Spelling Reform Eased by Computers
I have been an adamant advocate of spelling reform for English since at latest 1972. In that year, I issued the first version of my own system, "Fanetik". I submitted it to the newsletter of Mensa, the high-IQ society, of which I was then a member, and the editor, in Britain, was inclined to publish a presentation on it in the Society's international newsletter. BUT he wanted me to start with Traditional Orthography (T.O.) / Traditional Spelling (T.S.), and introduce the principles bit-by-bit. I found that a preposterously artificial and unworkable way to deal with the matter, so demurred.
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Instead, once the Internet became a major means for disseminating ideas, I created, in 1998, a website in which I spelled-out the principles, with sample texts. Over the course of the intervening years, I developed variants of Fanetik for different applications, for instance, guidance for children and foreigners as to how English should be pronounced in extended texts ("Augmented Fanetik" or, with accents, "Augméntad Fanétik"); in pronunciation keys, as in dictionaries, with accents for syllabic stress and dots to show where syllables separate ("Fanetik for Pronunciation Keys"); and, most recently, "Streamlined Fanetik", or "Compressed Fanetik", which drops unnecessary letters in adjoining vowels. I have not yet put up on the Fanetik website a comprehensive presentation on that FINAL version of this System.
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All these versions are just variations on a basic theme: that there should be a SINGLE way to spell every sound in English; that every vowel should be complete within its syllable (that is, before the next consonant) and not depend upon an extension into another (apparent) syllable (e.g., kleerstaure", not "clerestory", which many readers of English will see as a four-syllable term, kler.és.ta.rèe), (Actually, there is some "give" in Fanetik to distinguish between many homonyms; and there is one vowel-consonant sound combination, now spelled five ways — ER (most commonly), OR, IR, UR, and AR in T.O. — that Fanetik permits to be spelled three ways, ER (most commonly), UR, and, in a relative few words, AR (e.g., "dounward"). But in general, Fanetik employs ER for that sound, unless there be good reason to wander from it, as to distinguish between homophones.)
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Except as regards spelling, English is the simplest major natural language on Earth. It has no difficult sounds, like the French-U and German-Ü (U-umlaut), which I have seen described as being made with the lips rounded as tho to say "ooh" but then the sound long-E being pronounced) or the clicks of languages like Xhosa). The sound system of English is extremely simple. The spelling, however, is insanely complicated.
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Everyone raised in an English-speaking country is acutely aware of the most preposterous spellings, such as OUGH in "though", "through", "enough", "cough", "hiccough", and "thought", which are pronounced, respectively, as "tho", "tthru", "eenuf", "kauf", "hikup", and "tthaut"; and "freight" vs. "sleight": fraet, sliet. We also know about ridiculous numbers of silent letters: (gnat, wrap, fraught, benign, and knight, which are pronounced naat, raap, fraut, beenien, and niet). Children trying to learn how to read that MESS spend YEARS trying to make sense from this NONSENSE. Some kids never do adjust to such absurdity, but remain functionally illiterate. They are right in not accepting madness. They are the smart ones, not the idiots. The fault is NOT in them, but in the insanity they are required to try to memorize.
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The costs to functionally-illiterate people and to society are high. Horrendous (industrial) accidents, that cause multiple deaths, can occur when people cannot make sense out of printed warnings. But there is no public pressure to ABOLISH current insane spellings and replace that chaos with systematic good sense. In fact, there are some demented people in the educational Establishment who DEFEND traditional spelling. Why is that?
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The Computer Age has given us the first realistic opportunity to replace, wholesale, the madness of traditional orthography, but there are people still lost in the past who do not understand that computers make it possible for us easily to FINALLY end the madness.
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There is a man in India, Madukar N. Gogate, who used to be a wholehearted spelling reformer. Realize that India is now the 2d most populous English-speaking country on Earth — well, that is, if you accept absurd Indian mispronunciations as "English". There are some 75 million speakers of Indian "English", many more than the 66 million people in the United Kingdom who speak a form of English that we in the GREATEST English-speaking nation, the United States, would accept as "English", even tho many British speakers are barely intelligible to us. Alas, Mr. Gogate (is that pronounced as it looks, góe.gàet?) has in the past year or so surrendered to a feeling of helplessness. I replied today to an email from him that effectively gave up on English spelling reform. This is his text.

School children in UK US are bewildered to see illogical English spellings. We in India are not much bothered. English is our second language. We have mother-tongues, mother-scripts to guide. Example> Butter is illogically spelled. Its pronunciation and meaning can be seen in Hindi script. Watch it while reciting spelling Butter 10 times. Brain gets trained ! Of course use words in sentences etc to master them. English spellings problematic but grammar is easier. Nonliving things too have grammatical gender in Hindi. So adjectives, verbs vary accordingly. No such complication in English. I thought of reformed spellings, but now consider them unpractical [s/b "impractical", but he is not a native speaker of English, so we can cut him some slack.] (though good in principle). Huge investment made by many countries (training courses, books, encyclopedias etc[.]). By process of history, English is a World link for higher knowledge and business. Do not disturb it.

I immediately sent him this response.

I COULD NOT DISAGREE MORE. "Butter", in English conventions, is a PERFECT spelling. I don't know why you would see problems with that spelling.
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As for the vast investment the traditional English-speaking world has made in traditional spelling, you do not appreciate that the great preponderance of materials we see today are CREATED TODAY, NOW, every day. Wikipedia has replaced printed encyclopedias for most people who have Internet access, and Wikipedia can be revised every single day, and indeed several times a day. So bringing everything that people ACTUALLY deal with into alignment with a proper, rational spelling SYSTEM would be relatively EASY, and QUICK, given the ability of computer programmers to replace texts automatically. They would simply create two sets of spelled vocabulary and issue the command to go systematically thru traditionally spelled text and replace every single word with the rationally spelled version.
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So we could start with "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and in less than a second — or tenth of a second — it could be changed to "Tha kwik broun foks jumps oever tha laeze daug." A personal computer of the kind in BILLIONS of households could convert book-length texts (say, 75,000 words for a novel, and 200,000 words for a major work of serious nonfiction) in a very short time, perhaps as little as 6 minutes. An online supercomputer could probably respell 200,000 words in SECONDS.
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All we need to do is agree on HOW to respell things, and computer programs could do ALL the respelling we need in a TRICE.

We really do not need to surrender to madness. The spelling of English CAN be changed, all around the world, in a matter of weeks. Let's do it, and save generations of children the pains of trying to master illogical and mutually contradictory spellings.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:41 AM