What single addition would be most useful to the English writing system?
What single addition would be most useful to the English writing system?
Every once in a while I sometimes think about remaking the English writing system, as is normal I'm sure😅, and I wonder what would be the most useful revision of punctuation or phonetic.
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Spell things the way they are pronounced. Add extra letters if you have to.
I'm always curious on people's ideas on how to reduce the number of letters that are needed for spelling in english (48~ phonemes which is massive for an alphabet). Personally I find that it makes sense to spell zh (like the g in beige or the s in pleasure) with Ž as it's so uncommon it's not really worth the extra letter.
Two letter phonemes are always possible.
For example, Lithuanian has 32 letters in its alphabet, and has no x, q, or w, but has ą, ę, į, ų, ū, č, š and your aforementioned ž.
It also has two phonemes that require two letters:
ch to differentiate it from h, to separate hide (h sound) from whores (ch sound)
dž to pronounce Jack and John as Džekas and Džonas, because j is pronounced as the y in yarp.
it also as ie, au, ei and similar two vowel combos that slowly go from one sound to another.
True that's also useful, Two letters has worked fine for a lot of stuff in English (th, sh, ch) I guess zh isn't a stretch at all for us. I'm kinda worried about vowels though since we have so many, maybe an addition like Cyrillic's ь makes sense so non is non but known is noьn or something
You could either combine vowels to make new sounds or use something with diacritics like å, ä, ė or whatever is used the most.