Simple phonetic alphabet
I wanted to see how few changes would make a phonetic alphabet for American English. I used all 26 uppercase and 10 lowercase. (36 sounds)
The letters C, Q & X duplicate other letters so will be reassigned.
Since vowels are the main problem I used uppercase for long vowels (drop the y sound from the U. Use Q for ow (looks like an O sitting on a thorn).
Use lowercase for short sounds. a as in at, e as in ed, i as in it, o as in ox, u as in up. q is oo as in look, or u as in put. This give us 12 vowels ( The original written English had 12.)
Let C be ch, as suggested by others in the past, and c be sh. X is th as in think and x as th in the.
Also let n be ing.
G is always as in get. J as in jet. Never use ph or other two, or more, letter sounds that duplicate a single letter.
THAT IS iT!
I call it FoNiKSPeL. When you write with it, always start with (fs)
(fs) xiS MA LqK STRaNJ BuT GiV iT A TRI. YU NO MOST uV iT oL ReDE.
As Josh indicates, we already have IPA and X-SAMPA.
In regardes to my FoNiKSPeL alphabet I left out one minor change, W = wh and w is the regular w as in were. I was not aware of SAMPA but i looked it up and they do the same thing with w & W. The main difference is SAMPA uses many more letters and in some cases double letters.
In writing with FoNiKSPeL you are writing with sounds. It is like writing with all uppercase but treating the 10 lowercase as if they were uppercase.
I have used it for learning words in Gilberteeze while spending some time in Kiribati a few years ago.
I have written two computer programs to use with FoNiKSPeL, one shows the letter that is pressed in large type and says the sound it represents, and the other will audibly read FoNiKSPeL text entered or dumped into a text box. I am still working on improving the sound.
I have a website ( I do not sell anything) at
www.fonikspel.com for a better description.
You'll need one extra consonant at least: the central sound in "vision". As for vowels, you have not nearly enough with 12, especially as you're wasting 4 of them on diphthongs. "u" seems to be doing several jobs at once, for instance.
Try representing the example words in the lists here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set
Although several of them will be merged in the dialect you're aiming for, I don't think it's going to be nearly enough.
Also: oRENJ? Are you sure that's how you pronounce it?
Re FoNiKSPeL. My original name for it was Phonetic American Alphabet Simplified (PAAS). FoNiKSPeL came about while searching for a website name.
My intent was "heavy on the Simplified". It is not intended to be able to make a list of exact spellings but rather to spell thing the way they sound to the writer. For example oRENJ fits the dialect where I grew up. oRuNJ might fit others. VicuN is close enough to convey what you are saying, you could also write ViZYuN or ViZcuN.
The letter u is the most used letter by far. Part of my intent was to be able to 'speak' in real time by typing on a keyboard, say a laptop or PDA, by a speech impaired person for example. One of my programs will do that.
This was definitely not a work on the subtle differences of sounds as used in words.
AJC; You suggested the list from Wikipedia. Here it is in FoNiKSPeL
DReS, TRaP, LoT, STRUT, FqT, Bax, KLox, NuRS, FLES, FAS, PoLM, XoT, GOT, GUS, PRIS, CoES, MQx, NiR, SKuweR, SToRT, NoRx, FOoRS, KYUuR, HAPE, LeTuR, KoMu, iNTU
Say them one letter sound at a time as if you were a computer.
OK. I can see that for the example application at least, the occasional doubling up you have would be not a great drawback and the sounds near enough to be recognisable. I'd say you have a need for a schwa sound, though. It is significantly different to a "u" sound, unless your Welsh. As well as this, have you considered a way of marking stress?
AJC; Thank you for your input. I see there is a need for schwa. I will represent it with a lowercase j," VijN". I had considered adding a way of marking stress to avoid the '1950s robot' sound. I think I will use / to show an increase in volume and \ to show a decrease.
Note: the fourth word in the list should have used u. (STRuT) and after checking with Webster, I should have used ORiNJ for orange.
The changes above are being made on my website.
(fs) xu CANJuZ uBuV oR BEn MAD oN MI weBSIT.
interesting, don't rlealy have time to look at it more but wanted to make a note:
there are something you really do not have to get rid of, like th for example. Th is a distinct sound, and there only very few words where that is in the middle of a word and may be confusing but, they are usually compound words anyway.
th is a distinct sound, so that is still phonetic; ph is f sound, so yes, remove ph. Sh is another distinct sound. Not only that, but of those are written out in a way that make sense. TH souds like T mixed with H; sh sounds like S mixed with H.
so I see no reaosns to change it; instead of MQx, keep it as MQth.
I would ask or say more, but liek i siad, i only quickly looked at this, so il'l' do a bit more research myself, first.
Thank you for your response. If you have a chance to read my reply on Sept.27 at 4:13 you will see the reason. I want to be able to "speak" real time from a keyboard using a simple program that does not have to translate, but make sounds as each key is pressed. TH would give you " taha". A person should be able to read it also with out using rules by just learning the 37 sounds.
The early American settlers were close to having a phonetic alphabet. My intent was to see how few changes it would take to make a completely phonetic version.
(fs) xu uRLE uMeRuKuN SeTLuRS wuR KLOS TU HaVn A FoNeTiK aLFuBeT. MI iNTeNT wuZ TU SE HQ FYU CANJuZ iT wqD TAK TU MAK A KoMPLETLE FoNeTiK VuRjN. (See my 1st comment at Sep 26 08 7:31 AM and also Oct 04 08 4:34 PM for guide)