Alternative English Alphabet

[21st Century Stjepan]

Aa - as in "cat"
Áá - in "father"
Bb - as in "bat"
Cc - the c sound in cat
Dd - as in dog
Ðð - the voiced th in "then"
Ee - as in "bell" when stressed. when unstressed it is schwa. when unstressed and at the end of a plural, it is pronounced as the e sound in "roses"
Éé - the vowel sound in "make"
Ff - as in "frog"
Gg - as in "gear"
Hh - as in "hat"
Ii - as in "bit"
Íí - the ee sound in "teeth"
Jj - the y sound in you/young etc, and for palatilized consonants
Ll - as in "long"
Mm - as in "man"
Nn - as in "nurse"
Oo - as in "body"
Óó - the o sound in "ode"
Pp - as in "plant"
Rr - as in "run"
Ss - as in "sell"
Tt - as in "time"
Þþ - the unvoiced th sound in "teeth"
Uu - as in "gut" or "but"
Úú - long, as in the oo in "booed". When followed by a doubled consonant, pronounced short as in the oo in "good"
Vv - as in "vat"
Ww - as in "went"
Yy - the vowel sound (slide) in flight
Zz - as in "hazard"

Well, almost. There are 29 letters there, but as you know there are a lot more sounds in English than just these. Well, there are also a set of digraphs that are treated as single letters

Chch - Pronounced as ch as usually pronounced in English
Cgcg - Old English digraph rehabilitated. Pronounced as English j.
Shsh - Pronounced as sh as usually pronounced in English.
Zhzh - Pronounced as zh as usually pronounced in English

So the complete alphabet with all 34 letters is now:

Aa, Áá, Bb, Cc, Chch, Cgcg, Dd, Ðð, Ee, Éé, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Íí, Jj, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Óó, Pp, Rr, Ss, Shsh, Tt, Þþ, Uu, Úú, Vv, Ww, Yy, Zz, Zhzh

With the old consonant diacritics, words just became too cluttered, so I took the Hungarian route and stuck it out with digraphs. I also introduced Yy inplace of the original ij digraph (borrowed from dutch) because although that looked cool in some places, in others it looked rather awkward.

There are also the same old two digraphs which are not considered separate letters. I just swapped them.

ou - pronounced lau - pronounced like the vowel in "pawn"

In the past, I had used alternately e (as schwa) and é respectively to represent "a" as it seemed nifty. I have since dropped this because it was too conspicuous of a breach of the general rule that e is pronounced that way only when unstressed. So u - stressed schwa - has taken its place.

Also, words ending in é are now rendered with ej.

Forgot to mention, all plurals retain the -s/-es ending. The voicing value of the s is determined by the consonant that precedes it.

Só, it síms tú mí ðat ðis procgect haz ríchd u cenclúzhen at last. Ov córs, som þings stil lúcc u bit aukwerd but ðis, y þinc, reprízents ríl progres.

[21st Century Stjepan]

Manówór - Mountens from Syn ov ðu Hamer (1984)

Só tál, sylent egenst ðu scy
Up þrú ðu clouds, hwér ígels fly
Wind and rén bít doun on wun só straung
Ðej cut but never chéncg, hwot stúdd só long

Tál az u mounten,
Y'm gune tér þrú ðu scy
Lyf's fór ðu técíng
Lyc u man iz u mountensyd
Grétnes wéts fór ðóz hú try
Nun can tích jú, it's ál insyd
Cgust clym

Y'm in ðu ground, y'm in ðu ér, y'm ál
Y liv in ðu hárts ov ál men
Y'm ðu cál tú grétnes
Not ál can hír
Y ewécen ðu críéter, in ðóz hú dér
And ðu dej wil cum, hwen wí ál must dy
And enter ðu mountensyd

Y hav nó fír
Deþ and glórí
Bóþ drau nír
Lyc u man iz u mountensyd
Grétnes wéts fór ðóz hú try
Nun can tích jú, it's ál insyd
Cgust clym

[21st Century Stjepan]

Comparison to Renglish, a similar system that someone else did very similarly (although without my knowledge until I was pretty far into developing my own system)

Samples:

Modern English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

My system:
Ál hjúmen bíings ár bórn s wun enuðer in é spirit ov bruðerhüd.

Renglish:
Al Hjúmun Byyngz ar born fry and ykwul in Dignity and Rætz. Ðei ar endáed wiþ Ryzun and Kanshuns and shúdd akt tuwords wun unùðer in é Spirit uv Brùðerhúdd.

[21st Century Stjepan]

And please note that some further changes may yet be on the horizon!

[Tahmaseb]

Might I suggest the Finnish spelling for the English language? Of course your language contains many sounds Finnish doesn't have, but it's easy to eradicate those by effective brainwashing.

So basically your sample written with Finnish spelling would go like this:

Ool hjuuman biings aar born frii änd iikvual in digniti änd raits. Tei aar endaud vit riisn änd konsöns änd suld äkt tuvoords van önatör in ö spirit of bratörhud.

[21st Century Stjepan]

Ál hjúmen bíjings ár bórn frí and ícwel in dignití and ryts. Ðej ár endoud wiþ rízen and conshens and shúdd act tewórds wun enuðer in é spirit ov bruðerhúdd.

This is an alternative, borring somewhat from my buddy the Renglish dude, although he in turn borrowed it from North Germanic languages.

Üü for the short vowel in "would" now replaced with their Úú followed by double consonants. C returns to being hard, Ch for soft. Cg is preserved as is. (Consider this the "Hungarian principle", since there are lots of vowels, represent the consonants with digraphs instead of diacritics)

Also, stuck a j in to separate two i's as was the case in bíjings

Of course, you shouldn't consider it permanent until I have changed the first post.

[Bill3000]

It's quite odd to have j represent y - makes no sense for english.

[21st Century Stjepan]

It actually makes plenty of sense. J represents the English y in most of the Latin-based Indo-European alphabets and importantly in all of the Germanic languages with the lone exception of English. Part of what I wanted to achieve was to recover the Germanic nature of English in the spelling. Plus, I needed a single letter to represent the very common diphthong [ahymes with eye). Since I wanted to keep the character set as close to standard English as possible, Y became the most logical choice.

[mbasil]

not bad

coming from someone who's tried to develop a few himself

very icelandic-looking, stjephan

[Ryan]

I prefer the Alternative Dictionaries instead.

http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/

[21st Century Stjepan]

Thanks

I used Icelandic as a starting point and then experimented over time with a number of variations. At one point I had lots of additional letters for consonants as well (borrowed mostly from czech) but then the full weight of English's sound inventory started to become apparent. I've tried to make the it as rational as I could while preserving an aesthetic quality in the type itself. Haven't quite gotten there yet though.

I'm investigating the possibility of a new rule where an s at the end of a word (and preceded by a vowel) is pronounced voiced as in z, with doubling them to devoice.

For example, words currently like iz, az, haz would return to is, as, has

While words like kiss, miss would preserve their spelling and words like solace would be spelled soliss.

[Braden Indianensis]

[Sighs]

Perhaps, some day, we'll make the English language a copmplete barrier to understanding.

Good effort.

As if Dewey hadn't made enough lives miserable with his insane and confusing system for organizing libraries, he had to go and mutilate the English language by "simplifying" it. "Adirondack Loj," my foot.

[21st Century Stjepan]

I don't need to hear whining because I don't really care if someone thinks it's a wasted effort or not. I'm not going to go out and impose this on the world. It's my own thought exercise on trying to create English spellings that emphasize the Germanic origin over the French, and are based on rational and internally consistent principals. I've been making a bunch of periodic small adjustments over the months in order to both make it more aesthetic and to bring it closer to modern English spelling, but to preserve the rational nature at the same time. I already came to the conclusion that English, probably because of its isolating nature and vast number of phonemes, isn't suited for a latin-based phonetic system. I work on this only because I enjoy it.