This is a set of alternate ‘spelling systems’ for the English language, and the basis of my own romanization systems.
A long time ago, I had started working on a personal project. The project’s goal was to recreate the English language from scratch, so I could learn to understand it better, among other reasons. This project…was very very stupid…so I abandoned it soon afterwards.
However, I had created an alternative spelling system during this project. It was intended to be more phonetic and regular. Interestingly, while the personal project was abandoned, I continued to work on the spelling systems. This is what I’m sharing here.
The project was called ‘English-7’ and since this is a completely different thing now, I plan to rename it at some point…but it’s alright for now.
These are the tables for the consonants and vowels in the English language, represented using the IPA. While I think it is accurate, I can’t be sure.
The following sections explain the use of particular letters in more detail.
| Consonants | labial | dental | alveolar | postalv. | palatal | velar | glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | m | n | ng, n /ŋ/ | ||||
| plosive/affricate | p | t | ch /tʃ/ | k | |||
| b | d | j /dʒ/ | g | ||||
| fricative | f | th /θ/ | s | sh /ʃ/ | h | ||
| v | dh /ð/ | z | zh /ʒ/ | ||||
| approximant | w | l | y, ȷ /j/ | (w) | |||
| rhotic | r |
| Vowels | non-back | back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tense | lax | tense | lax | |
| close | í /i:/ | i /ɪ/ | ú /u:/ | u /ʊ/ |
| mid | è /ə/ | |||
| open-mid | é /ɜː/ | e /ɛ/ | ó /ɔː/ | ù /ʌ/ |
| open | a /æ/ | á /ɑː/ | o /ɒ/ | |
Here things get a bit complicated, as I’ve created several different spelling systems. Unfortunately, due to my general incompetence, I don’t know if there are 2 or 3.
The reasons behind creating multiple systems will become more clear.
This is a purely phonemic system.
I’ve forgotten why I originally created it, but it eventually settled into a way to write words out phonetically, without relying on the IPA (which doesn’t look very good).
The other system(s) rely on this one, and I use it as a kind of ‘standard’ romanization for my conlangs (WIP).
I variously made use of a few alternate letters, especially for the digraphs. However, the letters I tried using didn’t look all that great.
I’ve become aware that there’s a bit of a problem in representing the vowels /ʊ/ and /ʌ/. I will attempt to fix this at some point. I believe I have fixed it.
This was initially 2 separate systems that I ended up merging. This was because both ended up having the same result most of the time.
The Regular system is more complex than the P/A, this is mostly for æsthetic reasons.
As far as I can tell, the system is usable but still incomplete. ‘Incomplete’ meaning ‘not ideal.’
Unless a rule here directly contradicts a previously established rule, you should assume that the rules of P/A apply.
This might be the last system. It is even less complete than R. This one is meant to resemble English as closely as possible, while still being somewhat ‘regular.'
The rules are effectively the same as R, but additional rules are added to remove diacritics and stuff for æsthetics.
As it’s incomplete, I don’t believe it can actually be comfortably used.