Shuulinjii-in: A Practical, Phonetic Means of English Spelling

I've created my own orthography for the English language. Many people have done this before, and it wasn't adopted, not even when Shaw gave it a go, nor will this be. Nonetheless, my orthography is eminently practical and sensible.

As anyone who's learned a foreign language knows, it takes a while to learn an alien way of representing sounds, no matter how simple the rules underlying it. Which means, this will sound more complicated than it is.

Attractive features of my spelling system include: (1) it uses less letters than the current English alphabet; (2) it uses no new letters; (3) it's entirely phonetic; (4) each letter, digraph, or trigraph represents a single sound; (5) the sounds of the letters are largely derived from traditional English spelling; (6) it has a sensible arrangement of voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Let us begin with the consonants. The consonants come in the following groups (1) the stops; (2) the fricatives; (3) combinations; and (4) the liquids. We start with the stops as they are generally regarded as the "strongest" consonants.

A stop is any consonant that completely stops the flow of air in the mouth. We'll present them based on where they are formed in the mouth (the so-called "point of articulation"), starting at the back of the mouth and moving forward.

Velar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the back of the mouth.

Without a pitch, the sound is of the "c" in "car." This is represented by "k." (A pitched sound is one when the vocal cords vibrate. Hold a finger over your throat. Make a "k" sound. Now make a "g" sound. Hear the difference?)

With a pitch, the sound is of the "g" in "gun." This is represented by "g."

Finally, with the nasal passages opened, the sound is of the "ng" in "hang." We represent this with "ng."

So this gives us the series: k, g, ng. All are articulated at the same point in the mouth, with the first non-voiced, the second voiced, and the last nasalized.

Now at a different part of the mouth.

Alveolar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth, and occur in the same order.

Unvoiced: "t" as in "ton." Represented by "t."

Voiced: "d" as in "dam." Represented by "d."

Nasal: "n" as in "note." Represented by "n."

Finally.

Labial stops.

These are formed with the lips.

Unvoiced: "p" as in "pit." Represented by "p."

Voiced: "b" as in "beat." Represented by "b."

Nasal: "m" as in "moose." Represented by "m."

This completes the collection of stops. It forms this pleasantly ordered square.

k g ng
t d n
p b m

The first column is unvoiced, the second column is voiced, the third column is nasalized.

The first row is velar, the second is palatal, the third is labial.

The next group is the fricatives. Again, we group this by point of articulation, starting farthest back in the mouth.

Glottal fricative.

There is only one fricative at this location, the "h" as in "hot." It is formed in the throat, and is unvoiced, and is represented by "h."

In some languages this fricative also occurs voiced, Sanskrit, for example, but in English we only have the unvoiced version. Moving forward towards the lips, we arrive at the palatal.

Palato-alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "sh" sound in "shin." This is represented by "sh."

Voiced: The "sh" sound in "measure." This is represented by "zh." Note that as "z" is typically the voiced variant of "s," so "zh" is the voiced variant of "sh."

Alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "s" sound in "sin." This is represented by "s."

Voiced: The "z" sound in "zoo." This is represented by "z."

There's a slight difference in the position of the tongue here (it reaches back for "z") but the location is pretty close.

Dental fricatives.

Unvoiced: "th" as in "thin." This is represented by "th."

Voiced: "th" as in "the." This is represented by "dh." These two sounds, typically spelled the same in English, have to be distinguished. As "d" is the voiced variant of "t," it makes sense that "dh" would be the voiced variant of "th."

Finally, as we move forward, we reach the lips.

Labial fricatives.

Unvoiced: "f" as in "fun." This is represented by "fun."

Voiced: "v" as in "vine." This is represented by "vine."

This completes the fricatives.

h
sh zh
s z
th dh
f v

Combinations.

There are two sounds in English that are combinations of a fricative and a stop. They occur in a voiced unvoiced pair and are articulated at the alveolar ridge. One option would be to simply write these consonants as a combination of the fricative and the stop that make them up, but since (1) it's closer to current English usage and (2) it's easier to type one letter than two or three, I've represented them as single letters.

Unvoiced: "ch" as in "cheer." This is represented by "c." This is a combination of the stop "t" and the fricative "sh," and thus could be written "tsh." But I've chosen "c."

Voiced: "j" as in "judge." This is represented by "j." This is a combination of the stop "d" and the fricative "zh" and thus could be written as "dzh." But I've chosen "j."

This gives us the following combinations.

c j

Liquids.

The final group of consonants is the liquids, which are tougher to order, so here they are in no particular order.

"r" as in "run." This is represented by "r." "r" is a weird consonant, since after a vowel it consists of bending your tongue backward, but in front of a vowel, it's more done with the lips. This "r" represents the front of vowel version.

"l" as in "laugh." This is represented by "l."

That completes the consonants.

Vowels.

We could arrange the vowels by where they are in the mouth, but it's generally easier just to go by the typical English arrangement, which roughly goes from the top to the bottom of the mouth anyway. The vowels are as follows.

"a" represents the vowel in "fun."
"aa" represents the vowel in "watt."
"e" represents the vowel in "fed."
"ee" represents the vowel in "they."
"i" represents the vowel in "bid."
"ii" represents the vowel in "meat."
"o" represents the vowel in "caw."
"oo" represents the vowel in "foe."
"u" represents the vowel in "wood."
"uu" represents the vowel in "food."

Generally speaking the double vowels in the list are farther forward than the single vowels. In the cases of "ee" and "oo" they actually represent diphthongs, but few English speakers have any sense of diphthongs vs. monopthongs, so the distinction isn't terribly important.

Unfortunately this doesn't exhaust the vowels.

The vowel sound in "cat" was represent in Old English by the letter "æ." This isn't easy to reach on a modern keyboard though, so it's easier to just spell it as "ae."

The vowel sound in "fight" is represented by "ai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "a" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "five" is represented by "aai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "boy" is represented by "oi." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "o" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "south" is represented by "au." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "u." I've simply omitted an "a" for simplicity's sake.

To my ear, a vowel plus an "r" produces a sound so different from the vowel and consonant that makes the sound up, that we might as well just count the combination as a new vowel, in much the same way in French we count nasalized vowels as a new vowel.

So, the r-vowels, or "rhotic vowels" are the following.

The vowel sound in "car." This is represented by "ar."

The vowel sound in "wear." This is represented by "er."

The vowel sound in "fear." This is represented by "ir."

The vowel sound in "core." This is represented by "or."

The vowel sound in "fur." This is represented by "ur."

The vowel sound in "bower." This is represent by "aur."

The vowel sound in "foyer." This is represent by "oir."

The vowel sound in "fire." This is represent by "air."

So that completes the consonants and the vowels. This leaves the so-called semi-vowels, which are vowels used like consonants. That means that the vowel is said very quickly while leading to another vowel. Again we'll start from the back of the mouth forward.

The "y" sound in "yarn" is represented by "y."

The "w" sound in "warm" is represented by "w."

That's it, the complete palette of English sounds.

Leftover letters.

"x" wasn't used, but it could be used as a substitute for "ks" for the sake of speed, or alternatively represent foreign glottal sounds, like German "ich" or "nach" or Scottish "loch." "q," since it always occurs as "qu," which we can spell just as easily "kw," is completely superfluous and not to be used.

Hiatus.

It may be necessary at times to distinguish between two separate vowel sounds and diphthongs. In this case, as has historically been done, an umlaut can be used. This is somewhat difficult in modern keyboards, so feel free to substitute an n-dash.

Allophones.

Certain sounds are different in English but the difference is generally ignored by native speakers. The "t" sound in "ton," for example, is aspirated, meaning it is followed by a puff of air. The "t" sound in "stun," on the other hand, has no aspiration. Yet we spell them the same, and unless made of aware the distinction, native speakers are generally unable to distinguish the two. This is to be contrasted with, for example, Sanskrit, where the distinction between the two sounds is perceived by speakers.

As native speakers ignore the distinction, it hardly seems necessary to represent it. However, for foreigners learning to properly pronounce the language, the distinction might be beneficially marked, in which case, an apostrophe could easily be used, as in Ancient Greek.

"Pun" would thus be spelled "p'an." "Spun" would be spelled "span."

There's also the matter of the dark and bright "l" sounds, but that's far too abstruse to be represented as this level.

Stress.

Another distinction that isn't typically marked in English is the stress of a word. Again, this needn't be marked, but for purposes of teaching foreigners, an accent mark on the vowel can easily be used.

Alphabet.

For the purposes of ordering the alphabet, using digraphs as actual letters (e.g., treating "sh" as a letter by itself rather than simply a combination of "s" and "h") simply makes things more difficult. So to order the alphabet, we will simply use single monographs, and organize them by phonological position and quality.

Kk Gg Tt Dd Nn Pp Bb Mm Hh Ss Zz Ff Vv Cc Jj Ll Rr Yy Ww Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu

The order being:


Consonants
Stops (Velar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal]),
Combinations,
Fricatives(Glottal, Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced]),
Liquids,
Semivowels,
Vowels

Summary.

k, as the "c" in "cat."
g, as the "g" in "gun."
ng, as the "ng" in "ring."
t, as the "t" in "ton."
d, as the "d" in "dirt."
n, as the "n" in "not."
p, as the "p" in "pear."
b, as the "b" in "bear."
m, as the "m" in "mile."

c, as the "ch" in "chop."

j, as the "j" in "joke."

h, as the "h" in "hoe."
sh, as the "sh" in "shoe."
zh, as the "sh" in "measure."
s, as the "s" in "soap."
z, as the "z" in "zoo."
th, as the "th" in "thin."
dh, as the "th" in "that."
f, as the "f" in "fun."
v, as the "v" in "vote."
l, as the "l" in "loan."
r, as the "r" in "row."
y, as the "y" in "yell."
w, as the "w" in "woke."
a, as the vowel in "fun."
aa, as the vowel in "watt."
e, as the vowel in "pet."
ee, as the vowel in "they."
i, as the vowel in "pin."
ii, as the vowel in "sheet."
o, as the vowel in "raw."
oo, as the vowel in "show."
u, as the vowel in "book."
uu, as the vowel in "lewd."
ae, as the vowel in "cat."
ai, as the vowel in "fight."
aai, as the vowel in "five."
au, as the vowel in "cow."
oi, as the vowel in "toy."
ar, as the vowel in "car."
er, as the vowel in "care."
ir, as the vowel in "cheer."
or, as the vowel in "sore."
ur, as the vowel in "fur."
aur, as the vowel in "tower."
air, as the vowel in "fire."
oir, as the vowel in "sawyer."

A Robert Frost Poem.

Sam see dha wurld wil end in fair.
Sam see in ais.
Fram wat aaiv teestid av dazair
Aai hoold widh dhooz huu feevur fair.
Bat if it haed tuu perish twais,
Aai thingk aai noo iinaf av heet
Tuu noo dhaet for distrakshan ais
Iz olsoo greet
End wud safais.

Raaburt Frost

Note how easy it is to tell which lines rhyme.

Skaat Shuul

The Elegiac Couplet

The elegiac couplet was one of the most common forms of Latin poetry. It consists of two lines, one hexameter followed by a pentameter. An example is Martial's 1.38, here without macrons:

Quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus;
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus!

Latin poetic forms are adaptations of forms originating in Greece, and thus, like Greek, the Latin forms are based on syllabic length (English poetry, as a contrast, is based on accent strength). To understand this, let's first investigate the basics of Latin meter.

The most common unit (or foot) is the dactyl, which consists of one long syllable (the thesis) followed by two short syllables (the arsis), with long syllables being roughly twice the length of a short syllable.* "Dactyl" is, incidentally, the Greek word for digit --you can figure out the connection between the meanings by looking at the length of the segments of one of your fingers.

The two short syllables may usually be replaced by a single long syllable -- this makes sense, since one long syllable is the same length as two short syllables: the result is called a spondee. This gives us two possibilities (- represents a long syllable, u a short one) for a foot.

Dactyl: - u u

Spondee: - -

We can refer to both of these with the following short hand:

- U

Where U indicates either a long syllable, or two shorts.

When we refer to a hexameter, the prefix tells us how many feet (dactyls or spondees) we find in a given line: six. So the following are some examples of a hexameter line:

- - | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- u u | - - | - - | - u u | - u u | - u u

And so on.

(Note that u u - (called an anapest), though metrically the same length, does not occur.)

Now we can understand the typical elegiac meter. The first line is a hexameter, with the following pattern:

- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - -

So, as you can see, in the first four feet either a spondee or dactyl is possible. The fifth foot is always a dactyl, and the last a spondee: this gives the last two feet the rhythm of "Shave and a haircut."

The latter line is a pentameter with the following pattern:

- U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -

The double line indicates a pause, called the caesura. In the elegiac couplet, it sets up the punchline. As you can see, the first two feet can be either dactyls or spondees. After those two a half-foot occurs, a single long syllable. The caesura is then followed by two dactyls and another half-foot long syllable.

Now, before we apply this to Martial's couplet, we have to know a few rules of determining the length of a syllable.

1. A long vowel (in Latin, some vowels always occurred long, just as in English some vowels are always diphthongs) or a diphthong is always long (it's long by nature).

2. A short vowel, if it's in a syllable that ends in a consonant, is also long (long by position). Generally consonants attach to the following vowel, if possible. If a consonant cluster occurs the first consonant remains with the preceding vowel, the latter with the second. (It's actually a bit more complicated. See note ** at the bottom.)

Here's the couplet again, with the long vowels marked.

Quem recitās meus est, ō Fīdentīne, libellus;
sed male cum recitās, incipit esse tuus!

We can now tell which vowels are long.

Long by nature: the ā in "recitās" is long, as is the ō, and the two ī's in "Fīdentīne."

Long by position: "Quem" has a long vowel, because the syllable ends in a consonant, as does "est". Similarly the first "e" in "Fidentine" is long because the syllable ends in "n", as does the "e" in libellus, because the syllable ends in "l". The "us" in "libellus" must be long because the syllable ends in "s". "Sed" ends in a consonant, so must be long. Likewise with "cum". The first syllable of "incipit" is long, ending in a consonant. The last syllable is not long however, because as we've noted, the consonant goes with the following vowel if possible (even across word boundaries!), so here it attaches to the first syllable of "esse". The first syllable in "esse" is long, as it ends in a consonant (it's impossible to move both consonants of a double consonant to the next syllable: Martialis serpens non erat). The "us" in "tuus" is long: there's no following vowel for the consonant to move to!

So, knowing that, let's break the couplet into its feet with their length marked:

Quem recit | ās meus | est, ō | Fīden | tīne, li | bellus

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

sed male | cum recit | ās, || incipit | esse tu | us!

- u u | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Altogether, this give us:

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- u u | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Compare this to the prescribed pattern of the elegiac couplet:

- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - -

- U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -

It matches perfectly (Greek poets would frequently break the "rules," the Golden Age Latin poets less so, and the later Latin poets seldom if ever).

I mentioned the caesura being the break before the punchline. Here's the same couplet translated into English with the caesura marked to give you an idea what this means:

What you recite, Fidentinus, is mine

But when you recite badly || it begins to be yours!

Let's try another Martial. This is 1.47:

Nūper erat medicus, nunc est vespillo Dialus.

Quod vespillo facit, fēcerat et medicus.

Scanned:

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- - | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Note this meter is identical to the last couplet, save the first foot of the second line was before a dactyl, but here has had a spondee substituted, which we know is acceptable in the meter. Our "Shave and a haircut" ending is: "... illo Diaulus"

And translated (with the flexible Latin word order shuffled a bit to sound more natural), with the caesura marked.

Diaulus was recently a doctor, now he's an undertaker.

What the undertaker does ||

(Wait for it.)

the doctor also did!

One of the benefits of the strict meter is it aids in memorization, which may be one of the reasons for its strict adherence in a time where poetry was written to be recited, not read. These are just couplets, but the Iliad, written in dactylic hexameter, is over 15,000 lines long, and began as an oral tradition, only written down by Homer later on.

In fact, I was surprised a few days ago to find that I had, without intending to, memorized the first Martial couplet just by having spent some time figuring out how it scanned.

* When it comes to dactyls, spondees, anapests, etc., these are all also used in languages that rely on stress rather than length, with the long syllables corresponding to stressed syllables, the short syllables to unstressed ones.

** Nothing's easy. First h's don't count as consonants, so "ch", "th" and "ph" are just one breathy consonant that moves together to the next vowel if possible. "Gn" and "qu" are likewise considered one consonant and move as a group. A stop (b, p, d, t, g, c) plus a liquid (l, r) can move together as well, or they may be broken apart if the poet wants to.

Second, if a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins in a vowel, the first vowel disappears. Thus, "vita est" (3 syllables) is pronounced "vit-ast" (two syllables). That's easy to buy, but somewhat more surprising is that the same rule holds if the first word ends in an "m". So "vitam est" is also pronounced "vit - ast."

Why? Probably because Latin had started to develop a degree of nasalization, whereby the "m" simply nasalized the preceding vowel in certain positions but didn't sound by itself at all. This may be why so many words with "m" endings in Latin ended up with vowel endings in the daughter Romance languages. (After those endings were gone, French and Portuguese underwent a secondary nasalization, using "m" and "n" to nasalize another set of vowels. It may have been something like this: "Bonum" (Classic Latin) --> "Bono~" (Later Classic Latin) --> "Bono" (Proto-Romance) --> "bon" (Old French) --> "bo~ɔ̃" (Modern French). The clear significance is the French will eventually express approval of something by a loud "b" sound.)

Note that the poet could also avoid this elision at his discretion.

The Inebriation Hypothesis

If you're not a linguistics nerd, you'll have to trust me. This is hilarious.

One of the standard activities amongst Indo-Europeanists is the attempted adducement of the causative factors underlying the expansion of Indo-European languages, at the putative expense of surrounding tongues, most of which are no longer attested but which were doubtless related to both Basque and Etruscan and possibly Japanese. The explanation long considered standard was that the Indo-Europeans, or IEs as they are usually familiarly termed, were of a warlike mien and simply exploded out of their homeland via what in military circles is termed “a forceful display of occupational intent” or “spirited attainment of autochthon-nonvoluntary advisorial status”. Most scholars accepted this explanation, and for a long period debate was limited to the locus of the original expansion, with most European scholars except for the Poles claiming the Urheim for their own portion of Europe (the Poles had long recognized that Autochthhon-Involuntary Advisorial types came from any other region than Poland and were afraid that if they claimed the Urheim, the Germans would invade them to get it back). In recent years, Marija Gimbutas’ claim that the original IEs were in fact the Khurgan culture of the steppes has gained wide acclaim, since it positions the Urheim in an area that no-one wants to claim anyway and thus reduces friction at important Indo-Europeanist social events. In addition, the Khurgani were apparently a rather vigorous bunch, whose major artifacts were (a) hand axes and (b) rapidly built tombs, both of which are consistent with the traditional view of the IEs.

There are several problems with this scenario, however, foremost of which is the fact that the warlike expansion hypothesis was originally formulated by 19th century Germans, who also proposed that the spread of glaciers during the ice-age was the result of the military superiority of northern ice floes as compared to decadent Mediterranean lakes, and who invented the term “spirited attainment of autochthon-nonvoluntary advisorial status”, which in German constitutes a single word of such breathtaking length and consonantal density that many opponents of said attainment strangled in the act of attempting to oppose it. In addition, Indo-Europeans had a plethora of words for (a) trees, and (b) pigs, neither of which are found in notable profusion in the steppes and which certainly were not particularly valued by the Khurgani, who liked to gallop uninhibitedly about spiritedly advising those in their path and, according to Gimbutas, beating up feminists.

William C. Spruiell, A Reinterpretation of Some Aspects of the Indo-European Expansion