you before. Yes, in normal English spelling, the letter U can represent another sound that is not the schwa (such as the "long U sound"). My system consists of assigning a grapheme or a digraph to each phoneme, and each correspondence does not change due to context. Although A, E or O are more common for the schwa, these letters are already taken to represent other sounds (the vowel sounds in Car, Care, Core, respectively), the "long U sound" that you mention is already represented with OO, so U cannot represent the "long U sound" if OO already represents it; so the U becomes available to represent another sound, such as the schwa, which in fact in normal English spelling is often used for that, as in: Gun, Fun, Cut, But, Uh, etc. even when people misspell or respell some words like What, Love, 'Cause (Wut, Luv, Cuz). So the U in "Koreeu" cannot sound like the "long U", because the grapheme-phoneme correspondence does not change due to the context, it is regular. Some words look better than others, I guess "Koreeu" is one of those that look ugly.
@@EngelProgrammings yeah i'm just commenting that maybe you should add a rule to make "a" at the end sound like "uh", for better familiarity. there aren't many words that end in the "palm" vowel anyway except words like "ma" and "pa" and "schwa" where it can't be schwa anyway and only a few other words.
What do you think of the new ✨background colour✨? Definitely a massive change from jet black if you ask me...
It's like your channel is in Dark Theme and I love it. Much easier on the eye than either jet black or any bright color.
opinions on making the background the same colour as youtube's dark theme so that the video kinda blends in?
@Nibble Trinnal so you don't know what's video and what isn't 🧠🧠
Personally, not a fan. Isn’t very noticeable on an LCD screen, and wastes battery on an AMOLED screen.
What was that last line before "sorry"?
I love how he completely reinvented English spelling but didn't even consider removing the stupid long s.
one reason may have been that intervocalic long-s was never voiced, unlike standard s
nothing wrong with it
@@siyacerexactly
Come on! The long s is great!
Surprised you didn't touch on how awful those letters are, it's not clear how someone would write 'oa' quickly or with any sort of ease while still making it distinguishable from 'a', and all the h-like letters are just about indistinguishable in handwriting/from a distance/to someone with slightly poorer vision then normal.
Very true... perhaps I should have gone into more detail. I think I glossed over it in part because I was using substitute characters that were a little more distinguishable (aside from Latin alpha which in writing is the same as for the vast majority of the English speakers). It may also be due to the fact that I take much more interest in phonology, morphology, and orthography... but you're right, graphemics should have had more airtime for this reform :)
@@CasualConlanger Oh I dont think you _needed_ to mention it or anything, it's fine if it's not your focus (it isn't strictly part of the spelling reform per se). I was mostly surprised because it struck me as so bad immediately when I saw it, I don't think I could _personally_ make a video on this spelling reform without breaking script to complain about how hellish the actual letterforms are lol.
If you've seen any of the Apandah Reform, you can bet I'll have a script break to complain about his added characters XD
@@CasualConlanger I could never criticize such a work of absolute genius.
Than* normal.
Sorry.
Omg this channel has the perfect theme. Please please please do a video on the Portuguese spelling reform of 1911.
It's quite astonishing how much old Portuguese looks like English considering English is supposed to be a Germanic language. But it actually makes a lot of sense cos pre reform Portuguese spelling was heavily based of etymology, like English spelling.
To get a sense of how drastic that reform was, they literally removed every Y from standard Portuguese, and changed every PH to an F and every RH to an R or RR. They also removed lots of Hs and silent consonants, but it did increase the complexity of accent marks in the language. And that reform was very much not final, with two big reforms happenings in scond half of the 20th century.
If you want to see what a possible English spelling reform looks like, this is it.
Also, the story of the reform is absurdly underrated, and most Portuguese speakers don't grasp its significance. The basis of the reform was a proposal written in 1885, and it was only adopted in Brazil in the 1940s.
Episode Eight ;)
This is fascinating I had no idea this happened.
I love the jan Misali tribute with the intro and format. Solid video
Thank you so much!
Where’s the serif font tho 🤔
LETS GO MORE REFORM REVIEW BABE WAKE UP NEW REFORM REVIEW JUST DROPPED
😂😂😂
Something I actually like about this particular spelling reform is the fact that long vowels normally represented with a double letter are written with a single one at the end of a word, i.e. kαnsikuentlii > kαnsikuentli; bii > bi; menii > meni; tuu > tu. This is actually a pretty neat feature that would be nice to see in other spelling reforms!
in many more conservative dialects the vowel at the end of happy is specifically short rather than long, but this does also echo middle english spelling conventions of assigning more letters to nouns, verbs, & adjectives as opposed to particles which is how we got be vs bee
"/ai̯/" and "/au̯/" are spelt differently because, in most dialects (including General American and Standard Southern British), they have different starting positions, with "/ai̯/" being closer to [ɑi̯] or [ʌi̯] and "/au̯/" often being more front [æu̯] than the standard symbols suggest. I recommend Geoff Lindsey.
Agreed. I can attest for SSB, my PRICE vowel starts back and my MOUTH starts front. However, the starting vowels of these diphthongs never contrast in this environment, so are they REALLY different phonemes? It depends on how you analyse diphthongs. If they are just the sum of their parts, in SSB for example, PRICE is short START + /j/ and MOUTH is TRAP + /w/. However, short START and TRAP never contrast ("long" START and TRAP do, consider back and bark in SSB), so they could be considered allophones of a same phoneme under this analysis. Now, this might not have been the case for Benjamin Franklin, where the first vowel in each diphthong did contrast, but it seems unlikely that he had long START at the beginning of PRICE as opposed to short START (what I mean is, a vowel of the same quality but not the same length). This might be unclear, since I'm typing on my phone I don't have easy access to the IPA and have had to use lexical sets to describe other lexical sets (which is a bit silly). I can try to clarify another time if you ask nicely :P
@@CasualConlanger In SSB, "STRUT" (for those who don't merge it with /ə/) neatly fills in the position of the "short START" you are referring to. The symbols used in English phonetics are rather misleading.
Once again, agreed. As Geoff Lindsey argues (big fan of his, btw!), the Gimsonian symbols currently used are completely inadequate when trying to accurately describe SSB, or Modern/Contemporary RP (🤮) as some authors like to call it. As you said, "short START" (which it's worth saying, doesn't really exist in SSB but I created for the sake of the argument) can be STRUT (even the lexical set names are similar, isn't that wonderful?) if we're considering PRICE vowels.
All that said, I think most people consider the STRUT vowel to be more closely linked to that of FOOT, whether they have a FOOT-STRUT split or not, as a result of a certain level of phonographic symbolism caused by English spelling remaining practically static since Late Middle English (so both FOOT and STRUT are often written 'u', though, as in the case of foot, book, hood, etc. it can be 'oo').
Once again, if I could use IPA on this damn keyboard I would 😂, or small capital letters for that matter... naming lexical sets MAKES IT SEEM A BIT LIKE I'M SHOUTING. :)
often historically & still in some dialects most "long I" sounds were ʌj, distinguished from the aj or ɑj in aye or kayak
Great video as always. I first came across this while I was browsing the conlanger's bible, Omniglot. I also hapened across another reform that was put forth by the Mormons in Deseret. Perhaps you could check that out sometime?
Are you referring to the original Deseret Alphabet or a reform that uses it? I'd love to review some a priori alphabets!
@@CasualConlanger Either. The OG and the revised one which added the schwa character. I've noticed that's a theme where English spelling reformers will exclude a schwa character which I think is a bad move.
Oh and there's also stuff like shavian and quikscript. While cool, completetly reinventing the alphabet is never going to work as a spelling reform. as jan Misali said, it's basically cheating. I actually have my own spelling reform in the works and my goal is to make one that balanced recognizability with consistency (with regard to spelling).
I just found out about this yesterday through Wikipedia, and now I see there's a video on it released the same day? Incredible.
If it hasn't already been suggested, could you do a video on Anglish (the language reform of Modern English which returns it to its Old English roots and filters-out the Greco-Latin influence that came with the arrival of Christianity and the Bible to the English isles)?
Yes, I have it on my list but it didn't have a spot yet... until now!
the only thing i like here is using ħ as a digraph for th
Yeah t and h are two letters that can actually be combined and not look completely terrible
@@carter6456 Hey the ng one isn’t too bad either
Cool video! I'd be somewhat ok if represents /j/and /ɪ/, but since represents /iː/, it'll result in some pretty unappealing spellings, such as iiist (yeast) and iiild (yield).
But I actually like how the letter for /ʃ/ is being used for postalveolar digraphs instead of the letter for /j/. With /j/, there's greater opportunity to conflate actual digraphs and separate letter representations (/t͡ʃ/ and /tj/, /ʃ/ and /sj/, etc), found in words such as resume /ɹɪˈzjum/ and Asia /ˈeɪ.ʒə/. But it's way less likely to come across /t.ʃ/, /dʃ/, and /zʃ/, despite the decreased internal consistency.
All very good points! I wish I had thought of your examples to counter my idea to improve internal consistency... alas! It really is a very good argument, I'll keep it in mind if I come across a similar case :)
I'd consider -able a free morpheme because able is a word that means essentially the same thing.
Their functions aren't quite the same: one is an affix (inherently a bound morpheme), the other a verb or adjective depending on the example... which are almost always free morphemes.
Great video, I can tell you put a lot of effort into it. Even though your channel is “up and coming”, it deserves a larger audience. 👏
Thank you so much!
@@CasualConlanger your welcome.
Jhope's phonetic alphabet
Diacritics indicate sound change
Long vowels:acute(instead of aa,ii,oo,ee,uu)
Palatalization:acute(instead of sh,zh,ch,ny)
If C with acute is pronounced "ch" then normal C is "ts"
Damn I didn't realize you posted again! And I have 2 videos to watch too! What a gift😊
But a bigger gift is the f****ing EPISODE 38 OF CONLANG CRITIC.
So many similar looking letters!
Very interesting and a great sense of humour !
well, it reminds me of what the Masoretes did with ancient Hebrew writing -- which has (for a non-english or non-russian speaker) really annoying things i.e. how vowels or whole words sound completely different when u stress a different syllable (*) so its obvious that in a phonetic spelling things change, but further than that also indicates pronunciation changes based on rhythm/intonation in a sentence (which is like if the whole sentence would be a word, and shifting the stress/position in it changes the pronunciation of the rest like aforementioned). therefore i guess in the case of "to" written and , it depends on that you emphasize "to those", but in "who wish to acquire" (at least nowadays definitively) you reduce it and actually use a shwa why some people write / instead. maybe the use of by him is to show that, since his never has an "oo"-sound, and even "who" is reduced since he wrote it which not having the context people using his alphabet might think is a "ho/hoe" xD
-> /iz/ is written in pausa, since sorry guys yall native english speakers may say what u want but i hear you devoicing voiced sounds at the end of words all the time (even if yall claim Auslautverhärtung is no thing in english) if there isnt something preventing that i.e. following voiced sounds. inconveniences is followed by a comma, so, in pausa; same for difficulties, but not for etymologies hence ... but why on normal plural -s there is only round s used, i still have to ponder...
but in short: i just think since this is NOT written by benjamin himself but some other, he simply made mistakes, like keeping "be" written which cant be right since it must rhyme with "way" than i.e. "bay"(?) or forgetting to double vowels where they r long e.g. for see instead of
and i find the usage of the uh-vowel letter deeply disturbing, standing for [a] or whatever vowel english employs most close to it e.g. in "i", for the real uh-vowel like in "cut", and for the sir/word/hurt-vowel too?! but how to distinguish word and ward ? ... well i see one example of this vowel anywhere so maybe it has its own sign instead of using the one he also employs for [a]
(*) e.g. when u dont know where to place the stress, or when suffixes change the stress e.g. démon -> démonize but demónify, the first two written vowels, "ee" and "ih" in demon become "ee" and the shwa in demonize, and shwa and the vowel in demonify
These are all very true, but I do still think that the / distinction was probably an accident, likewise for and , but it's very interesting that you mention the devoicing of voiced sounds: I wasn't sure if that was a feature in 18th-c. English, since "etymologies" was written with but inconveniences with . In the end I explained the change by saying it was a mistake by the writer... but I should've looked into it more.
Looking at the rest of the reform, I think "ward" would probably be written "woard" (oa as in the ligature), but just as you pointed out, the use of "uh" is too broad.
I've been learning the Deseret Alphabet lately, and it could make for a cool video.
It's already in my super secret list, I think it's Episode Seven or Eight 👍
@@CasualConlanger I'm looking forward to it :D
A spelling reform that is *phonetic* can never be global. It privileges one dialect/accent over all others. Every person who speaks a non-privileged dialect will have to learn an essentially arbitrary system. English spelling, as it is, can act internationally precisely because it is not phonetic anymore. This is something that erstwhile spelling reformers never realize.
It is a bit more complicated then that. Problem with English spelling is not that it isn't phonetic. There are many systems that are either completely un-phonetic, like French and Russian or with certain irregular areas, like Latin American Spanish that on top of silent H merged Y & LL and S & Z, so now spelling is not entirely phonetic for most of us. In fact, European Spaniards are a minority of Spanish speakers. Almost all East-Asian systems have these irregularities. Yet, you won't hear as much complaints about any of these systems. You won't see proposals to re-spell Russian or French.
No. The problem with English spelling is that it is arbitrary. There is no rule you can follow to read or write a word. When I see a Spanish word "llamar", I know to read it "yamar". Just as when I see Russian "корова" I know to read it "karova". How do you read "Athena" in English? Common sense suggests TH should be read like in "moTHer", but it isn't because it is a Greek loan. And there is no rule to follow, because TH in "the" should be the same as in "THink", but again it is not. So now we have a digraph that is read completely arbitrary and your guess is as good as mine on how to read it. How do you read "celtic"? Again, common sense suggests it is "seltik", but it isn't, just as "ocean" isn't read "osean". There is also H that is silent in French loans, but is pronounced in Germanic wordstock. And we didn't even touched my favourite digraph CH that represents 4 different sounds depending on etymology or GH that is either F or silent at the end of the word you are free to guess which one is it.
There is also a problem of compound words. How do you read "lighthouse"?
Would it be imposing my privileged dialect on unwashed plebs if we wrote "modher" instead of "mother" (there is no dialect of English for which marking both sounds with a "th" makes any sense at all)? If C was repurposed for something else entirely and we wrote "keltik" and "Kyprus"? Or would it hurt anyone to put a damn hyphen in "lighthouse"? I doubt that. Yet nobody seems to agree that common sense should prevail
I would reintroduce the ð and þ to represent the th sounds. These letters are still used in Icelandic to distinguish the soft and hard th.
@@user-mrfrog Yes, it is a good idea. It would have made texts shorter for one. But for some reason people are adamantly against those letters. People are generally against common sense when it comes to English spelling. People still think that you would need to cast all these new letter for a printing press. Not just download an update to your iPhone
This is a great point and why I believe scripts like Shavian are better at this, a focus on phonemic rather than phonetic.
@@KC-vq2ot I would however write Cyprus as Syprus if the c was getting changed
w is mostly related to gb, which is a labialized velar consonat, it is never mainly labial and it never was.
the diphthongs arent as bad as you say
having aɪ and aʊ spelt with different things for the a is fine, especially because in some dialects (including mine) its əɪ and aʊ. tho the ə character in oɪ is weird
and the vowels just merge short long pairs, and merging the strut vowel with ə happens in some dialectly.
happens in some dialectally -> diacentrism -> not ideal for a global spelling reform
@@CasualConlanger your proposal of aɪ also only happens in some dialects.
aɪ would be worse for me, and əɪ would be worse for you.
either way someone gets the bad option.
you could work out which of əɪ and aɪ is used by more speakers, but even doing that you advantage some dialects over others.
EDIT:
just taking a glance at wikipedia, there seems to a lot of dialects that use ʌɪ or əɪ or ɐɪ, all of which fall under jeffersons weird letter.
I'm looking at it from the (standardised) phonemic level, which itself may be a bit biased toward "standard" accents like RP(/SSB) and GenAm, but is currently the best system available. I agree though, figuring out a mode vowel phonology (mentioned in Episode One) would be the best way forward.
@@d.l.7416 no matter how it's written, it makes diacentrism... only when it's written to represent the diphthong! if you don't write it like that (maybe ī or something) then it is no longer diacentric and it works.
I feel like Franklin missed the most fundamental point of English orthography. The whole reason that Eth, Thorn, Wynn and others were dropped and replaced by digraphs in the first place was because they appeared too similar to other letters (think of "Ye Olde"). The very existence of the letter h invalidates most of his new letters
The "ye" came from the fact that printing presses were invented by a German, and consequently didn't include thorn, with y being the closest approximation using the given letters.
@@tonydai782 damn right fellow Traveller! Same thing with the z in Menzies (Scottish surname)
@@tonydai782 William Caxton's printing press was a Flemish one - they didn't have the letter thorn, either (making extra letter casts would have been expensive - and where would they have put them in the letter cases, anyway?).
Wynn was replaced by after 1200, as it was easily confused with thorn, eth fell out of use around the same time, and thorn itself had its ascender reduced by 1400, being easily mistaken for a .
The letter yogh (originally the Anglo-Saxon/insular ) became basically identical to the cursive version of (hence McKenzies) and was dropped after 1450 or 1500.
I think I can help with some of the oddities in Franklin's system that you bring up. Hopefully, this helps:
@ 5:38
How? It isn't.
Sheridan (1753) suggests /ɐi/ or /ɒi/ (he says it's the price vowel (we'll get to it) but with a more open mouth and sharper glide). Johnson (unhelpfully) says it's pretty similar to how the individual letters sound (so a diphthong, but we don't know what sort of o he's on about).
but it looks like Franklin is describing something like a triphthong. Judging from how he wrote it, perhaps /ɒɪi/, or similar? Personally, I think it was possibly a clumsy attempt to just write /ɒi/, or something similar.
@ 5:45
Here mid-18th century dictionaries help a lot (many come with pronunciation guides):
Mid-18th Century "standard" (read: middle and Upper-class Southeast England) pronunciation of the upper one was basically either /ʌi/ or /əi/--the latter was the conservative pronunciation.
The House phoneme was--based on what Sheridan states in 1753-- this: /ɒʊ/ (older speakers perhaps still had /ɔʊ/). The former lines up perfectly with what Franklin is writing here.
Actually, the table should overall, look like this:
a, ɑ, ɛ
ɪ, ʌi (or əi) , ɒi, e:
ʊ, u, ɒʊ, o:
The cut vowel was /ʌ/. Johnson also supplies ə or ɨ for cases like the e in "chicken"; Franklin likely didn't distinguish between them and the cut vowel in his proposal, hence some of the spelling used.
As to the choice of IPA letters: the "all" vowel was described as being similar to the Dutch a, which was not the same as the a in "hat", which was described as being like the Italian a. Italian--mercifully--changed relatively slowly, so the a then was as it is now. Dutch has both a's, so that suggests Johnson (who goes into the specifics), is describing a back vowel. Comparison with older and newer descriptions of English then provides evidence that this was a rounded back vowel--at least for the long version; the short version might have been unrounded (or it might not have; we don't know if vowel length was the only true contrast). I know that the earliest RP recordings have unrounded pronunciations if Simon Roper is any clue.
The resulting accent is...well, it's not like any modern dialect of English. It sounds modern--like something you could imagine being used on the streets today--but you wouldn't know exactly where he's from. However, a lot of people say it sounds Irish or Scottish (the latter due to the pronunciation of r: every description before 1750 favors the alveolar trill as the standard, with two allophones.)
Look up A.Z.Foreman's reading of the Declaration of Independence: that's the closest I can find to what Franklin's getting at.
Oh, I forgot, coming back here:
The sound of the a in "name" in the standard language was a pure vowel at the time, not a diphthong as it is now in RP or general American. Same goes for the sound of the o in "stone". These vowels don't break until c. 1800 or after.
I wonder if you'll review Mashpoe and several others' "fixed" alphabets...
They are all coming...
Dang. I was prepared to make an English vowel diagram with this, but Ben didn’t deliver in that regard.
I did it anyway. I’ve reinvented a proposal for phonemic vowel spelling based on the Franklin alphabet. I’ve replaced the double-alpha with the Volapük A-umlaut (ꞛ) and added the Volapük U-umlaut (ꞟ) to distinguish /ə/ and /ʌ/ (append vs. upend).
/æ/ - a: cat→kat
/ær/ - ar: carry→kari
/ɑː/ - aa: father→faaħɥr
/ɑːr/ - aar: part→paart
/aɪ/ - ai: mind/mined→maind
/aʊ/ - au: mound→maund
/ɒ/ - ꞛ: cot→kꞛt
/ɒr/ - ꞛr: porridge→pꞛridի
/ɔː/ - ꞛꞛ: caught→kꞛꞛt
/ɔːr~or/ - ꞛꞛr: before→bifꞛꞛr
/ɛ/ - e: bread/bred→bred
/eɪ/ - ee: pain→peen
/ɛr/ - er: terrible→teribɥl
/eər/ - eer: tearable→teerɥbɥl
/ɪ~i/ - i: bin/been→bin
/iː/ - ii: bean→biin
/ɪr/ - ir: mirror→mirɥr
/iər/ - iir: clearer→kliirɥr
/oʊ/ - o: hope→hop
/ɔɪ/ - oi: boy→boi
/ʊ/ - u: could→kud
/uː/ - uu: cool→kuul
/ʊər/ - ur: poor→pur
/ʌ/ - ꞟ: upend→ꞟpend
/ʌr/ - ꞟr: hurry→hꞟri
/ə/ - ɥ: append→ɥpend
/ər/ - ɥr: forward→fꞛꞛrwɥrd
/ɜːr/ - ɥɥr: foreword→fꞛꞛrwɥɥrd
Feel free to modify.
Oh yeah I remember how many things Benjamin Franklin dod
I feel like ole Benjy gave up too easily. he got one pushback and said aight I'm out
I think it was a very good first attempt. It could've used some changes but it works pretty well, no worse than some systems today. It's pretty fun to read these in their old pronunciation
I was surprised at how bad BF's proposal was.
I have my own which creates a one-to-one correlation between phonemes and graphemes and keeps things simple. I call it 7M Phonemic English. It gets rid of all digraphs, maintains compatibility with cursive writing and uses simple, easy-to-write letters. It only adds 8 more characters to the existing 26 because some characters are reassigned to different speech sounds. I keep as many existing glyph-sound associations as possible. Diphthongs are spelled out (eg 'late' becomes 'leεt'). Notice that the word is not made longer by doing this.
7M Phonemic Alphabet:
[uppercase]:
H, U, Ŋ, G, I, N, V, ᐱ, ⴳ
D, W, E, Ћ, Z, R, P, T
K, L, Q, F, S, M, A, X
Y, O, J, ᖶ,Ђ, B, Ů, C
and Ɂ (glottal stop)
[lower case]:
h, u, ŋ, g, i, n, v, ʌ, ⴳ
d, w, ε, ћ, z, r, p, t
k, l, q, f, s, m, a, x
y, o, j, e, ѣ, b, ů, c
and ɂ (glottal stop)
7M to IPA to Current English Table:
7M | IPA | Current English
h | h | hat, [h]at
u | ə | mud, m[u]d
ŋ | ŋ | sing, si[ng]
g | g | get, [g]et
i | ɪ | sit, s[i]t
n | n | nap, [n]ap
v | v | very, [v]ery
ʌ | ɑ | not, n[o]t
ⴳ | ʒ | measure, mea[s]ure
--------------------------------------------------------
d | d | dot, [d]ot
w | w | wet, [w]et
ε | i | feet, f[ee]t
ћ | ð | smooth, smoo[th]
z | z | zip, [z]ip
r | ɹ | dirt, d[ir]t
p | p | pet, [p]et
t | t | tub, [t]ub
--------------------------------------------------------
k | k | kite, [k]ite
l | l | little, [l]itt[le]*
q | u | loop, l[oo]p
f | f | fig, [f]ig
s | s | sit, [s]it
m | m | man, [m]an
a | æ | cat, c[a]t
x | ʃ | dish, di[sh]
--------------------------------------------------------
y | j | yellow, [y]ellow
o | o̞ | note, n[o]te
j | d͡ʒ | judge, [j]u[dg]e
e | e | get, g[e]t
ѣ | θ | tooth, too[th]
b | b | bed, [b]ed
ů | ʊ | put, p[u]t
c | t͡ʃ | chat, [ch]at
and ɂ (glottal stop)
crc = church
*The letter /L/ represents both a consonant form & a vowel form.
Ten pure vowels [no diphthongs]:
7M(U I Λ E R Q A O ᖶ Ů
u i ʌ ε r q a o e ů)
IPA(ə ɪ ɑ i [ɹ] u æ o̞ e ʊ)
2 additional vowels with no glyphs
Dark L /ɫ/ and raised /æ/
This IPA nuttiness will clearly not work for everyday handwriting:
ʊ, d͡ʒ, t͡ʃ, o̞, æ, ð, ʒ, ə, ɪ, ɚ
I must provide a demonstration. It may appear very exotic but every word is spelled according to sound and once you learn the sound associated with each letter, it's actually quite easy. Currently, we do not spell words the way that they sound, so it's our current orthography that is bizarre and inscrutable.
Dεr Sr, Ʌε hav cranskrʌεbd yor alfubet, etc., wic Ʌε ѣiŋk muεt bε uv srvis tu ћoz, hq wix tq ukwʌεr an akyrrit prununsεeεxun, if ћat kůd bε fikst; but Ʌε sε menε inkunvεnyunsis, az wel az difukltεz, ћat wůd utend ћu briŋiŋ yor letrz and orѣʌgrufε intu kʌmun yqz. Ʌl aqr etimʌlujεz wůd bε lʌst, kʌnsikwentlε wε kůd nʌt asrteεn ћu mεniŋ uv menε wrdz; ћu distiŋkxun, tq, bitwεn wrdz uv difrunt mεniŋ and simyulr saqnd wůd bε yqslus, unles wε liviŋ ruεtrz publix nq edixunz. In xort Ʌε bilεv wε must let pεpl spel ʌn in ћer old weε and (az wε fʌεnd it εzεist) dq ћu seεm aqrselvz."
It's important to realize that the obstacle of rewriting printed works is now overcome by technology that didn't exist in Ben Franklin's day.
Also, it is not the purpose of written language to either function as it's own history book or it's own dictionary. The purpose of written language is to make spoken language span a greater length of time and provide it with portability to a far greater audience. The written word should not be saddled, encumbered or crippled with extraneous history or dictionary duties. To focus on those things is to allow your mind to become addled with senseless priorities.
7:01 yeah and exactly that argument is why "this system wouldnt be centralized if its based on his dialect" makes no sense to say: just compare in UK english vs US english, they are completely different vowels, in the UK its an unique vowel while in the US its the same vowel as in . so people WOULD have to relearn orthography multiple times any way, or someone from america never could write a letter to someone in britain, or vice versa :D
not to mention the difference IN america by state or the UK by country, soomuoon in scootland dys nât heev diphthongs !
The unneeded letters ARE: C, Q, W,X,Y & Z.
(inhales)
C is needed for CH, pairs like "specific" and "specificity", pairs like "advise" and "advice" (or just the voicelessnees of C in general), and besides C looks way better than K does.
W is easier to read than U. "uit" (wit) looks likes "fruit" or "conduit", "uy" (why) looks like "buy" or "guy"
X replaced with CS or KS would make words look plural
how on earth do you replace the Z at the beginning of zone, zero, zeal, etc?
Q is fine, although we could be without it
oh also "exit" can be pronounced "egg-zit" but it's harder to see that pronunciation in "eksit"
Have you ever looked at Shavian, or its improvement, Quikscript?
A cursory glance at both, yes. Shavian is already on my *super secret* list of reviews (Episode Eight, I think), and Quikscript won't come too long after :)
How did you make this video? Those transitions are beautiful
oh hey, someone else whose entire thing is liking conlangs, and is also kinda a jan Misali clone (i might make those sort of videos)
Good God he's doing the apandah reform next.
I mean to be fair it has _some_ good ideas..........
i already love this
I totally disagree, this spelling reform, with some of its own small reforms - modifications - would do wonders for the English language, at least would be the case if such was only applied for the states, for which I cannot say for the rest of the English speaking world, however a proximal similarity to this is the situation with Norwegian, where there are two official spelling systems used.
Right? It's a great first draft. B Frank gave up too quickly. To be fair the revolution was on the horizon when he came up with it so he got preoccupied but it should've been revisited.
I've shown this writing to some ESL students and they managed to read it much easier even with the new symbols
according to the omniglot page, /oj/ is just a digraph, not a trigraph
Let's goooooo another video
Nice 👍🏼
I think long s should be used for sh c should be used for ch þ should be used for th in think and đ for th in the
You mean ð.
1200 years of precedent.
Take a look at the Deseret alphabet. Wild stuff
On the list for Episode 7!
Might I request reviewing jan Misali's spelling reform?
It's on the list!
I expected better from ben franklin ngl
also that "ɑ" character looks really annoying to write, it almost feels more like a sinhala letter than latin
Exactly!
Gotta write an ɑ like you’re writing m above and ɯ below
I got rid of the top bump and made it ɷ with an extra stroke on the left. I also made up uppercases: ⍋ЧИⲜҺႬ
👍 again CC!
La vidéo est cool mais s’il te plaît, arrête de mettre des transitions bleues, ça fait mal aux yeux
Once you do get used to it, Latin spelling with v's and i's is actually super intuitive imo. So I don't really see it becoming a problem if it were in a reform. In fact I kinda like it - then again it does specifically appeal to me as someone who has studied Latin.
It looks like Dutch.
wait, apandah had his own spelling reform?
It would appear so... Episode 5 will likely be a bit cursed X)
eszett is long S + z, which I learnt from saying the same wrong thing on the internet lol
Sure, but the grapheme comes from long S + small S if I'm not mistaken (that seems to be what most sources say)
The Fraktur grapheme comes from ſ + ʒ (long S + Z), and looked like ſʒ (but connected like ɮ). The Roman grapheme (ß) comes from ſ + s, as explained.
This makes a lot more sense now :)
@@CasualConlanger I’m glad to help. I’ve looked up the history of ß before when I wanted to design a capital ẞ for my font.
Sorry I missed this one
It's dedicated to you and everything smh
@@CasualConlanger Nice, got a good laugh from this response, but seriously I had some summer school work
No worries, RUclips can always wait :)
how would the Ish-letter ђ for "y" be more sonsistent?? some people say as "isyu" others as "ishu", benjamin would clearly be an isyu-guy cause thats the original pronunciation, so writing would be right for his time, but all would pronounce it that way and there wouldnt be a "sh"-symbol :D
furthermore, the Ish-letter is a ligature of the way u write normal long s, just with the right "leg" of an h added, since its together .. no one would think of a "y" sound back then or even now, that is ^^
yep, I regret saying that now, another comment also made this very good point of the distinction between /sj/ & /S/ (as well as /tj/ & /tS/, /dj/ & /dZ/, /zj/ & /Z/, etc.) being useful: if yod were ish, the distinction couldn't be upheld. Note: For dialects with extensive yod-coalescence, such as mine, (/S/) and (/sj/) would just be pronounced the same in many words, which is totally fine since a lot of yod-coalescence isn't universal.
i do "ishyu"
cool :)
If you are an English reformer getting confused or stacking again and again in the same situation, then why not look into other languages that are scientific and have been tested over thousands of years? Yes, my boy, I am suggesting Sanskirt alpha bat, in which you can find or make all the sounds in the universe, e.g. for sh, shaa, si, se ...we have this many letters.
श श्क श्ख श्ग श्घ श्ङ श्च श्छ श्ज श्झ श्ञ श्ट श्ठ श्ड श्ढ श्ण श्त श्थ श्द श्ध श्न श्प श्फ श्ब श्भ श्म श्य श्र श्ल श्व श्श श्ष श्स श्ह श्ळ
ष ष्क ष्ख ष्ग ष्घ ष्ङ ष्च ष्छ ष्ज ष्झ ष्ञ ष्ट ष्ठ ष्ड ष्ढ ष्ण ष्त ष्थ ष्द ष्ध ष्न ष्प ष्फ ष्ब ष्भ ष्म ष्य ष्र ष्ल ष्व ष्श ष्ष ष्स ष्ह ष्ळ
स स्क स्ख स्ग स्घ स्ङ स्च स्छ स्ज स्झ स्ञ स्ट स्ठ स्ड स्ढ स्ण स्त स्थ स्द स्ध स्न स्प स्फ स्ब स्भ स्म स्य स्र स्ल स्व स्श स्ष स्स स्ह स्ळ
It kind of looks like Albanian if you look fast.
Also like Chinese if you look *really* fast 😂
ben
1:13 you spelled [ɔː] but pronounced [o̞ːo̟]...
/ɔː/ (as shown on the left by /ᴘʜᴏɴᴇᴍᴇ/). My bad for the pronunciation, but it's fine since [ɔː] and [o̞ːo̟] aren't contrastive and the latter is my idiolectal emphatic pronunciation of what's typically transcribed as /ɔː/, and /oː/ when transcribing RP or SSB [o̞ː].
@@CasualConlanger I'm sorry, it's just that I often feel like historical IPA transcriptions are becoming like a new established orthography which is hard to break away from
I agree 👍
Ben Franklin: y is dumb and pointless, let's get rid of it. Also /ʌ/ needs a letter, so I'm gonna create a letter that looks almost identical to y for it
Me: -_-
Also since I can't find another comment addressing this, does it bug anyone else that he created new letters for /ð/ and /θ/ but didn't brinɡ back Ð or Þ?
ɥ is still a better looking letter than y.
No, I don't like the letters he created for them but at the same time I can't stand Ð and Þ as well.
@@illogical1421 I mean y didn't have to look exactly the way it does now. Insular Y looks exactly the same as the letter we're using to stand in for the letter I'm making fun of for instance.
As for Ð and Þ, what's wrong with them?
@@MalachiCo0 Thorn is great but Eth is garbage, D is just not a letter you can add stuff to.
@@tfan2222 Agreed, though ð would have been useful for Franklin's purposes of one letter for one sound. But then there is a reason why /θ/ and /ð/ have always been written using the same method.
Super interesting !
I remember first finding out that English doesn't do spelling reforms because of people saying it is too complicated to do so. The Dutch language has them all the time! This makes for quite easy spelling rules. I think Dutch writing is a great blend of the spelling reflecting the pronunciation, without harming consistency and morphology. Of course, with every spelling reforms there are small controversies, but that is in its nature.
I read this Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Dutch_orthography#The_spelling_reform_of_2006_(The_Netherlands_and_Flanders) and it's very interesting.
Thank you for reminding me!
Fascinating Wikipedia page! It's really interesting to see such a similar language in so many ways take such a different approach!
the vowels honestly baffle me
if i understand it correctly, why did he just not use oo and o for ɔː and ɒ
why did he need a new letter for that
if anything that shouldve been reserved for the FATHER vowel and/or the central mid vowels while “a” would be for the TRAP vowel
and idk if it was an older english thing but like, couldnt he have made long-short pairs for the two close vowels? why is it only “i” that has a single+double; why is there not also literal double u
They gave me a good baffling too 😂
I created my own spelling system that matches the way the English language is pronounced, here is an example:
*ORIGINAL*
_Since then advocacy of the abolition of a monarchy or respectively of republics has been called republicanism, while the advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. As such republics have become the opposing and alternative form of government to monarchy, despite some having seen infringements through lifelong or even hereditary heads of state, such as in North Korea._
*MY PROPOSAL*
_Sins dhen ạdvukusee uv dhu ạbulishun uv ei manarkee or rispektivlee uv reepubliks hạz bin kold ripublikunizum, wail dhu ạdvukusee uv manarkeez iz kold manarkizum. Ạz such reepubliks hạv bikum dhu upoụzing eund oltṛnutiv form uv guvṛnmunt too manarkee, dispait sum hạving seen infrinjmunts throo laiflong or eevin hṛeduteree hedz uv steit, such ạz in North Koreeu._
I also created one for Spanish:
*ORIGINAL*
_Desde entonces, la defensa de la abolición de una monarquía o, respectivamente, de repúblicas se ha llamado republicanismo, mientras que la defensa de las monarquías se llama monarquismo. Como tales, las repúblicas se han convertido en la forma de gobierno opuesta y alternativa a la monarquía, a pesar de que algunas han visto infracciones a través de jefes de Estado de por vida o incluso hereditarios, como en Corea del Norte._
*MY PROPOSAL*
_Désde entónses, la defénsa de la abolisyón de úna monarrkía o, rrespektíbaménte, de rrepúblikas se a llamádo rrepublikanísmo, myéntras ke la defénsa de las monarrkías se lláma monarrkísmo. Kómo táles, las rrepúblikas se an komberrtído en la fórrma de gobyérrno opwésta i alterrnatíba a la monarrkía, a pesárr de ke algúnas an bísto infraksyónes a trabés de jéfes de Estádo de porr bída o inklúso ereditáryos, kómo en Koréa del Nórrte._
too many u's that don't make the u sound
@@notwithouttext The UH sound, is the most common sound in English, can you point me to a word where the U doesn't really make that sound?
@@EngelProgrammings
haiku, adieu, emu, gnu, flu all have the LONG "u" sound. "Koreeu" looks like it has a long "u" sound. schwa is most commonly a, e, or o. as in affect, allow, drama, Korea, era, enough, quicken, happen, attention, mission.
@@notwithouttext I think I didn't understand you before. Yes, in normal English spelling, the letter U can represent another sound that is not the schwa (such as the "long U sound").
My system consists of assigning a grapheme or a digraph to each phoneme, and each correspondence does not change due to context. Although A, E or O are more common for the schwa, these letters are already taken to represent other sounds (the vowel sounds in Car, Care, Core, respectively), the "long U sound" that you mention is already represented with OO, so U cannot represent the "long U sound" if OO already represents it; so the U becomes available to represent another sound, such as the schwa, which in fact in normal English spelling is often used for that, as in: Gun, Fun, Cut, But, Uh, etc. even when people misspell or respell some words like What, Love, 'Cause (Wut, Luv, Cuz).
So the U in "Koreeu" cannot sound like the "long U", because the grapheme-phoneme correspondence does not change due to the context, it is regular. Some words look better than others, I guess "Koreeu" is one of those that look ugly.
@@EngelProgrammings yeah i'm just commenting that maybe you should add a rule to make "a" at the end sound like "uh", for better familiarity. there aren't many words that end in the "palm" vowel anyway except words like "ma" and "pa" and "schwa" where it can't be schwa anyway and only a few other words.
Ooh, I made a reform+conlang hybrid, I call swæpglĭš.
Åj låjk thŭ dŭ ðĭs făny þĭng wer åj speăł Ĭnglĭš wĭð ĕ nyŭ rŏŭmĕnåjzEjšĕn, óăł ðĕ wåjl prĕnaănsĭng ðĕ modĕn Ĭnglĭsh óărþOgrĕfĭ wĭð ruăłs klŏwzĕ thŏ lathĭn, óăr oðĕ modĕn IŭrŏpIĕn lAngwĕdžiz móăr khõnsŎvatĭv ðan Ĭnglĭš, płăs ĕ bĭt ŏv ååbĭtrÉrĕnes.
[iː liːkə to do tʰis funːɲʲ ˈtʰiŋɡə̥ wᵊʰˈhɛrə iː spɛlː ˈeːŋɡlishə̥ ˈwithə̥ a neːwᵊ romanisaˈtiʕoŋˌ alː tʰe wᵊʰˈhiːlə proˈnɔːʕuŋʈʂiŋɡə̥ tʰe ˈmɔder̩ŋ ˈeːŋɡlishə̥ ɔrtʰɔˈːɡrapʰʲ wit̩ʰ ˈrulɛs ˈʈʂloser to ˈlatiŋ ɔr ˈoːtʰer ˈmɔder̩ŋ eʕuropeˈʕaŋ laŋɡuˈʕaɟɛs ˈmoːrə ʈʂoŋˈsɛrvatiːvə tʰaŋ ˈeːŋɡlishə̥ˌ pluːs a bit of arbitrariˈnesː]
very cool!