

# Single-stroke English

#### (Long edition)

Series: Democracy Science, 0.

Copyright © 2018: Richard Lung.   
First edition.

Creative Commons license for the "Single-stroke English" short-hand system:

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## Table of Contents.

### Single-stroke English

The good news and the bad news.

Quick start to rational spelling English speech.

Single-stroke English alfabet.

Is Single-stroke English the English alfabet simplified?

Why solving English literacy is so difficult.

### English Spelling Priorities: the ESP alfabet.

Life or death literacy.

The spelling bee in my bonnet.

The uncivilised privilege of English literacy.

Who was John Downing and what was his finding?

Against the e-accent.

Cut speling.

The ESP Alfabet and Common Word Code.

ESP Alfabet chart.

Half of English in 100 words (coded).

English Past Tense proposal.

### How a humbl Accent Apostrofe can save English Literasy.

How to solve the problem of illiteracy in English.

Consistent consonants.

Vowels and dipthongs sorted by an Accent Apostrofe.

How far is compromis speling practical?.

### World Roman Alfabet (WRA)

The double-bluf of Euro-English.

World Roman Alfabet WRA.

Note on a World Pictografic Alfabet.

Passage from Milton: Areopagitica, and speling reform transcript.

### Single-stroke English examples.

Gettysburg address in Single-stroke English.

World poem samples in Single-stroke English.

English romantic and elegaic poetry samples.

Prose samples.

Single-stroke English Word list: a - i.

Word list continued: j to z.

Common English Words simplified and shortened.

Semi-fonetik English sampl.

H G Wells: For Freedom of Spelling.

Single-stroke English (Summary edition)

Guide to five volume collected verse by Richard Lung.

Guide to two more book series.

# Single-Stroke English

Table of contents

"The Simplifiers had risen in revolt against the hieroglyphics. An uncle of Cadmus who was out of a job had come to Egypt and was trying to introduce the Phoenician alphabet and get it adopted in place of the hieroglyphics. He was challenged to show cause, and he did it to the best of his ability...

I pray you let the hieroglyphics go, and thus save millions of years of useless time and labor to fifty generations of posterity that are to follow you."

Mark Twain: Letters From The Earth. (Simplified Spelling.)

A chart of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, matched with the alphabet (alfabet), shows how some Roman letters might have originated. The resemblance is quite startling, in the case of letter, w, for waves, or the vessel shape of the letter, v. Some other matches require only a little imagination. True, appearances can be deceiving, but there is a real evolution that has been studied. Closer resemblances are evident from the Phoenician fore-runner of simpler modern alfabets. Singe-stroke English continues that tradition.

Hieroglyphics caused confusion among nineteenth century European deciferers because their pictographs are in fact symbols for a fonografic (phonographic) or speech-based language, not a visual or sight-based language. The book by Oliver Sacks, on deafness, suggests the medium of pictografic sign-language, may be the most efficient means of quick communication, especially between alien cultures. And I mean alien, from this and other planets.

### The good news and the bad news.

According to Bernard Shaw, the currency of some recognised short-hands owed less to attractive or facile design than to the business ability of their promoters.

I am not promoting Single-stroke English as a business. It is freely available under legal conditions of the Creative Commons, to ensure the thought, that has gone into Single-stroke English or "Single English" (SE) for short, is not exploited for commercial ends.

To repeat, SE is a short-hand, made memorable, by being based on the letters of the alfabet. There is no reason why English cannot be written by all, with an efficiency approaching that of English speech.

There is the good news and there is the bad news.   
The bad news is that I cannot sight-read my own writing invention, at the time of publication. The fact is that every-one learns to write before they can read the language on sight. (A Dickens character, from Our Mutual Friend, mentions this. And Charles Dickens was an ace short-hand writer.) That is part of the normal process of literacy learning.

To the unfamiliar, myself included, an SE page, at a glance, looks like any other alien short-hand or alien language, in general, even if you are more or less familiar with English. This is liable to put-off inquirers of SE, without so much as giving the author the benefit of the doubt.

After all, why should those literate in English have to re-learn English literacy? Well, in the first place, Single-stroke English is meant, as a fast lane to English, for any number of people, who do not have, already, a good knowledge of the language. The learning principle is that it is easier to learn ordinary English, by first learning a much simpler version, a stream-lined or rational English. That is the proven principle of an Initial Transitional Alfabet. At the same time, SE has learned from the mistakes of ITA, as a system, that was introduced into some schools, in the 1960s.

In the second place, for those already literate, English is such an inefficient tool of communication, that it is worth learning an efficient version.

Were I still a young man, I would have the time, to let SE mature, before publishng the system. That is not the case, so I have decided to publish, somewhat prematurely, with apologies, what has already taken me a life-time journey.

OK, so the bad news is that even those literate in English cannot sight-read SE - without some familiarisation.

The good news is that after a life-time of tinkering with English spelling reforms, and being unable to remember my own alfabet inventions, I can remember the stream-lined English letters, of Single-stroke English.

I can recognise the SE letters individually and, slowly, work out what I have written, tho I could not recognise the page at a glance, or even many of the words, at once. At least, some mneumonic access to the individual letters is a basis for the script to become more familiar. Whereas my former (and others) radically new alfabets fell into disuse and became a mystery.

More good news is that I can write SE, from the start, without looking at it. This is more restful, to my old eyes, than staring at a glaring back-lit screen or even having to regard print in natural reflective light. The night-writing snag is that you have to keep your place on the page, to avoid writing over previous words.

(It is possible to start a new word where you left-off from the previous one, so that you keep going either down or across the page. Tho, that is perhaps less economic of space - if that matters.)

I do use voice recognition software but it may not completely supplant an efficient hand-writing system, offered by SE. At any rate, I still thought it worth-while pursuing this alternative option. (And it is independent of electronics.)

It has to be said that SE didn't stay the same alfabet. It evolved over a long period, with very limited and intermittent use, and considerable changes, which were a barrier to growing familiarity. I had to solve out-standing problems before SE could become a stable system, and my memory have a chance to properly come to terms with it.  
This was not an idle afternoon fancy on the back of an envelope.

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## Quick start to rational spelling English speech.

Table of contents

The sentence on the cover, of this book, is a phonemic (fonemic or fonemik) pangram, because it gives all the speech sounds, you need, to spell the English language:

vet ewe tho brown fox high jump lazy ash dawg

This sentence may remind you of the pangram: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The purpose of the pangram was merely an exercise in ingenuity, to see how many letters of the alfabet could be included in as short a sentence as possible.

My sentence is less elegant but more practical: it offers fonetic (phonetic), and therefore economic, writing of all English speech. Hence, my summary sentence of essential English fonemes is called the fonemic pangram.

If you were fast enuf (enough) and your short-hand was efficient enuf, you could take down dictation, like a secretary or a reporter. I know those things are not needed, in this age of various machine recorders. But it is still a time-saver to be able to learn English with an efficient script, such as Single-stroke English (SE).

My sentence, with all the English speech sounds or fonemes, is not all spelt foneticly. (The lack of consistency, amounting almost to anarchism, is why English spelling is such a nuisance.) So, the real speech sounds, behind irrational spelling, have to be explained.

Consider each word of the pangram, in turn.  
First word: vet.  
That's alright. "vet" is spelt as it sounds: a rational one-sound one-letter word is fonetic. Consonants generally come in breathed or voiced pairs. Consonant, v, is the voiced version of breathed consonant, f. These are fricative consonants, made by the sound of friction that air makes, passing inside the mouth, mostly when the tongue is close enough to some point in the roof of the mouth. In this case, the f,v pair, the air friction is caused between the upper teeth and lower lip.

The breathed consonant, t (voiced version, d) makes a plosive sound or clap. Clapping the tongue, against the dental ridge, is one of the most convenient vocal sounds to make. This explains why it is one of the commonest speech sounds in any language.

The second word, ewe,   
is pronounced the same as word, you, is rendered rationally by the dipthong, iw, as in: few, view. An alternative rendering is: yw, as in word, yew.  
Notice that the spelling, ewe, is not so far from fonetic, especially if you drop the silent letter, e, from the end. For, the vowels, e and i are neighboring vowel pronunciations.

Vowel, i, as pronounced in words: i[t]; i[n], is a forward vowel, in the vocal cavity, and close to the palate. Vowel, e, as in words, egg, them, is slightly less forward and slightly less close. It is possible that the spelling, ew[e], reflected an earlier pronunciation of this word, in the history of English speech.

American English tends to drop the pronunciation, y or i, before w or u. in words, like: sue, new, tune.

Third word: tho.   
The digraf, th, is for a foneme that has no letter, in the Roman alfabet, which reflects its marginal importance. A short-hand might be: th[ree] = 3. Also, let definite article, the = 3.

The pronunciation of letter, o, in "tho" is rendered by the dipthong, ou, as in the words, shoulder, show. (I use the shorter spelling, tho, for: though.) This is another foneme of marginal importance, because English spelling often does not distinguish between the vowel, o, as in "on" and that dipthong, ou/ow.

Fourth word: brown.   
The consonants are fonetic. The dipthong spelt, ow, is the usual spelling, along with its closely related version, ou, as in: how, house. The standard spelling of this foneme is not fonetic, in current English pronunciation - tho it may have been in the past.   
Today, the fonetic spelling, au, of this dipthong, is only found in the odd imported foreign word, like: tau. Another fonetic example, as specified by the author and spoken in the movie, is the name of the dragon, Smaug, in the novel, The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein.

For purposes of transcribing speech to spelling, consistently, to avoid confusion, it's necessary to resort to the fonetic spelling, au. The reason can be seen from the previous fairly fonetic dipthong, ou/ow, as in: boulder, grow. Notice ambiguous words like: bow (and arrow); row (the boat), and bow (down) pronounced bau or baw; (noisy) row, pronounced rau or raw.

However, the existing English word, raw, is pronounced with another dipthong foneme, discussed when we come to the word, dawg.

Fifth word: fox.   
The breathed consonant, f, is fonetic in this word.   
Vowel, o, is also fonetic, as in: on, of, off, odd.   
The letter, x, standing for two consonanrts, ks, makes little-used letter, x, redundant in English.

Sixth word: high.   
Consonant, h, is a near relative of Greek chi, written nearly like the Roman letter, x. Fonemes, chi and h, are both made in the same rear vocal position, above the throat. But foneme, h, sounds more like a wind-tunnel effect, whereas chi is a more constricted and therefore more frictional or hissing sound.   
Sound, h, is another marginal consonant, disappearing from languages. In English, it always appears as the first letter of a word, where it still distinguishes the meaning of a small (but familiar and therefore important) group of words.

The word, high, is sometimes shortened to: hi, pronouncing not the vowel, i, but the dipthong, ai, that English accidentally gets right fonetically, in the word, aisle (if you discard the two redundant ("silent") letters, s and e).  
Southern English pronunciation (by which I generally mean Cockney and Australian) often pronounce fonetically words spelt like: rain; maid (pronounced, in Northern or received English, the same as: rein/reign).

Seventh word: jump.  
Pronouncing this word is fairly straight-forward. (We won't trouble about the tendency of English speech to relax or unstress the pronunciation of vowel, u, from its tongue position close to the rear of the palate.)

Eighth word: lazy.   
The two consonants, l and z, spelt as they sound. Here, vowel, a, in received speech, pronounces the dipthong, ei, as in: vein; rein; eight (silent: gh).   
Here, I use letter, y, to mean the dipthong most often spelt: ee; for example: glory rhymed with free, in the words to the Elgar march. Often the two letters, e, are separated by a consonant: seen/scene; discreet/discrete; phoneme; compete.  
When a words final letter, y, is not emphasised or stressed, it shortens to more like the vowel, i.

Ninth word: ash.   
Here, vowel, a, is as in: an, at, as, add. English does not distinguish meaningfully between two distinct versions of this open vowel, pronounced to front and back of the oral cavity, so we don't worry about that.   
The consonant, usually spelt with the digraf, sh, also has some limited association with the letter, c (as in: ocean, social, chef, schnapps, Puccini).

Tenth word: dawg.   
Two consonants, d and g, spelt as sound. But why this slang or regional dialect expression for the word, dog? It spells the southern US drawl, as in the cartoon character, Deputy Dawg. The reason for including the word, dawg, is the difference between words like: awe - or; saw - sore.

My voice recognition software types: or, when I say: awe. A fonetician (called Wells) said that the spelling, or, is acceptable for the dipthong that convention spells: aw.   
The actual fonetic rendering of this dipthong is the vowel, o, followed by a neutral vowel. Historically, the consonant, r, has been replaced by this less stressed pronunciation, except by northerners, like the Scots.

In this last case, I leave the option of retaining the conventional - tho unfonetic - spelling, aw, so as not to introduce another letter, into the alfabet, for the neutral or unstressed vowel, which is very common in actual English speech but does not help much to differentiate meaning. It is an undifferentiated vowel, whose tongue position is in the middle of all the other vowel positions, in the vocal cavity. Hence the term, neutral vowel.

However, there is one case, where the unstressed vowel is so common, that I could not ignore it. That is in the hurried pronunciation of the indefinite article, a, (more carefully pronounced with the foneme, ei, to be recognised by my voice software). This can be given by just a slight dot.   
Or you could leave it out. Some languages don't have words for the indefinite or definite articles.

The dipthong, that convention spells, aw, could be given fonetic spelling, as vowel, o, plus unstressed vowel, by putting a slight dot, like an accent, to a stroke-letter for vowel, o.

Yet another option is to adopt a Yorkshire accent, in this respect, where the word, daughter, is pronounced like conventional pronunciation of word, doubter!

That concludes the 10 words, vet ewe tho brown fox high jump lazy ash dawg, that give a virtually complete command of how to transcribe standard English speech. Single-stroke English is based on such a fonemic pangram of about 30 fonemes making up those ten words.

The fonemic pangram contains 18 consonants, v, t, th [= 3], b, r, n, f, k, s, h, j, m, p, l, z, sh [= c], d, g.

There are 5 vowels within: vet; fox; high; jump; ash. And 7 or 8 dipthongs, as in: ew = iu; w = uu; [th]o = ou/ow; [br]ow[n] = au; [h]i[gh] = ai/ay; [l]a[zy] = ei/ey; [laz]y = ii; [d]aw[g] = or.

### Single-stroke English alfabet (SE).

To previous section.

Note:

Single-stroke English follows how one dipthong, not included in my alfabet list, is usually spelt. Dipthong, oi/oy, as in words, boy, join, is the only English dipthong that is generally spelt true to its vowel combination. (Dr Mont Follick, the foreign languages teacher and English spelling reformer, called oi/oy "our best dipthong.")

### Is Single-stroke English the English alfabet simplified?

Single-stroke English is both a stepping stone to conventional literacy and a short-hand system, in its own right (or, in its own write!)

The purpose of a Single-stroke English is to make written language easier to learn and easier to use for every-body.

For efficiency in learning and speed of mature use, the two golden rules of writing efficiency are:

1) A short one-sound, one-stroke alfabet

2) Memorably stream-lining the familiar Roman English alfabet letters, where possible, into simpler more easily joined designs.

1) Official research showed that a one-sound, one-letter beginning version of the English alfabet advances, rather than retards, conventional literacy. But it will not be popular, if more letters, than are strictly needed, are added to the existing alfabet.

2) Short-hand must be based on the familiar alfabet to remain memorable. It is no good inventing a new rational alfabet, if one needs to continuously re-familiarise oneself with it. That seems to be why there is no short-hand, routinely used by the general public, such that their writing approaches the speed and efficiency of their speech.

The Roman alfabet can be related to the simplest (geometrical) shapes, which form symmetrical patterns that can be visualised as a whole. Such pattern-learning (called gestalt or holistic learning) should aid both learning to write, and writing, efficiently.   
The same principles can be adapted to any language using the Roman alfabet.

English, which happens to be the authors language, serves as a demonstration. This is especially so, as English spelling presents a lot of difficulties for learners, and slows down, even those, who are familiar with its caprices.

I defend my claim that Single-stroke English is still the English alfabet, tho simplified. I certainly don't claim that all my letters are simplified forms. I think that at least half of them can be recognised as stripped-down versions of their originals.

So, just how many of the Single-stroke English letters are grounded in the conventional English alfabet? Or, at least, how memorably are the simple letters related to their originals? This is not entirely an idle exercise, because it helps to give a memorable over-view of the relation between Single-stroke English and the conventional alfabet.

The main body of the chart is three pairs of groups, each of four letters, making 24 letters. The pairs are short and long versions of the same letter, which is generally a single stroke.

So, there are long and short versions of three basic groups of letters. The three basic strokes are: a straight line, a shallow curve or bracket shape, and a deep curve or cup shape. Each basic stroke has four orientations, which is similar for every group. The straight lines differ slightly from the curves, in this respect. But there is a pattern to the groupings.

These simplicities and symmetries of letter forms make the alfabet easier to grasp as a whole. These strokes can be matched to speech sounds, which are also the same, in some respect or other. For example, speech sound, s, is just made with the breath. Whereas, the similar sound, z, differs only by being voiced, meaning that sound, z, is sound, s, except for being made, in conjunction with the vibration of the vocal chords in the throat.

There are six pairs of similar consonants, in English, but for being either breathed or voiced: s, z; t, d; f, v; c [=k], g; C [=sh], J; p, b. If you know the stroke for one foneme each of the six pairs, in SE, you automaticly know the other six foneme strokes, which are their mirror images. Learn 6 and know 12.

Yes, I know this is an old trick of short-hand systems. And some systems approximate more to the English letters than others. Tho, not enuf, in my opinion. Naturally, I studied previous innovations, if only to see if there was any version that would satisfy me for practical use. Personally, I did not find that to be the case.

In Single-stroke English, the first letters group is the short straight lines. The breathed-voiced consonant pair, s, z, are represented by a short backward slash, \, and forward slash, /, respectively. They are fairly self-evident.

The letter, z, is very little used in English. English usually spells with letter, s, its breathed version, even when the sound spoken is foneme, z.

Single-stroke English makes convenient usage of a short forward slash for both fonemes, z and th. French speakers tend to pronounce English foneme, th, as: z. This can be a memory aid, even without a command of French.

Three-quarters of th-usage is reserved for the definite article, the, which could not be mistaken for z, in a sentence. If you want to distinguish them, on the rare occasions, it would be necessary, then the letter, z, could be written in full.

SE represents the letter, r, as just a vertical short line. The letter, e, becomes a short horizontal bar, which may not be an obvious derivation, at first. The lower-case, e, is a short horizontal bar, that then curls round anti-clockwise, to join the next letter in a word. More-over, the capital letter, E, consists of three horizontal bars.

The next SE group of four letters are merely longer versions of the first four straight lines. In most fonts, the letter, y, ends in a long forward slash. /, which is all that the Single-stroke English alfabet retains of that letter.

The long backward slash, \, represents the letter, h. Imagine the slash laid-back, with its top touching the top of the letter, h, and its midpoint touching the hump of the letter, h. The backward slash may be remembered as representing the letter, h, in its declination.   
I admit this is one of my more contrived renderings of English letters as single strokes.

The English language confinement of letter, h, to the start of words, and digraf, ng, to the end of words, is useful for a single stroke English alfabet that can make the backward slash, \, double for both, h and ng.

I assume that SE will not cause much confusion, as to whether a short or long diagonal comes first in a word. Should the order need to be shown, it could be done by slanting the short diagonal more than the long diagonal (for example, about 45 and 30 degrees, respectively). Or a slight break or slight kink could indicate which diagonal comes first.

Single-stroke English fully represents letter, l, as a long vertical stroke. All Single-stroke English is by definition, sans serif or without embellishments to letter top or tail.

In the conventional English alfabet, the short vertical stroke is used both for letter, i, and letter, r. When you join a long stroke to a short stroke, it simply produces a longer stroke. How to tell whether the long or the short stroke comes first?   
That is why the short stroke must be used for letter, r, not letter, i, because letter, r, generally does not follow letter, l, in English speech or spelling. So, you know, when you see a longer vertical stroke, that it signifies an r followed by an l.

The least satisfactory representation, in this second group, is the long horizontal stroke, which is used for the vowel, a. The capital, A, does have a horizontal bar, which helps memorise this meaning. An a-bar can be thought-of as a stripped down version of the letter alfa, considered as a clock-wise curl round an a-bar, in contrast to the anti-clockwise curl about an e-bar.

An extra-long straight line, that combines letters, e and a, generally does so in that order, in words like: real. Generally, I think of the Spanish and German pronunciation, as in: Real Madrid; Realpolitik. The typical English pronunciation has drifted the vowel, e, to vowel, i, and vowel, a, to an unstressed or neutral vowel, which (by definition) does not differentiate which vowel is meant. SE does not complicate matters by mandating the neutral vowel as another vowel symbol.

For special transcription purposes, rather than convenient general usage, SE does provide the option of a dot for the unstressed vowel. Tho, in SE, this is principally for the indefinite article, a, often unstressed in speech.  
The neutral vowel is the most common foneme in English speech, but SE prefers to follow traditional more distinct (and therefore more informative) pronunciation and spelling of the vowels.

The next two SE groups are not straight lines but slightly curved, like brackets. The four shorter versions, of this shape, consist of a pair of short brackets. Opening short bracket shape stands for the letter, i, like an italic or slightly curved vertical. There is no dot over the letter, and, as always, the letter is sans serif.

The short closing bracket represents the vowel, o. This representation reduces the full moon of the letter, o, to a crescent moon shape.  
As a memory aid, the front bracket stands for front vowel, i. Back bracket stands for back vowel, o. That is in relation of the tongue, making vowels, i and o, respectively, at the front and back of the palate.

The pair of short brackets are now considered in their horizontal positions. The one is like a shallow letter, n, and the other is like a shallow letter, u. And fonemes, n and u, are just what the two symbols represent.

Now to the four full-length bracket shapes. The opening bracket stands for letter, t. The top of the bracket curls-in, as a substitute for having to cross the t. The closing bracket stands for letter, d. It can be thought-of as the bow, without the string, to the capital letter, D. Fonemes, t, d, are a breathed-voiced pair of plosive consonants, made by clapping the tongue against the dental ridge.

The pair of horizontal full length brackets are longer versions of the shallow-n and shallow-u shapes, respectively standing for letters, m and w. Think of the Single-stroke English letters for m and w, as leaving out the middle stem, in each letter. The double-u is treated as literally double the length of u, tho printing, as distinct from hand-writing, generally does not do this.  
So, a plate shape is left for letter, w (as in the word: few; or Welsh: cwm; or standing approximately for both related fonemes, in the word, woo = ww).

From the straight line groups and bracket groups, we now come to the cup shape groups. Starting with the small cup strokes group, small letter, c, is essentially unchanged, with the ends of the letter open, not closing in on each other. This stands for the k-sound, as, more often than not, is the case, in English spelling.

The key-board doesn't have a mirror image letter to c, as shown on the chart, to represent g, the voiced version of this plosive consonant. It looks approximately like the letter, g, were it open at the front and without a stalk or tail. Another way of imagining the letter, simplified, is to focus on the lower half of the letter g, more so in some fonts (like Courier) than others. That is to say the baseline and tail of letter g.

The breathed-voiced pair, f, v, are hissing or fricative consonants (in the same sound class as: s, z.   
Disregarding the line thru it, the letter, f, looks like a shepherds crook, more so, in some fonts than in others. Single-stroke English leaves only the crook-shaped top, like an upturned cup, or cupola, to represent the f-foneme.

Its voiced version, v (for vessel) is drawn like a cup or vessel. For ease of drawing, in one stroke, the simplified letter is not a sharp or angular v-shape.

Now to the four large cup shapes. The first is like the capital letter, C. As with the small letter, c, the ends should be fully open, not converging. This letter, c, as in chef, is often associated, in European languages, with the English foneme, sh (most common, in word: she).

Single-stroke English has: sh = C. And its mirror image letter looks like the capital letter, J, when the font happens to have a cap on the capital. Indeed J is the foneme for which mirror-C stands for.

The voiced version of the fricative consonant, sh = C, is French J. But for spelling purposes, it does not matter if you use mirror-C for the slightly differently pronounced English J, which has a d-sound before French-j. You get a sense of this, comparing French, juge, with English, judge.

The horizontal large cup shapes are given to the breathed-voiced plosive consonant pair, p, b (upped-pot, p; boat or basin, b). In handwriting, it is common for the loops, in these letters, to be left open, short of rejoining the stem or stalk. Take the stalks away, and you are left with an approximate pot hair-cut shape, for foneme, p, and an approximate boat or basin shape for foneme, b.   
These may not be very good approximations. They were what single strokes, I had left to play-with, for a less common consonant pair, p, b.

The p-sound is not much found in the most common English words. With a few important exceptions, the same is true of foneme, b. Likewise for the pair, sh & j. That partly determined why these four speech sounds get the four largest, and therefore slowest, strokes, in Single-stroke English.

#### Optional fonemes.

A dot for the neutral or unstressed vowel mainly would be used to signify the indefinite article, a, if one needed to note it at all.

The dipthong, ai, pronounced in the personal pronoun, I, is given the optional letter of a tightly drawn clockwise circle, like a minute letter, a, or alfa, little larger than a dot (as found on letter, i).

The dipthong, ei, could be represented by a tightly drawn anti-clockwise circle, a smaller version of vowel, e, little larger than a dot (as found on letter, i).

#### In summary

With what justice is my single-stroke alfabet a single-stroke English alfabet? How many of my simplified letters are good representations?

Well, I would say reasonable are my simplified letters for: s, z, r, y, l, n, u, m, w, t, c, v.

I would add to these, as better than they look at first: e, i, g.

That is 15 out of the 24 basic single-stroke letters are something like simplified drawing representations.

Some simplified letters relate, more or less well, to capitals: A, D, C, J.

Another five simplified letters have more tenuous (tho they do have some) associations with their originals: h, o, f, p, b.

It was not possible to stream-line English dipthongs, because the English alfabet does not include letters for the dipthongs or logicly compose the dipthongs from the vowels.

To SE chart.

### Further comments.

Letters, for instance, s and z, can be considered as made-up, respectively, of a backward slash and a forward slash, which are the bodies of the two letters. And which both have two limbs, for joining a chain of letters to make a word.

Actually, letters, s and z, are joined, before and after other letters, at head and foot, respectively.   
Letters may be compared to the great apes, having two hands and two feet with prehensile toes, that can hold on, by their hands or feet.   
This analogy means you can still recognise a person, whether or not they have their hands and feet extended in greeting.

A calligraphy, like Gill Sans, is short for: sans serif. It may be likened to an English alfabet without hands and feet extended. Similarly, Single-Stroke English may be likened to an English alfabet, also without arms and legs extended.

To speak plainly, getting the benefit of Single-stroke English depends on seeing, for example, that the diagonals for letters, s and z, are still instantly recognisable as the same letters, in their least adorned forms.

That way, ones memory of English letters may help every one to acquire short-hand. At present, the alien alfabets, on which short-hands depend, make extra-quick writing a specialist skill. Professional short-hand writers are like script athletes, who have to put in hours of training a day, especially before sporting events.  
Whereas, I envisage short-hand English, as not all that much more difficult than learning to write English, in a different script like italic.

You may appreciate that various factors go into deciding how each English alfabet letter is assigned one of the limited number of simplest geometrical strokes, that necessarily make-up my invention of Single-stroke English. Each letter, being assigned its closest counter-part, among the simple single strokes, is the first consideration, but not the last.

The breathed-voiced pairs all had to be matched, in mirror pairs of letters, for economy of learning and recall. Some of the single strokes are bigger and not as quick to write. You prefer to assign the most common fonemes the shorter strokes. This was a factor in making English letter, n, into a shallow version of itself, in Single-stroke English.

Much thought and calculation has gone into Single-stroke English, to best balance the options. (Any improvements await a future edition, for which, I have no plans.)

The chart, in general, offers the memory aid or mneumonic power of symmetry. Symmetry is a basic knowledge-organising principle in science. From the diagram, Single-stroke English (SE) is a pattern of twenty four single-stroke letters for twenty-four single speech sounds (or 26, including th and ng).

This pristine simplicity of the chart is somewhat marred by showing three alternative options for three of the dipthongs, and the option of a dot to represent the unstressed or neutral vowel. These four extra symbols, that clutter and spoil the diagram, are redundant.

But this redundancy can be useful to distinguish the meanings of many short words, often of one syllable, that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. Indeed, this is a feature of conventional English spelling, except that it has fallen into such disorder, that it seems hopeless to sort it out.

I resort to a limited and optional use of small clockwise and anti-clockwise loops, as an aid to making my dipthong spellings more consistent than in my Single-stroke English vocabulary and poetry examples, given later in this book, where some of my dipthong spellings were chosen more on impulse than by a consistent plan of whether to follow the conventional or the fonetic spelling.

On the chart, three dipthongs have alternative SE spellings. The ei-dipthong is spelt consistently, in words like: they; grey, fey, prey, veil, deign. It has the option of being spelt like a small letter, e, or anti-clockwise dot.

The ai-dipthong is consistent with its vowel components, in word, aisle, or as southerners [Cockneys and Australians] pronounce: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.   
Bernard Shaws play, Pygmalion, better known as the movie, My Fair Lady, (in)famously "corrected" this pronunciation by the flower girl Eliza Doolittle, a "draggle-tailed gutter-snipe." Eliza talked her way into high society, after she took elocution lessons from the fonetician (phonetician) Henry Higgins.

Dipthong, ai, has the option of being spelt like a small clockwise dot, or minimal letter, a. The letter, a, or alfa is essentially a clock-wise circle. Reduced to almost dot-size, it reminds of the dot over the letter, i, and so symbolises the combination, ai.

Being able to spell the ei and ai dipthongs both as digrafs (digraphs) and single symbols, or "grafs," gives more options for distinguishing meanings, if one wants them.   
For instance, words, vane and vine, are foneticly spelt: vein and vain, respectively. But the latter two rational spelings are also conventional spellings for two more English words. I could distinguish: vane, vine, by using the optional new single letters, or grafs, for each of these dipthongs.

The general rule (not well followed in my less than rigorous sample transcriptions) would be to use the (single letter) grafs for all e-accented dipthongs, like: vane, vine, male, mile,...  
It would be a big advantage to get rid of all the duplicate uses of letter, e, as an "accent" added to a vowel, to signify a dipthong. A rational English alfabet should confine letter, e, to its sound value, as the vowel, in: ebb, egg, them...

A later chapter works out, for ordinary English text, a complete system for replacing use of letter, e, as an accent, with an apostrofe (apostrophe) for an accent.

My SE examples mainly used the clockwise dot, for ai, latterly, a few times, as an afterthought. I didn't much use the anti-clock dot, ei, tho practice has made me think that it might be an improvement, occasionally.   
Language, like science, is not a finished product.

When I looked at my examples of alternative spelling dipthong, ai, with the clockwise dot, I saw that my examples did not come out too well. The dot looked too small.

The dipthong, pronounced by the word, "awe," is, indeed, usually spelt: aw. (The final letter, e, is silent.) Fonetically, this dipthong is the vowel, o, followed by an unstressed vowel. Hence, the alternative spelling, given on the chart: the symbol for vowel, o, followed by a dot, for the unstressed vowel. The reason this minor dipthong is given its own spelling is to distinguish words like: awe, law, saw, from words, like: or, lore, sore.

The dipthong, ou, (or closely related dipthong, ow) is fonetic in words like, mow; mould, (which Americans may spell: mold). Indeed, it is often not distinguished from the vowel, o (as in: on, none, gone), in words like: so, no, go.

The dipthong, au, is usually rendered, as in the well-known non-sense phrase: How now brown cow. It is possible that the conventional spelling did convey an earlier English pronunciation of these words, more like: stow low show crow.

It would not do to confuse: how now cow, with: hoe no co. Yet English has no distinct digraf or letter combination for this dipthong. Single-stroke English just follows its fonetic digraf, au.

One has to remember that the vowels and their combinations are unlike the consonants, in having no fixed position, of tongue and lips, in the mouth. The vowels are pronounced, without the tongue touching the palate. The vowels, unlike the consonants, are unanchored, so their pronunciation in words tends to drift. In the history of English speech, there is something called the great southern vowel shift. (That is from close to more open vowel pronunciation.)

In general, vowels and more especially dipthongs pronunciations vary so much, that trying to pin down their pronunciation, in writing, is like writing on sand, if not water. A good rule is to follow conventional spelling of vowels and dipthongs, as far as consistently possible, as if they were pronounced as spelt, especially as in some English-speaking dialect, or other, they probably are! Each dialect, that happens to be fonetic, is a powerful memory aid. Received English is only the fashionable dialect, that will fall out of fashion, as British English has given way to American English.

It slows the speed of my short-hand (when one becomes practised) that I do not have extra single-stroke letters for all dipthongs. But it quickens the learning of my short-hand that there are fewer letters to learn.

Also, Single-stroke English letters are not only fewer but more distinct, so easier to distinguish and thereby master. Most of the letters are at right-angles to each other. The only diagonal letters are straight lines, which are less easily confused than curved letters, as to what angle they are meant to be, on the page.

Being an old man, I wanted a short-hand that could be written intelligbly, without looking and putting strain on the eyes. This was more important to me than introducing the ambiguity from a lot of extra letters, especially for the dipthongs. Also, they could not be related to the existing English alfabet, so there was no memory aid, for them, from conventional usage. This elaboration of the SE system would have weighed it, too much towards the revolutionary "Year One" short-hand alfabets that have no relation to the Roman alfabet. SE is surely radical enuf, for the forseeable future!

There is no definitive way of spelling many of the conflicting English dipthong spellings. Where the rules are in doubt, what is meaningful to you, and you think may be meaningful to others, is the guide of last resort.

To SE chart.

### Why solving English literacy is so difficult.

To quick start.

This chapter has dealt with simplifying the letters of the English alfabet. A few changes are needed to make English rational with one-letter for one speech-sound. The Single-stroke English alfabet is conveniently short.   
A further chapter will deal with how to bridge this fairly straight-forward Roman road, of a Single-stroke English, with the tortuous jumble of conflicting rules, that make up the winding English road of English spelling.

A measure of English spelling inefficiency is that one fifth to one quarter of the population suffers from functional illiteracy. Both efficiency and democracy demand that we do something effective to remedy this unnecessary handicap, placed on so many English-speaking people, native and foreign.

Trying to spell English rationally is not only a problem in itself but looks grotesque to the majority of people, familiar with conventional spelling, the so-called orthography.

Rational spelling of English, so far as it is possible, with the existing unreformed English alfabet, gives only a moderate stream-lining, by cutting unnecessary doubling of letters and not adding the letter, e, as an accent, to distinguish a dipthong from a vowel. After that, and a great deal of other straightening out, the look of the text is so unfamiliar, for a marginal compression of effort, that such an up-heaval seems not worth the effort.

In my youth, spelling more rationally was my main approach to spelling reform, for the sake of improving literacy standards.

In my middle age, I realised this was not enough, and turned to the radical approach of constructing a new alfabet. I tried many different approaches, including a scalar alfabet, rather as musical notes are written on the scale.   
In one of his science-fiction novels, Robert Heinlein has his narrative character visit another planet, which uses such a scalar script, he says he learned.

Author of the "Britic" spelling reform, Reg Deans (Dr Reginald Deans) attempted a variant on this, using graph paper, where each box is a word, indicated by joining the positions for the required fonemes. I tried this approach, too, but Reg thought of it before me.

Of course, I investigated the standard short-hands and their short-comings. Chief of these, was the short-coming they shared with all my own attempts. I found-out this draw-back, the hard way, by years of trial and error: they are unmemorable.

Freedom of Spelling must compromise with convention, if it is not to repel too many readers. Yet this seemed to leave too much confusion to make English spelling easy to learn. Many reformers believed that half-measures would not sufficiently improve English literacy. Hence the invention of new alfabets and new systems of spelling.

Short-hand alfabets were specially designed to be written as quickly as speech. Speech sounds or fonemes were assigned the simplest possible strokes. Words, especially the most common words, are abbreviated.

Yet, short-hands have never come into general use. Tho they were more or less rational systems, they remained the province of specialists, such as secretaries and reporters. Of the stripling Charles Dickens, (parliamentary) court reporter, it is said: There never was such a short-hand writer!   
He still had to write out his novels in long-hand, because his secretary didn't understand short-hand. N doubt he could not find any secretary to transcribe his notes.

He spent three weeks in Yorkshire, remembered by the locals in and around Malton, as if he'd just left. The novel, Nicholas Nickleby has a local, who speaks in Broad Yorkshire, that Dickens must have foneticly transcribed, because it is pretty accurate.

HG Wells says in an early letter, that he looked at his short-hand notes, a day or so later, and could make no sense of them. Thru-out his life, he wrote in a fast long-hand, difficult to decifer.

After many years of trying to invent new short-hands, I always failed, because I could never remember my new alfabet! I only succeeded in remembering the reformed alfabet, when it didn't deviate too much from the alfabet ingrained in my life-time memory, namely the English (essentially the Roman) alfabet.

So, the principle, of more efficient writing for the general public, is that it must be based memorably on an alfabet, in which one was educated. The younger, that one learns any alfabet, the better. As with speech, so with spelling.

My old age marks a third phase as spelling reformer, based on the eventual realisation that all my new alfabets had to be abandoned, simply because they were new, and therefore unmemorable, indeed unmemorisable.

This left me no alternative but to question my assumption that the English alfabet itself could not be made into a short-hand alfabet. That meant "one sound: one letter" but also the even more demanding task of each and every English letter reduced to one distinct stroke.  
To a limited extent, this approach has been tried, as with Teeline shorthand. But to my mind, not nearly enuf!

Fortunately, the Roman alfabet uses simple letters. These can relate to the simplest of shapes. for the purpose of writing with more ease and speed. I found it helpful to think in geometrical terms of symmetry, in designing the simplest of calligraphies.

This endeavor was not an afternoons work, but a gradual modification, by stops and starts, over a fair number of years. Basing a short-hand system on the English alfabet itself was an evolutionary approach to alfabet reform, which I could only evolve over time.

I adopted the classical short-hand principle, that single stroke letters simply must be joined end to end, without any extra links between them. Taking this a step further, one might consider a standard letter of the Roman alfabet or its English alfabet version, in terms of a basic stroke with extensions for joining to other letters.

For a long time, in my researches, I simply thought of looped vowels, e, a, o, in terms of variously shaped clockwise and counter-clockwise loops. But loops are not single strokes. The word, circumlocution, sums up their indirectness!

More-over, loops do not join simply but may or may not require to be extended, depending on particulars, like the shape and direction of the loop letter and whether the next letter is horizontal or vertical. This further violates the principle of a single stroke alfabet writing.

Indeed, I did not entirely escape the problem, of directly joining letters, that are essentially half-circles or crescent moons, without cross-overs, that may over-lay and obscure two joined letters. A computer programmer or coder might largely avoid this difficulty by making the ends of the letter strokes sufficiently shallow, to avoid much over-lay. Examples are the combinations, bi, uc, in words like, bi[g] [d]uc[k].

To SE chart.

To quick start.

* * *

## English Spelling Priorities: the ESP alfabet

Table of contents

### Life or death literacy.

In november 1997, the BBC series, Scare Stories, featured the population explosion. Robert Macnamara commissioned a statistical investigation of every conceivable factor that might correlate with the population rate. Only one such variable was found. And it was a perfect fit.

High population rates went with high female illiteracy. So, womens equal rights are needed to stabilise the population, which is needed to prevent the further destroying and poisoning natural resources.

In 1970, writing of The End, Isaac Asimov played the gruesome game of working out how long, at present growth rates, it would take for the mass of humanity to equal the mass of the universe: less than 5000 years. To equal the mass of animal life on earth (except algae to feed humans): less than 500 years.   
(Asimov used a simple exponential formula, like that used to work out the growth of capital at compound interest.)

Asimov said that unless the population problem can be solved, none of the other problems can be solved.   
Given that illiteracy of women is a key factor in the problem, the English-speaking peoples have done precious little, especially to make English spelling easier. Radical ills require radical remedies.

In 1998, the Human Development report found over 20% of the UK (the home of English) functionally illiterate.   
In 1999, Save The Children promoted a scheme, led by footballer John Barnes, of Dad reading to boys. Boys tend to be less literate than girls. They are also more likely to rebel against the conflicting spelling rules that make no sense. From the spelling reformers point of view, the more compliant girls are more likely to humor wrong-headed conventional literacy teachers.

With 22% of adults having very low literacy levels, experts partly blamed "trendy" teaching techniques moving away from phonics - foniks, n'est pas? [is it not?] - teaching children to read by matching letters and sounds.

Also in 1999, a government commissioned report stated adults in England have poorer literacy and numeracy skills than any country in Europe except Poland and Ireland.   
Ireland is particularly significant because the Irish have to learn two of the worst spelt languages in the world - Gaelic and English.

Leading statistician, Sir Claus Moser reports this lack of adult basic skills is disasterous for society and the economy. Former chairman of the Confederation of British Industry, Digby Jones complained of illiteracy for why they cannot find enough employable people.

This is not new. In his novel, You Can't Be Too Careful, HG Wells (one of many distinguished supporters of spelling reform) mentions that, by the end of the 19th century, London commerce had to recruit German clerks drilled in English orthography.

Where spelling is concerned, modern Germans evidently know that relentless drilling has its limits. The German-speaking peoples from nine countries got together to make some modest simplifications of German spelling.   
Not enough: so I heard from a German-speaking cousin.   
On the contrary, the German clerical classes, imbued with traditional spelling, were rebelliously out-spoken against the inconvenience to their spelling habits.

The spelling conventions are convenient, to those familiar with them, and they should not be inconvenienced by mandatory reforms. Freedom Of Spelling can be tolerated, because writers want to make themselves understood. If they didn't, there would be no need to read them.   
When he was an unknown young journalist, HG Wells humorusly wrote: For Freedom of Spelling. (I append the article to this book.) Wells supported spelling reform, thru-out his life, but he didn't write about it much. Like Dickens, his novels sometimes resort to renderings of dialect. The school recitals, by rote, of the small children, in The Dream, are a joy.

English is perhaps the most confusingly spelt of major languages. President Teddy Roosevelt had all American government publications follow slightly simplified spelling rules. He could not do more, because Congress would not co-operate. Perhaps the most significant change was to cut down somewhat on repeated letters.  
Repeated letters have been identified as a main cause of spelling "mistakes."

In a democracy, convention cannot be replaced in an authoritarian manner. Not often does some revolutionary take-over happen to include radical spelling reform, as in Russia and Turkey.

In volume 3 of The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed that Russian emigres accepted the revolutionary alfabet. They were more gracious than the dissidents of the American Congress toward Teddy Roosevelt.  
I did not learn Russian well, partly because I did not start soon enough and partly because the teacher did not make us speak only Russian in class - the only way to retain anything of it, for someone of my moderate ability. But I never had any difficulty spelling the words, that I soon forgot.

The same is true of literacy, as fluency of speech, early learning is vital, as discussed by André Michaud, writing of: Our Bankrupt Elite.

### The Spelling Bee in my bonnet.

To top.

The Spelling Bee is a spelling contest between children that has been going-on in America for generations. It was copied over here, like many other things. This exercise is a sort of religious revivalism against constantly flagging standards of literacy. Except that standards cannot flag that never flew.  
Mountains of money have been poured away into a Brave New World of literacy where everyone spells like Dr Samuel Johnson of Dictionary fame.

If I had to give the prizes for a Spelling Bee, I would have to say to the winners: Congratulations! God has given you a better memory than mine. You need no gifts from me.   
And I would have to say to the losers: First prize to the first person to be knocked-out of the contest for having the stubborn intelligence to spell the word as it sounds, rather than as the dictionary tells you it's spelt. Second prize would go to the second person disqualified, and so on.

Of course, like all prizes, this upside-down system is fallible, because children are well aware that the words, they have been given to spell, are chosen, for their fonetik stupidity, to catch them out. So, they may have guessed merely a wrong stupid spelling, rather than the right stupid spelling.

You only had to look at a British attempt to make television of the Spelling Bee. The show had small children competing to recite spellings that could not be worked-out by a consistent rule.

Teaching speech-spelling relations consistently, tho convention is inconsistent, is the right lesson. Consistency is also the right way to good social relations or, indeed, to relations with animals. Sending mixed messages is distressing. It wastes someones time and emotional energy, if they have to keep guessing: Well, do they want my friendship or don't they? If one wants a friendship, one must be consistent about it. One must make up ones mind.

Learning spelling, a child must be allowed to make up their mind that it is acceptable to spell a foneme in some standard way. The fact that conventional English spelling cannot make up its mind how to spell many a foneme is no reason to muddle childrens education.

The British Spelling Bee tv series hardly got started before it had little girls bursting into tears. To atone for this, the adults had to put themselves on the rack, or they would have looked like bullies. This is not so far from the truth. Imposing an authority in orthography has no independent appeal to fonetik logic. Of course, the adults couldn't get it "right" always either. So, what is the point?

More recently, I saw a (perhaps defiant) tv announcement of a tarted-up version of the spelling bee. I never heard any more of it. Spelling bee revivalists never learn.

The moral of this story is the failure to impose a rigmarole that is deemed correct by reason only of tradition, which exhalts the advantage of A1 memory, or total recall, possessed by a few, over reason available to all.

The Spelling Bee in my bonnet is over the reactionary charm of a lazy and servile conformity, that is no more than a competitive worship of stupidity. The person who conforms best to the most eccentric spellings is judged the best speller, when they are only the best conformer. The basic value is conditioning from early childhood to unquestioning obedience to the leader. It puts the dictate into dictatorship.

A democratic spelling contest would be between the most consistent ways to spell words, while keeping them recognisable. In other words, what is the way to make all words conform to simple rules, without their becoming too remote from their familiar spellings?

How would you spell such an intractable little word, like "phase," both intelligently and intelligibly - withut confusing it with other words?  
A prime condition is that letter, e, is a vowel, and should not be also an accent, signifying a dipthong. Instead, the apostrophe might be used as a dipthong accent.

Rigid hostility to all change is not realistic, intelligent or adaptive. Radical changes are needed to English spelling, if the English language is to remain viable as a mainstream means of communication. Never the less, I tried to compromise with conservative usage, so that learned familiarity is not sacrificed, more than necessary, to reasonable if radical reforms.

Conformity and authority, of course, have their value. We could not make a move without relying unquestioningly on the judgment of experts. We know (or hope) that those experts are being put thru the mill, by others who have studied their subjects. This is not happening with English spelling. It is time it did. That is why I support the expert judgments of Dr Mont Follick and Professor John Downing.

### The uncivilised privilege of English literacy.

To top.

There is making oneself understood with proper consideration for others. That is why older people should not be obliged to abandon conventional spelling \- tho conventional spelling sometimes abandons them. That is also why children should be introduced to a convenient, rather than a conventional, spelling system, to learn quickly to communicate effectively with each other. Illiteracy should not be a considerable social problem at all.

It is because we are not democratic enough, or considerate enough, to each other, that we have not tolerated children being freed to spell rationally. From this secure basis, they can, if they wish, pick-up the irregularities of conventional spelling.

The need for freedom of spelling is a lesson of life. If we went thru our social institutions from education and religion, to politics and the economy, lack of democracy, or consideration for others, is why they work so badly and frustrate peoples wishes.

Correct spelling only should mean that people are concerned to communicate efficiently with each other. Pedants, of an orthography, have talked of the beauty of the English language. English law used to be regarded as near perfect, before Jeremy Bentham dared to criticise it, as an adjunct to the Conquest.

Noam Chomsky, who should know better, once spoke of English spelling as near perfect - Near anarchy, more like it, largely based on copyists letter inflations and printers technical hitches.

Scholars and literary figures, such as founded the Simplified Spelling Society, promoted the republic of letters, instead of a social class oligarchy of literacy. Mostly unnecessary illiteracy deprives perhaps more than twenty per cent of the population from better employment. It also deprives society of their full ability to make independent judgments as citizens. Prisons have a sixty per cent illiteracy level. A less thoughtless society might have less rejects to become criminals.

It is also well-known that a lot of disruption in class-rooms is caused by those, who don't understand, preventing those who do understand, from getting on. Often, the unruly are unruly to hide their shame at not grasping unruly English spelling. The problem of English spelling must be made more "ruly" if problem children are to be more ruly.

HG Wells said: English never learned to spell. And those, who have never learned its bad ways to spell, may be frustrated into bad behavior. This is compounded by finding they have no job opportunities, from never having been given the keys to knowledge, by way of written English. They may be "prepared" to graduate from anti-social behavior, in the classroom, to crime in the outside world.

### Who was John Downing and what was his finding?

To top

In Britain, Dr Mont Follick eventually won The Case For Spelling Reform (as his posthumous book was called). Joined by Sir James Pitman, of the short-hand family fame. he led a back-bench campaign in parliament against the combined opposition of the Churchill and Attlee front benches.

This was an epic battle of back-benchers against the most powerful front-benches of post-war Britain. Incredibly, they wrung-out of the government a promise to see whether children would learn better by starting with a simplified spelling alfabet.

The government agreed on school trials of the Initial Teaching Alfabet. ITA is still some way off a one-letter one-sound alfabet. But the idea was to start children off with a considerably more rational version of the English alfabet, to help them pick-up writing more quickly and make an easy transition to ordinary English spellings, before they are stalled with all the extra spelling rules that conflict and confuse.

John Downing showed that starting children, with fewer and more consistent rules of spelling, helped them, as a stage towards mastering the complicated rules of conventional English spelling.

Downing led the government tests on ITA, which, on the whole, were positive. His research showed ITA gave a two years improvement in primary childrens literacy level.   
But he was to deeply regret that ITA introduced new letters to augment the Roman alfabet. Before he left for a post in Canada, this was reported, in the journal of the Simplified Spelling Society, edited by Chris Upward.   
The English Spelling Society is the descendant of this spelling reform organisation.

ITA has 43 (or 44) characters. 14 of those are unweildy two-letter combinations, joined together ("ligatured") as if they were one, following the old practise of making "ae" one letter, in a word like: mediaeval, now usually rendered: medieval. (As shown in Chamber's Twentieth Century Dictionary, published at the beginning of that century, with a moderate but definitely progressive attitude to spelling reform.) Four more of these combined letters followed the practise of adding letter, e, to one of the five vowels.

Further discussed, below, is this inconsistent use of letter, e, not only as a vowel but as an accent, to distinguish five dipthongs from five vowels.

Mont Follick used no new letters. He ran a language school, bombed-out during the war. He knew that people don't like to learn long alfabets. ITA over-looked that teachers and parents, to say nothing of the children, would not take to a lot of unnecessary new letters.

After the untimely death of Mont Follick, his old comrade James Pitman did not act on this wisdom. His grandfather, Isaac Pitman invented a short-hand with a long alfabet.

If anything, Pitman ITA exceeded convention in its zeal to appear correct, with the superfluous fonetic distinctions he made. I know this was an issue, from a teacher, I asked, when ITA was falling-out of use, in the early 1970s.

He was a nice man was Sir James Pitman, and wrote back to me, as a young man, into spelling reform. But the cruel truth is that ITA was a sadly botched construct, as so often is the case with supposedly democratic reforms. (I know, I also have been an electoral researcher/reformer.)

James Pitman distanced himself from the notion he was introducing spelling reform. It was all too understandable that he did not want to antagonise the still highly conventional society of post-war Britain.

One has to remember that in the early 1960s, literacy education still had exacting ideas of "correctness" that really hindered, rather than helped, people to communicate. One dialect was standard (BBC English). Tony Harrison recounts, in his poems, how Yorkshire dialect was purged from his education. In the 1930s, Broad Yorkshire was banned from my mothers classmates.   
And only one spelling was supposed to be correct: the dictionary of Dr Samuel Johnson, 1755). However, the correct dialect and the correct spelling were somewhat haphazardly related.

To conventional spellers of English, a spelling mistake is a disgrace. Even in the late 1990s, the New British Library, on opening, "blushed with shame" for spelling "heritage" with three e's! (This mis-spelling may be an example of the over-weening influence of the letter, e, not only as a vowel, but as an accent, after the vowels, to turn them into dipthongs.) That attitude belongs to an unquestioning age of authority. The purpose, here, is more sensible spelling to make English literacy available to all.

### Against the e-accent.

To top

Failure to agree, by spelling reformers of English (who don't all have English as their first language) is caused largely by two distractions.   
A lesser distraction is the pattern (regular but not rational) of adding the letter, h, to some other letter to make a digraf. This precedent encouraged the use of two letters where one letter will do. We could well do without digrafs (digraphs) ph and gh, and other cases.

From the point of view of learning literacy, tho, the digraf, th, is not much of a problem. However, this is a question of relaxing the condition for the most basic alfabet to establish literacy with one-letter one-sound.

The more serious trap, for spelling reformers, is to follow the pattern of spelling dipthongs, introduced by William Caxton, the first English printer, from about 1477. He put _e_ on the end of a word to change a vowel, in a word, to a dipthong. The letter, e, for this purpose, has little linguistic or literary significance, other than that it is a vowel, of which Caxton happened to have a type surplus. The English language has been suffering from this technological limitation of the primeval press, ever since.

Using letter, e, as an accent to turn a vowel, into a dipthong, has no scholarly or academic justification. It is purely the result of a technical hitch that won't go away, or a chronic case of technical hiccups. English has had half a millenium of illiteracy hiccups with the e-accent for dipthongs.

I learned from pamflets of the Simplified Spelling Society (SSS). But, early in the twentieth century, their, "Nue Speling" adopted the Caxton e-accent for all dipthong spellings. The mistake was to adopt a regularity without rationality.

ITA followed the same unhappy practise and compounded the problem by ligaturing the dipthongs, so the two vowels looked like "Siamese twin" letters.  
Was it possible to do any worse?

The very first word of the SSS reform, nue, shows the short-coming of this e-accent approach. Much better to keep the spelling, new, which has a semblance of fonetic accuracy. Words, like new; few, crew, are useful for illustrating and introducing a fonetic rule, that could replace the dud oo-digraf, as in fool, with the spelling, fwl. This resembles the Anglo-Welsh word, cwm. (It is in the West country novels of Mary Webb, maps of the area, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary.)

Some spelling reformers and conventional spellers may think that giving-up the Caxton spellings is too big a departure from convention.   
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. English is a fonografic (phonographic) language. That means English is written by sound. Whatever fashions, in English pronunciation, may come and go, any English word can be remembered as a combination of sounds.

Examples of the e-accent dipthongs rule are: from _mad_ to _made_ ; _cod_ to _code_ ; _wed_ to _weed_ ; _rid_ to _ride_ ; _cut_ to _cute_.

Three objections to e-accent dipthongs: Firstly, they are not fonetic. The Caxton e-accent digrafs cannot depend on an appreciation of how vowels combine to make dipthongs. The e-accents have to be learned by rote - dumbly, as it were.

Learning, as a rule, is intelligence first, only then backed-up by habit, to release intelligence to learn new things. Forgetting the arbitrary e-accent rules, one cannot go back to first principles to remember foneticly the formation of dipthongs from vowel combinations.

Secondly, the e-accent spellings do not help learning other languages. Their lack of sound logic is naturally not acceptable to foreigners. A Spanish linguist, writing in the Spelling Progress Bulletin, dismissed the English aberration of letter, e, as an accent for distinguishing dipthongs from vowels.   
One day, there may be a standard Roman alfabet for all the languages of Europe and their overseas counter-parts. Caxton-ruled English spelling reformers are too parochial.

Thirdly, the e-accent dipthongs don't always look familiar even to English readers, when used consistently. For instance, e-accent spelling reformers render _made_ as _maed_ ; _ride_ as _ried_ ; _code_ as _coed_ ; _rude_ as _rued_.

Both made/maid become: maed. Better, you leave "maid" as it is. Some people, southerners, pronounce: maid, as it is spelt.

Words like: coed, maed, tempts one to think and say: co-ed, ma-ed. "Rued" is also the past tense of "rue" This comes close to revealing the nonsense - the non-sense - of making a foneme double as an accent: the accent, e, will be pronounced, as if it is still the vowel, e. The confusion of usage may be unconscious but it could take place, in peoples minds, every time the fonetic logic of the language over-comes the ad hoc usage of letter, e, as an accent.

The following example may or may not be quite fitting but it illustrates, well enough, the possibly sub-conscious mental process of spelling a word more foneticly than is the custom. The word, friend, is usually pronounced "frend" but I've heard it pronounced as it looks to sound: "fri-end." The difference was not very noticable. (The Chris Andrews song, To Whom It Concerns, starts something like: "Ma fri-ends, please hear me do,..")  
English used to be pronounced more as it is spelt, and the older fashions sometimes persist locally.

Of course, learners should know about the Caxton spelling convention, when they have to come to terms with it, in ordinary usage. Let that be an optional later stage to the peculiar anarchy that passes for literacy in English.

### Cut Speling.

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English has too many letters to many of its words.  
Research has shown a main source of spelling confusion is over repetition of letters. It is easy to see why repeated letters are a source of confusion, because they rarely have any fonetic basis. Medieval copyists of manuscripts were paid by the letter and repeating letters was one way of boosting their fees.

Especially suspect are monstrosities like "though" and "through." I ceased these spellings, as soon as I didn't have an editor correcting me. (Rejection was the standard mode of correction, I received.)   
Repeated letters have less to do with scholarship than scam. Americans have somewhat reduced repeated consonants. We should, in all honesty, tolerate doing away with spelling the same letter twice for no fonetic reason. Equally, we should tolerate the conventional spellings.

Valerie Yule, Australian academic and Simplified Spelling Society member, advocated "Cut Speling." That is the practise of leaving-out unneeded letters from ones spellings. There is some "Cut Speling" on the Internet. The linguist John Lyons noted "rhubarb" is now mostly spelt: rubarb.

Over the years, especially since putting-up web pages, I have had this in mind. I admit my pruning of dead letters has been modest, compared to what would be foneticly justified. I went little further than Teddy Roosevelt spelling reforms. I would like to do more (or rather less) but felt it might look too unfamiliar and off-putting to conventional spellers.

For convenience of reference, I put the Gettysberg address, in Cut Speling, after my SE transcription, below. The address is the standard text that spelling reformers use to demonstrate their new spelling systems.

It will be seen from this rendering into Cut Speling that its scope for reform is very limited. All the confusion of spelling rules are left in place. Worse still, the shearing of superfluous letters exposes our reliance on confusing spelling rules, especially with the e-accent. Yet the speling cuts still make the passage look strange enough. Evidently, our minds crave for familiarity, which inhibits change.

At the same time, adaptation is needed, when conservatism, by itself, fails so many learners. The moderate change, of the Cut Speling program, is a tempting proposition for the spelling reformer, who wants to encourage simpler spelling without putting-off people used to the conventional spellings.   
I think people used to be more intolerant of any change, when society still seemed to be relatively static. But they don't have to read anything that deviates from the conventional forms. And freedom of spelling is perfectly legal.

More-over, we all have a good idea of what letters don't add to the meaning of words, so this Cut Speling reform can be carried out fairly consistently, by any-one, without having to wait forever, on some central directive to follow certain new rules. Cut Speling has the potential to become a popular movement, and to become familiar and accepted, in its turn.

Every-one knows that language has to be learned young, or children, like the "wild boy" growing-up alone in the woods, never speak. They may pick-up odd words but have missed sentence construction.  
A mathematician, who became blind in later life, told me that he could never read braille fluently, because one lost that kind of capacity, by ones forties.

By inventing new alfabets, I found out the hard way that I never became fluent in them. The trouble even with established short-hands is that they take a big investment of time to acquire and keep up.

Therefore, spelling reform must work with convention. Adapted from earlier designs, going back to the Phoenicians, by an ancient people, renowned for their rational law, the Roman alfabet is the simplest of the great traditional alfabets. Since the nineteenth century, it has been accepted for international postal addresses.

### The ESP alfabet and common word code.

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How few letters do we need for a rational English alfabet? This is a proper technical question. We should not be put-off by fears that it will never work. Learned and high-placed professors said that about the steam engine and the aeroplane.

Vowel pronunciations shift in time and space. An orthography, based on the fashion in vowel speech, is a house built on sand. It will not stand. You've got to be a bit flexible and adaptive to all peoples needs. Let the conventional spellers spell conventionally. Let people spell rationally, if they are to spell at all. And if they graduate to conventional spelling, fine! Then the job's done. If not, that's fine, too. At least they've got a rational means of communicating that's much more efficient than existing spellings.

ESP or English Spelling Priorities are the main rules of English spelling, given priority over conflicting spellings, to secure a short but rational one-letter one-sound English alfabet. There are a minimum of new letters to learn.

The way that children learn their alfabet, or ABC, by reciting A, B, C, etc misses an important learning trick. The English language consists of about seventy to a hundred words, or more, that are repeated in about half of ordinary English speech or conversation. If you know those precious few words, you are literally half way to learning the content of average English speech.

Using thirty, or so, of the most common English words, as names for the letters of the English alfabet, makes up to thirty per cent, possibly one third, of ordinary English usage. Just the ten most common words make up one quarter of English speech.

So, let's recite the letters of the English alfabet, plus the most essential extra fonemes, drawing from the most common words in English speech.

Most of the letters of the ESP alfabet mean exactly what you would expect from the traditional English alfabet. Alfabet letters are given as abbreviations or code-letters for some of the most common English words. Occasionally, I have put up alternatives.

#### Word meanings of alfabet letters:

a: a/an   
b: be (am/is/are)   
c: she  
d: 'd/would/ did  
e: their/them   
f: if  
g: go   
h: he  
i: in  
j: judge/just  
k: co/can  
l: 'l/will/shall   
m: me/my   
n: 'n'/and   
o: of   
p: up/put   
r: her  
s: so   
t: it/to  
u: us/we   
v: 've/have   
w: who  
y: you   
z: as

#### Number short-hands:

3 = th/the  
0 = ou/"owe"   
1 = I (ai)   
8 = ei[ght]  
2 = to   
4 = or (as well as / rather than: for)

Numbers, which do not need capital key-board shift, might stand as single letters for fonemes.

Scots pronounce "her" as it is spelt, not having drifted away from traditional Northern English pronunciation, of foneme, r, which the south tends to pronounce, when after a vowel, as an unstressed vowel. For example: earn, verse, girl, work, turn.   
A short-hand tip is to leave out the preceding vowel, to convey an unstressed vowel before "r". Hence: rn, vrs, grl, wrk, trn. Sometimes, word, her, is pronounced 'er, with the vowel unstressed or neutral. In the Minder tv series, the dealer (George Cole) calls his wife: 'er in-doors.  
(For short-hand writers, a subsidiary code word for letter, r, could be: or. Whether the r short-hand means: her, alternatively, or, can be told from its context, in any given sentence.)

Old word-processing programs could automatically transform single letters to words of your choice. Whatever happened to them? Their disappearance is a great loss to both literacy learning and time saving. These progressive programs have been replaced by bloatware, with a lot of intrusive time-wasting functions.

Information technology has gone reactionary, with spell-checkers and grammar correcting, against thinking for oneself. (Admittedly, such computer tutoring is useful for people learning English.)  
A primitive, like myself, where technology is concerned, can still be a literacy progressive. Tho, I did use an Apple tablet, or ipad, to write my SE short-hand, as shown later in the book.

When efficient word-abbreviation programs were on the go, Prof. Abe Citron, the spelling reformer produced a list of one, two, three etc letter abbreviations for the commonest English words. (This appeared in the Spelling Progress Bulletin, whose archive can be found on-line.)

The main change, the ESP alfabet makes to the consonants, is that letter, c, is confined to its sound value, in words like ___social_ and _ocean_. And _c_ is made the code letter for: she, by far the commonest English usage of this foneme.

Following from this use of _c_ , the English digraf, ch, as in whi _ch_ , would be re-spelt: tc. Which = whitc or witc. Common word "which" can be the code-word for foneme, tc.

Personal pronouns are a basic group of words (as the ESP alfabet lay-out shows below). An example is word, they. The dipthong in: th _ey_ , is spelt foneticly. Mostly, it is not spelt so accurately, apart from words, like: vein. Most often, this dipthong is spelt with letter, a, as in: acorn; trade.

Letter, w, literally a double-u, also serves for the long-u dipthong. Hence, rwd = rude, cwt = coot.

By analogy, letter, y, is a sort of double-i, used in the way that the words, to the Elgar march, rhyme "glor _y_ " with "fr _ee_." In this case, rather than spell: free, as fry, which already is a word with a different meaning, there is the German word, frei. Or failing that, use my apostrophe convention of replacing the e-accent with an apostrofe. Hence, free = fre'.

The main new function, of letter, y, would be to replace: ee. Hence, wyd = weed; meet/mete = myt

However, these economies on the number of letters in the ESP alfabet produce minor oddities like: ww = woo. This is distinct from, say: wud = wood. The same-sounding word, would, could be rendered: wud, or as a short form: 'd. Traditionally, the short form, wd, is an option.

The code word for foneme, j, is: judge, which is the only code word to the ESP alfabet not to be found among (or even near) the 100 most common English words. (An option is word, just, which has a useful grammatical meaning or purpose, as a preposition.)

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* * *

### ESP Alfabet chart.

#### Personal words

Possess  
-ive ------ Subject -- Object

m: my ---I: I/eye -- (m: me)

\------------ h: he ------ (h: him)

r: her --- sh/c: she -- (r: her)

\------------ i: it ---------- (i: it)

au: our -- (u: we) --- u: us

\------------- y: you ----- (y: you)

e: their -- ei/ey: they -- (e: them)

#### Verbs

b: be

v: have/'ve

c/k: can

g: go

l: 'll/will/shall

d: 'd/would/did

#### Joining words etc

a: a/an ------- p: put/up

th/3: the ---- s: so

n: and/'n' --- z: as

o: of --------- 0: "owe"

f: if ----------- w: who

j: judge/just

tc: which

Each foneme is represented by a letter and a word. The word can be the name of the letter, just as the letters of the alfabet, in effect, have names when they are recited: A, B, C, etc. The value, of naming the letters of the alfabet, by the most common words, that use them, is that the single letters may stand as short-hand for these most common words in the language.

The dipthong, au, as pronounced in our/hour, does not have a single English letter.

Notice that the object section of personal words are all doubled for, by letters in the possessive or subject sections. This is standard short-hand practise. Also letter _e_ can double for: their/there. They can be distinguished by their different grammatical positions in a sentence. The same is true of the short-hand trick of using _b_ to mean either: be/by. And all the irregular forms, am, is, are, of the verb, to be, can be symbolised by letter, b.

People used to laf (laugh) at the colloquialism: I be from Somerset.  
Rather, we might emulate it.

So, the ESP alfabet includes about 25 of the 100 most common English words, or about 36 words, allowing for the double meanings of some letters, which can be distinguished by their grammatical functions in sentence construction.

* * *

### Half of English in 100 words

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10 words make up one-quarter of English usage (counting a/an as one word): and in to the I (= 1) that is of an it. This shortens to: n i 2 3 1 3t b o a t.

Half of demotic English usage is covered by some 100 words.   
So, it would be economic to make two or more letter shortenings for as many as possible of those 100 most common words, having coded all the single letters of the ESP alfabet.   
Four words with no single letters left to shorten them are: on, or, no, at. (The three-letter word, out, may be left unshortened, too, unless rendered: ot.) We might let number four, 4 = or, rather than: for.

#### 2-letter codes:

(Fairly clear in most of these 22 words.)

mn: man

wn: when

bt: but

md: made

al: all

bn: been, was, were.

tm: time

gd: good

af: after

sd: said

fr: from

mk: make

mt: might

lk: like

wt: what

hd: had

nt: not

yt: yet

hs: his

rt: right

sm: some

ti: till

#### 20 other letter pairs

(may not be so easy to guess:)

km: come

en: any

wr: where

tw: too

kd: could

na: now

sy: see

ts: its

ms: must

ov: over

w1: why

0n: own

mc: much

wc: which

m8: may

yn: even (e'en)

sc: such

nw: new

hr: here, hear

Note: number eight, 8 = ei/ey.

#### Some three-letter shortened words:

yor: your

onl: only

mor: more

mos: most.

sns: since

wel: well

abt: about

Number three, 3, stands in, for digraf, th, in some of the following common words given short-hand forms:

wi: with; o3: other; 3n: than, then; 3s: this; 3r: thru/ through; 3o: tho/though.

Likewise for these 3 four-letter shortenings that contain _th_ :

3os: those; 3ys: these; 3ng: thing.

Any list of unspecialised English from everyday speech, journalism or literature, compiled on a broad statistical basis, would mostly agree on the 100 most common words. Differences would be marginal.   
The above listed words total about 107, including different versions of the same word from irregular verbs.

I made my list firstly by consulting my own experience and backing my own intuition as to the most important words. But I became keen to check with other sources. Some included the prime vocabularies of various short-hand systems, and Basic English.   
The 100 word list, by Helen Fouché Gaines, in Cryptanalysis, comes to about 49% of their sample. A less conservative estimate is by John Dewey: half of popular English in 69 words. (He apparently drew on a limited sample of text, because his word list includes a relatively uncommon word, presumably on the subject of the passage, that Dewey happened to pick for his word count.)

These most common words are used, all the time, to support the vast number of less frequent words. That's why it's hard to make sense of them on their own, as the following nonsense verse shows. (Even then I cheated, using word, _might_ , not as the common supporting verb but as the noun for strength. That is, unless the supporting verb, might, is treated, or mistreated, as a noun: their might, meaning their potential.)   
The nonsense verse is first spelt in full:

### Half of English in a hundred words

Since man has been made, for how much its time  
can he or she go on, as we are, from here?  
A them-and-us will not do. Then, the one, well up,  
shall have most there is, so an-other, than him, had  
no-thing but be thru with it all, which some must now,  
til who two would, where could, come to good,  
that was his, tho her, own, by what you said,  
when their might may yet see out my, of your, right  
even our such, they, too, at first just,  
were in after, if only about: why  
should I like those new over me any more?

### Half of English in 100 words (abbreviated).

Sns mn v bn md, 4 hw mc ts tm  
kn h or c g on, z u b, fr hr?  
a e-n-u l nt do. 3n, 3 1, wel p,  
l v mos e b, s a-o3, 3n h, hd  
no-3ng bt b 3r wi t al, wc sm ms na,  
ti w 2 d, wr kd, km 2 gd,  
3t bn hs, 3o r 0n, b wt y sd,  
wn 3r mt may yt sy aut m, o yor, rt  
yn au sc, ey, tw, at 1st j,  
bn i af, f onl abt: wI  
d I lk 3os nw ov m en mor?

The above nonsense verse is a possible memory aid or mnemonic for short forms of about a hundred of the most common English words. I admit that not all these short forms are memorable, if some of them are.   
You will be aware what a riddle, the short-hand version looks. It cannot be sight-read, just as I had to admit that I could not sight read my own SE short-hand. In both cases, that does not mean we cannot learn to find them useful.

I give myself, as much as the reader, a chance to become familiar with those hundred words in Single-stroke English. Since these words are so common, it is convenient to abbreviate them, and learn their short forms. And that's half the English journey. (True, the going gets steeper, after that.)

### One hundred most common words   
in Single-stroke English  
plus short forms.

* * *

### English Past Tense Proposal

To top.

Perhaps the best next step would be to learn the 18 or so Basic English verbs, whose meanings can be expanded by a few simple qualifying words.   
CK Ogden and IA Richards devised Basic English as a simplified English for world wide use. They showed that English sentences could be constructed with just 18 of the commonest English verbs: come, get, give, go, keep, let, make, put, seem, take, be, do, have, say, see, send, may, will.   
(These 18 verbs combined with directive words, like: in, out, with, away, off, etc, may replace many compound verbs, that have prefixes.)

Only one of these 18 verbs has a regular past tense, adding _-ed_ : seemed. Generally the less used English verbs have this standard past tense.   
The English past tense proposal adds _'d_ to the subject of the verb, just as the future tense already adds _'ll_ (short for "will" or "shall") to the subject. "I'll go" is short for: "I will go" in English.

Hence, "I'd go" or "The man 'd go" could mean: "I would go" or "I did go" or "The man did go" as a substitute for: "I went" or "The man went." This avoids the need to learn or remember all the irregular past tenses of English.

The traditional distinction of past tense meaning between "I went" and "I would go" can be preserved, because only the abbreviated form, _'d_ is proposed as the supporting verb to put all English verbs in the past tense.   
Some traditional English writers avoid the short form as colloquial, so this regular past tense proposal for _'d_ would not conflict with their usage.

To top.

* * *

### Basic English verbs and directives  
in Single-stroke English with short forms

# How a humbl accent apostrofe can save English Literasy.

Table of contents

### How to solve the problem of illiteracy in English.

How to solve the problem of illiteracy in English?   
You give the fonetic values of the alfabet free rein, by getting rid of the use of letters as accents (aksents). Such letters can be called silent letters, because they themselves are not pronounced but appear in a word to tell you that a preceding vowel must be pronounced as a certain dipthong. Thus, the letter, e, often at the end of a word, separated from the vowel it modifies, by a consonant. Also, the digraf, gh, in a small group of words, like: right, as well as: rite; might, as well as: mite.

Sometimes, the silent letters no longer fulfil any distinct function: word, give, is just as clear spelt: giv. Word, thought, might be spelt, as in Glasgow pronunciation: thot.

Letters, as aksents, have no "literary" value, whatever apologists for the status quo mean by that. They are purely the product of a technical hitch from the Caxton printing press. The letter, e, was the surplus type, he happened to have, to distinguish vowels from dipthongs. It's no more "literary" a device than being stuck with the qwerty keyboard, from mechanical typewriters.

A contemporary Caxton likely would be among the first to say good-bye to the Caxton e-accent, given our options on the computer key-board.

Medieval copyists were paid by the letter and so made words longer than necessary. Redundant letters are not "literary," but mercenary!   
Repeated letters (I should say: leters) have been identified as one of the main obstacles to so-called correct spelling. We are thoughtless copyists of copyists sharp practise, in not dropping them.  
As you see, I am haphazard in cutting repeated letters. I have found that consistency doesn't improve with age (at least, not such petty consistency).

### Consistent consonants.

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There are a few redundant letters in the English alfabet. These stumbling blocks, to learners, could be fairly easily removed.   
The reform rules would be:

Replace q with k: question spelt kuestion.  
Replace x with ks: ex spelt eks; excel spelt eksel.

Let c = k, so that either letter is allowed without prejudice, as is sometimes the case in practise: Celtic or Keltic. Notice that the confusion of sometimes pronouncing c as k and sometimes as s, has resulted in Celtic being pronounced: Seltic.

So, another rule is to always spell s-pronounced letter, c, with an s. Thus, word, literacy, spelt: literasy.

Why do we not get rid of letter, k, as well? Because letter, c, may be needed for the foneme, spelt as digraf, sh, in word, she. That is to keep our options open when a European or World Roman Alfabet comes to be considered.

Other redundancies to remove. Always spell ph as f: physics as fysics or fisics; phoneme = foneme; graph = graf; apostrophe = apostrofe. This would be consistent with some continental practise.

Likewise, digraf, gh, is sometimes pronounced f, and could easily be spelt so, without much disturbing the look of English, while removing traps for the unwary learner.

A third -h digraf, wh, would not be much missed, in truth. Let: which = wich. This has the same pronunciation as: witch, where there is no letter, h, after the double-u.

For the time being, it would be convenient to keep unchanged digraf, ch, which is equivalent to: tsh. This is especially so, should a World Roman Alfabet adopt: sh = c. Then the group of ch/tch fonemic spelings would become: tc. For example: fetch = fetc; witch/which = witc.

Another easy consistency would be to spell: j, always instead of dg, and sometimes instead of: g. For example: judge becomes juj; and gauge reforms to: gauj.  
However, there would be some merit in retaining the g-spelling, tho no longer fonetic in English, when it is still fonetic in German, as in the name, Angela Merkel.

It doesn't matter if you aren't completely consistent in speling. No-one is very consistent in life. It matters that all people should have a chance of making themselves reasonably understood. And it is common courtesy that deviations from spelling orthodoxy be tolerated for that purpose.   
And if you don't like my spelings, you don't have to read them.

### Vowels and dipthongs sorted by an Aksent Apostrofe.

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Getting English consonants spelt consistently is not an over-whelming problem. Most of my life, I have assumed, as a speling reformer, that the over-whelming problem was with the vowels and dipthongs.

Now I look at these dipthongs, as King Knut (Canute, as they spelt his name when I was a child) looked at the tides. Of course, they got the story wrong at school. He was regarded as an old fool who thought he could order back the tides. The true story is that he showed his credulous subjects that was what he could not do.

Likewise, speling can never fix the vowel shifts of speech over the generations. It is as pointless to reform the speling of dipthongs as it is to try to hold back the tides. Hence the Knut principle of conservative vowel and dipthong speling. Those spelings will slowly change, too, almost unconsciously in the course of common practise, as always. Some disregarded fogy (not me) may complain about them but they will only high-light accepted (aksepted) changes.

We may unconsciously pronounce dipthongs the way they are spelt, in order to remember them, even if that is not the fashionable pronunciation. And if some learner pronounces words as they sound, rather than according to fashion, the literate still know what the uninitiated person means. And that is enuf (enough)! Language is for communication, even if it is also used to exclude some from an inner circle of initiates. A democrat would like to see English available to all who want to learn it.

The biggest ambiguity in English spelling, and therefore the greatest confusion, is the legacy of limitations to the first English printing press. William Caxton added his most common letter, e, to distinguish dipthongs from vowels. We can use the apostrofe instead.

Sometimes, the extra letter, e, is spelt when the word is no longer pronounced as a dipthong. In that case, the extra, e, can be cut without putting an apostrofe in its place. For example: more = mor.

Reformers don't spel much more simply, because they don't want to put-off people from reading them, defeating the object of writing at all, which is to communicate. Some people scarcely tolerate any deviation from their idea of an orthography, as if it were a degradation of standards. This appears to be nothing more than the thoughtless force of inertia.

Still, human inertia, like physical inertia, is a powerful force and must be treated with respect or at least prudence. In speling reform, the dilemma has always been how to make English reasonable enuf for the great majority to understand, without revolting the traditionalists.

Another trouble is that, as with most proposals, most speling reforms are naive. The world is full of half-baked solutions. I have been disagreeing with myself for forty years of changing ideas about speling - not to mention other reforms and research.

I think there has to be some compromise between tradition and reform. Some petty correctors are never going to be pleased or appeased. The hope is that most people will tolerate speling changes that are eventually realised to be well-considered.

This is the goal of my apostrofe reform. It's a big enuf simplification to improve literacy levels, without losing touch altogether with traditional forms of spelling.  
This is what would be involved:

Caxton uses of letter-e would be replaced with an apostrofe, which would mean that the vowel letter in the word is a dipthong, ending in i-pronunciation for the front vowels, i, e, a; and ending in -u for the back vowels, u, o.

The front vowels are those pronounced by the tongue, nearest to the dental ridge. Vowel, i, is the closest; vowel, a, is open. Vowels are distinguished from consonants by the fact that consonants are made by touching distinct positions inside the mouth, the vocal cavity, whereas vowels are made by the tongue in a more or less clear passage (under the roof of the palate).

This lack of precise positioning, in vowel pronunciation, allows for shifts in the pronunciation of vowels, and especially dipthongs, much more than in consonants. Languages originally didn't even write down the vowels. Speling reformers need to allow for the fact that spelings cannot keep chasing the shifts in the speling of dipthongs in words. Least confusing to keep to conventional dipthong spelings, so far as practical.

Going thru the dipthongs distinguished by the use of letter, e, added as an accent (aksent), and replaced with an apostrofe:

Thus: ga'v for gave. The fonetik speling is : geiv, in received pronunciation. The southern English or Australian pronunciation, gaiv, is right by fonetic standards.

Whereas, word, give, could be spelt: giv, because it is not pronounced as a dipthong.

The dipthong, ee = e'. Thus: e'l = eel. If e'l stood for eil, it would sound, in northern or received pronunciation, like words, ale or ail. We don't worry about this, if only because word, e'l, is distinct from: ale = ail = a'l, when it spels as it sounds, or is fonetic, by southern pronunciation.

An option, I prefer, would be to spel the dipthong, that approximately sounds like ii, as in eel, with letter, y: yl for eel. That is to say, y becomes the letter, double-i, just as w is double-u. Then: sy = see. As in the words to the Elgar march, glory rhymes with free.  
For single syllable words like: my, by, why etc, only some northern dialect preserves this rhyme, whereby word, by, sounds the same as word, be.  
Short-hands make letter, b do double service for be and by, because which is meant can be understood from the context.

Consider: 'il = aisle/isle/I'll. And: r'it = rite/write/right/wright. It would be alright to leave in the (in modern parlance) unsounded letters, w-, just to distinguish meanings.   
Note, in this case, of dipthong, ai, that it is the first vowel, a, of the dipthong that is missing and so the apostrofe is put before the second vowel, i, to show this.

Also, note that the digraf, gh, when silent, sometimes serves to mark a dipthong.

Let: o' = oh/owe. Thus: to' = toe. There is no need to change words, like soul or own, because they are spelt much as they sound.  
A single character key-board option, would be to let 0 = ou = o'.

Let: tru' = true; su' = sue.   
An option would be to let letter, w, actually serve as a double-u. That is let: w = uu. Thus: two = tw; who = hw.  
It would be desirable to replace digraf, oo, with w. Thus: too = tw; moon = mwn.

Finally, there is the possibility of some minor confusion with the use of the apostrofe for the possessive cases of singular and plural spellings. For example: His one brother's friend; his few brothers' friend.   
Bernard Shaw confided that he had got away without using the possessive apostrofes, for many years in his published writings, without anyone ever noticing.

The speling reform of an aksent apostrofe for dipthongs, with the options of double-u and double-i for long-u and long-i, are summed-up in the following chart.

#### The apostrofe dipthongs; also double-u & double-i.

a is for arm, ankle   
a..e = a' = ai. pale = pa'l (fonetic in southern English)

e is for elbow   
e' as in free = fre' (or: see = sy).   
machine = machi'n;   
field (unchanged).

i is for in-step   
'i = ai -- is for I/eye;   
smile = sm'il.

o is for orb.   
o' = oe -- as in: toe; hope = ho'p.

u is for upper

ue = u' -- as in: true = tru'; two = tw.  
hue = h'u; due = d'u   
new [unchanged]; noon = nwn.

Notes:

Southern pronunciation refers to south of England, especially Cockney and the southern continent (Australia), whose fonetic pronouncing of word, same, is: saim = sa'm. The apostrofe here stands for vowel, i. I don't put in the vowel, because the apostrofe shows that a soundless letter, e (sometimes a soundless digraf, gh) has been omited from the spelling of the word.

The traditional or northern pronunciation of word, same is: seim (like: they or vein). But where possible I defer to conventional spellings, not to add to the burden of changes needed to make English spelling understood to ones free intelligence, instead of having to depend on arbitrary authority.

### How far is a Compromis Speling practical?.

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A previous attempt at compromise, I called Kompromis Speling, along with an Index of pages in its speling system. These pages, on my Democracy Science web-site, may still be useful to people wanting to learn the relation of (fairly standard) English speech to spelling. But I have modified those spelling reforms.

I would have to preface a page in my more recent Compromis Speling with an explanation, preferably simpler than the following:

This page is in Compromis Speling:

1) Consistent consonants (except c, which allows option, k; "soft" c always spelt s; ph & sounded gh spelt f; wh spelt w; dg spelt j.)  
2) Generally, doubled letters and silent letters left out.

3) An apostrofe, to show a dipthong, mainly replacing dipthong accent-e.  
Apostrofe after a, a', pronounced like personal pronoun, I; (ate = a't; male = ma'l. Both fonetic in "southern" English).   
Apostrofe before: i, stands for: a (site/sight = s'it; right/rite = r'it).

After u, o, the apostrofe stands for: u (true = tru'; toe = to').   
Before u, apostrofe stands for i, (in British English, rather than American); due = d'u.   
Few; dew...(unchanged).  
Letter, w, replaces digraf, oo: zoo = zw.

Letter, y, or e', replaces digraf, ee.   
But, for example, word, bee, as: be' because "by" is already another word, the preposition, by.

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# World Roman Alfabet (WRA).

Table of contents

### The double bluf of Euro-English.

In 1999, I suggested, that the European Commission regularise the fonetics of the Roman alfabet.

In 2002, it went round the web that so-called Euro-English spelling has been regularised with the agreement of the British government. Along with some sensible spelling reforms, other proposals made English sound as if spoken with a stage-German accent.

It was taken as read, in our local news-paper. I mentioned it to a linguist. It was plain she disapproved, soon remarking, half to herself, in a bit of a huff: It must be a joke.

I told her that I checked, wider afield, on the local news report. And she was right. It was a joke. The reporter had been taken-in by a hoax.  
The linguist was not amused. The specialist may not like having her feathers ruffled.

Some people may have been taken-in by Euro-English "reforms." As people realise they have been fooled, they will think there is no such thing as Euro-English. In that case, they will fall for a double bluf. (This was the expression of a friend, when I told her this laughable - lafabl - story.)

Euro-English is an ironic name given to the simplifying of English grammar and spelling, by the multi-lingual membership of the European Union. Euro-English has become an object of academic study.

A similar assimilation of English happened in the cultural melting pot of immigration to the United States. Way back in Anglo-Saxon England, a like process created early English.

I've discussed, in a previous book, that language is unity in diversity. The famous example of the Inuit, having seventy words for snow, explains that language is knowledge, and like knowledge, it becomes specialised. That is why we seek and preserve languages. They are of unique historical and cultural value.

English schools used to persecute its own dialects, like Broad Yorkshire, a language in its own right. English is one of the world languages but is no substitute for any other. English readily adopts words from other languages, which means that it is a language that will change out of recognition, but which also means it is a living, adapting language.

Some continentals (who are really the insular ones) have spurned English because it does not style itself as a classic language. Classic language seeks to designate new experiences, in terms of its preconceptions. English accepts foreign words that are as new as the experiences themselves.

The classic approach is exemplified by a character, in The First Circle, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. There is no word in Russian for Capitalism, so he substitutes the Russian word for usury, to keep the language purely Russian.

### World Roman Alfabet. (WRA).

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An English Spelling Alfabet is not much different from a basic World Roman Alfabet.   
A common Roman alfabet for all European languages wouldn't necessarily be carried-out by the European Union, which doesn't include all Europe. And European languages are world-wide.

In any case, I would expect a European or world agreement will have the foneme represented in English, sh, and in French, ch, alloted the single letter, c, as part of a one-sound one-letter World Roman Alfabet.

My ESP alfabet adopted c, as in "ocean" or "social." Letter, c, is often associated with that sound in many European nations alfabets. To give but three examples, French: chef; German: schnapps; Italian: Puccini.   
It would be useful if the European Union designated _c_ as the standard letter for the foneme in _sh_ e or _ch_ ez. [I first wrote this in 1999.]  
We could spell digraf, ch, in "church" (which sounds like tsh) as tc. Thus: church = tcurtc. "Fetch" becomes: fetc.

Having said all that, I am ready to concede that English teachers of foniks probably would prefer to start with "sh" as in "she," the word which makes the most common use of this foneme.

Another option, that might be possible, at least in English, is not to use foneme, sh. Instead of speling: social = soshal = socal, a good approximation would be sh = si. Consonants, s and sh, belong to the so-called fricative (or frictional) group of sounds that hiss or shush!

Thus: social = sosial; ocean = osean. This is because the foneme, sh, is pronounced by the tongue at a mid-point between consonant, s, and vowel, i. That is why you hear a word, like appreciate, sometimes pronounced like: appreshiate, or sometimes: appresiate.

However, I don't think this quite comes off. How would one spel word, she? Possibly, she = sie, might do. But what of: show = siow? etc.

The voiced version of English consonant, sh, (pronounced like "ch" in the anglicised French word, chef) is French j. A World Roman Alfabet letter, j, would refer to French j rather than English j. This is because English j is really pronounced like French j preceded by foneme, d. You get a sense of this from English speling, comparing, for example, French: juge, to English equivalent word: judge. In fonetik terms, English sounds like: djudj, compared to French.

The fact that the English and French pronounce their letter j differently doesn't cause much, if any, confusion of meaning. The similarity of pronunciation is perhaps great enuf to be just a pleasing difference of accent in the two nations. There is no more need for English j and French j to be spelt differently than there is for them to be pronounced identicly.

Foneme, th, has dedicated letters, for the breathed and voiced versions, in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon. But this is unusual. They have dropped out of English usage. Not all English dialects distinguish between the breathed and voiced versions of "th" that exist in English speech and it doesn't hinder communication not to make the distinction.

Foreigners find foneme, th, hard to pronounce, but we understand them and the various English dialects that only pronounce it approximately. Foreign speakers of English tend to use substitute fonemes. French speaking people often use foneme, z, instead. Indeed, some English dialects also use alternatives, like fonemes, t or d.

The word, the, is three-quarters of English use for this foneme. Some languages, like Russian, don't have a definite article and foreigners often leave it out, even when speaking English. So do newspaper caption writers.

So, for an early-learning alfabet, one need not bother to replace digraf, th, with a single letter.  
The foneme, th, is probably not important enuf, for strictly practical purposes, to be more than an auxiliary letter, in a World Roman Alfabet (as distinct from the International Phonetic Alfabet: IPA).

Roman letter, X, awaits a distinct fonetik meaning, called chi, in the Greek alfabet. This influenced the Cyrillic (mainly Russian and partly Balkans) alfabet, which also includes this foneme, as a similar letter, like x. It is the foneme,"ch" in the German name of Bach. And in Scottish pronunciation of loch. And in the German (or Scottish) word: nacht.  
It isn't needed for the English language but might become the standard meaning for x, as an auxiliary letter, in a World Roman Alfabet (WRA).

A certain fonemic affinity can be charted, in an undulating line or wave, across the breadth of Europe, separating north from south speech patterns. The fonetician Eustace once sent me a map of this. Most curious.   
I have wondered whether this contributes to an unconscious affinity between Scots, like Nicola Sturgeon, and the European Union with its northern leadership (as well as the historic ties between Scotland and France).

Foneme, x, is a fricative consonant made, at the back of the vocal cavity, above the wind-pipe. Being out of the way, from the main center or cluster of speech production, guarantees its marginal importance in human speech. So, x = chi is really only an auxiliary letter in a possible World Roman Alfabet.

I would expect a World Roman Alfabet to assign x the foneme that it stands-for in the Greek and Cyrillic (mainly Russian) alfabets. But I don't include x, for basic teaching purposes. The Scots and the Welsh might use x, if only as an auxiliary foneme. Richard Burton pronounces this foneme in his reading of "Under Milk Wood" by Dylan Thomas.

The foneme, ng, doesn't have its own letter in English but is spelt with two letters, which, however, approximate that sound fairly well. e.g.: word, finger, conventionally pronounced, tho not spelt: "fingger."

I remember, at primary school, a class-mate who did not appreciate the distinction, and always said "finger" with just the ng-foneme. Perhaps the word bothered him, as if it were buzzing in his head, like some pedantic pest pronunciation, from which, he was trying to shake himself free.

There still is a tendency for foneme, ng, to fall out of use in some American English, as in the expression: huntin shootin 'n' fishin. (Note: 'n' = and).

To keep as simple as possible, I go along with conventional usage in basicly ignoring what is a foneme of very marginal use in English. Victorian pedantry is said to have insisted on the redundant and fading "ng" distinction in English speech.

I put this foneme, as an auxiliary in a projected World Roman Alfabet. It is of more importance in other languages, especially in Africa. But a UN committee might decide this extra foneme isn't worth the lengthening of a Basic WRA.

People prefer to learn short alfabets and that remains true of a world alfabet, designed to engage all humanity.

It is also possible that an existing letter, like h, which has fallen out of use in some languages, may be demoted to auxiliary status in a WRA. French still spels letter, h, but doesn't pronounce the h sound. (This is as in the BBC comedy of the French resistance: 'allo, 'allo.)

English dialects vary in whether or not they pronounce: h. Some say: herbs. Others say: erbs. Ancestors of the latter speakers carried the pronunciation, erb, to the United States.

It may be that the main consonants will be confined to the sounds made to the fore of the mouth, not those consonants far back from the central speech-making position of the dental ridge, just behind the teeth. (Tho theta, or th, is likely to be side-lined because foreigners find this tongue-to-teeth foneme difficult, and it is not a wide-spread consonant in world language.)

Perhaps, the border-line consonant, in a WRA, will be c = sh and its voiced version, French j. All the consonants far back in the vocal cavity, like h, ng, x = Greek chi, may be relegated to auxiliary status. These consonants require vocalisation away from the main traffic of the tongue, which is the main work-horse of speech, in the closely packed positions to the fore of the mouth. Therefore, far-back consonants may cumulatively slow down speech, and being less efficient, less used.

The far-back consonants that won't be relegated to auxiliary status are breathed and voiced pair of fonemes k and g. They belong to that group of consonants called plosives. As the term suggests, it is an emfatic sound. And therefore has the advantage of being easily heard, so that people are more likely to catch this foneme, and correctly identify the word it is in. So, these far-back consonants nevertheless have a time-saving value, because of the strong nature of the sound, if not its position in the vocal cavity.

This is less true of other far-back consonants, which belong to less strong sound classifications: ng belongs to the so-called nasal sounds (where the passage of air thru the nose affects the pronunciation); and the two sounds: x = ch (German/Scottish), also h, both belong to the fricative group of sounds. The term, fricative comes from the tongue approaching the palate to allow thru a hiss of air friction.

These are the kind of options a commission on a WRA would have to consider for a stream-lined universal medium of communication. I hope they do the job well. If they don't, the general public will not necessarily follow suit, at least without qualification. A good job has a better chance of gaining eventual acceptance.

There is always my own efforts to fall back on!   
I actually did look at a phrase book of world languages, not just Lyall: Languages of Europe. It's a long time ago but I didn't find any other very wide-spread consonant to add to the basic European complement to a possible World Roman Alfabet.   
After all, humanity has the same vocal equipment.

That doesn't mean to say that an international committee might not suggest an addition or so. But it would better justify its existence by a minimal, rather than a barnacled, WRA. I hope there are no academic or political additions for reasons of pedantry or local prestige.

The letter, q, can be left as a spare for new uses. When it came to devising a Europe-wide or a world-wide Roman Alfabet, the letter, q, could become a bone of contention between any competitors for the most important unassigned foneme in global speech. It probably would be best to leave it out of the basic world alfabet, as an unassigned auxiliary, keeping down unnecessary letters (tho that might be a test of will power).

As for the vowels and their combinations, these more or less open speech sounds, which don't touch any exact position in the vocal cavity, are prone to historic shifts in pronunciation. The shift from Northern to Southern English pronunciation is from close to more open vowels (making for more relaxed and easier speech).

Languages didn't originally have letters for vowels. The five English vowels crudely map a triangle of tongue positions in the vocal cavity. The letter, a, is perhaps the vaguest of the five, making do for two fairly distinct, forward and backward, open tongue position sounds, that an English speaker, such as myself, doesn't really notice, because they serve no meaningful differences, in my native language.

With regard to common dipthongs, German is confusing, in using the less consistent spelling, ei, as pronouncing: ai. So, the name, Einstein, literally "one stone," ein stein, logic would spell: ain stain.

The unrelated English word, stain, would only be pronounced foneticly in southern speech. (Standard or received English speech would pronounce, as "stein," the word spelt, stain.)

There is a mid-point between the five vowels, known as the central vowel or neutral vowel or unstressed vowel. It is the sound in the indefinite article, a, only when unstressed. It approximates the exclamation, uh! or uh? (only when unstressed) suggesting puzzlement or not understanding what some-one has said.

Unstressed vowels occur in much natural or relaxed speech, with the tongue drifting to the central vowel position, instead of bothering to always find the five close or open positions to back and front of the palate in the vocal cavity.

However, from the point of view of writing, we don't need an extra vowel to make ourselves understood. Indeed, it suppresses a written clue to the word used, when it replaces any one of the stressed vowels.

### Note on a World Pictografic Alfabet.

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It may not be appreciated, at least in the West, that world language cannot be just a fonografic language.

Oliver Sacks, writing on deafness, made me realise that deaf people were given a hard time, by having to learn sign language based on fonetik signs rather than picture signs.

Picture language is much more assimilable, potentially allowing communication in a very short time, days, over-night almost. That might apply not only between foreigners but even between aliens from different planets.

Perhaps there will be some United Nations commission into a World Pictografic Language. Conceivably, it might be chaired by a deaf Chinese pictografic sign linguist.

Anne Glyn-Jones gives us an insight into the power of mime, in her history of the theater, Holding Up A Mirror. She quotes an ancient Roman astonished at a performer who effectively talked with his hands.

American native sign language, which transcends many spoken dialects, can be powerfully expressive of co-operation, with compelling intuitive meanings.

The foto albums of Marilyn Monroe generally make me pick them up to flick thru, because of the emotional language of her complexions and expressions; body language that I don't understand intellectually but which still convey some mysterious message. This may have something to do with bringing out the poet in a man.

When I was young, the time when you think you have forever to look into everything, I might have tried think of a pictografic alfabet translatable into hand signs. Never the less, I recognise that a pictografic language is an essential feature of world language.   
Motion pictures may be harnessed to visual sign language. Pictograms may be made of holograms.

It is perhaps significant of the human condition of conflict and social parasitism, that so little progress has been made in manifest picture communication between people, who cannot speak the same language. And what we fail to achieve in intra-species communication, we will fail, all the more surely and tragically, in adapting to other intelligent life forms, on other planets (not to mention our own).

Crossing the communication barriers is part of the democratic problem of preventing the public interest being subverted by vested interests controling governments. The language of representative democracy is curtailed, in democratically deficient elections, that do not suffer the true voice of the people to be heard. And that voice cannot be based on sound or sensible judgment, without removing impediments to free communication between all peoples.

### Passage from Milton: Areopagitica, and speling reform transcript.

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What would ye do then? Should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves.

Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may despatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to you, and excite others? Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton: Areopagitica (1644).

### Possible transcript of previous passage, preceded by a caution.

Milton himself was a speling innovator. The following transcript is not meant to be the only way. I am not setting up a new orthography or dogmatic right way to spel. Indeed it is not possible to be perfectly consistent, nor desirable to be pedanticly consistent, but only where important issues of principle are at stake.   
English needs to be fairly consistent, much more consistent than it is, because the principle of a republic of letters is at stake, where there is universal suffrage of literasy, where almost everyone can read and write.

Some of the spelings follow my page on how to use the apostrofe, instead of adding letter, e, like an accent, to each of the 5 vowels to denote 5 dipthongs.  
Otherwise, I mostly let alone dipthong spelings. They may not be reliable guides to pronunciation. But pronouncing the conventional speling may be enuf to make oneself understood by the sympathetic English speaker!  
I have cut some repeated letters and some silent letters that merely clutter words.

I have used, for dipthong in personal pronoun, I, or words, aisle/isle, number one, 1, because it looks like letter, I, but does not need a key-board shift to upper case. The personal pronoun, I, is left unchanged. But the foneme, that word, I, pronounces, is otherwise given as number, 1, which may be thought of as letter, i, with the dot joined to the stem, to distinguish words: lit, from light = l1t; sin, from sign/sine = s1n.  
Leter, c = sh.   
Number 3 is short for foneme, th.

The reformers aim is a balance or compromise of convention with consistency. My speling pages show how I have wavered, over the years, in trying to strike the right balance, to achieve a more wide-spread literasy.

Short-hand, or less letters to write, is also a consideration. And the two aims help each other, to some extent.

### From: Areopagitica.

Wat wud ye do 3en? Cud ye supres al 3is flowery krop of nolej and nw l1t sprung up and yet springing daily in 3is sity? Cud ye set an oligarky of twenty engrosers over it, to bring a famin upon our minds again, wen we cal n0 no3ing but wat is mesured to us by 3er bucel? Believ it, Lords and Komons, 3ey hw kounsel ye to sutc a supresing do as gud as bid ye supres yorselvs; and I wil swn c0 how. If it be desired to n0 3e imediat kaus of al 3is fre' r1ting and fre' speaking, 3er kannot be as1ned a truer 3an yor 0n mild and fre' and huma'n government. It is 3e liberty, Lords and Komons, witc yor 0n valorus and hapy kounsels hav purtcased us, liberty witc is 3e nurs of al great wits; 3is is 3at witc ha3 rarefied and enl1tened our spirits l1k 3e influens of heven; 3is is 3at witc ha3 enfrancised, enlarjed and lifted up our aprehensions degrys abov 3emselvs.

Ye kannot ma'k us now les kapabl, les n0ing, les eagerly pursuing 3e tru3, unles ye first ma'k yorselvs, 3at ma'd us s0, les 3e lovers, les 3e founders of our tru liberty. We kan gr0 ignorant again, brutic, formal and slavic, as ye found us; but yu 3en must first bekom 3at witc ye kannot be, opresiv, arbitrary and tyranus, as 3ey wer from hwm ye hav fre'd us. 3at our harts ar now mor kapacus, our 3ots mor erekted to 3e seartc and ekspektation of greatest and eksaktest 3ings, is 3e isu of yor 0n virtu propagated in us; ye kannot supres 3at, unles ye reinfors an abrogated and mersiles law, 3at fa3ers may despatc at wil 3er 0n tcildren. And hw cal 3en stik klosest to yu, and eks1t o3ers? Not he hw ta'ks up arms for k0t and kondukt, and his four n0bls of Danegelt. Al30 I disprais not the defens of just imunitis, yet lov my pys beter, if 3at wer al. Giv me 3e liberty to n0, to uter, and to argu fre'ly akording to koncens, abov al libertis.

John Milton: Areopagitica (1644).

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# Gettysburg address in Single-stroke English.

Table of contents

Before I had much practised with Single-stroke English writing, and before I knew it could be hand-written straight onto (ipad) computer, I laboriously constructed each letter from the geometrical tools in a basic graphical program ("Paint"). This improvised SE transcription of the Lincoln Gettysburg address was a first attempt. It turned-out clearer to read than my many subsequent free-hand samples. So, I put it first.

Having to manually re-touch my short-hand-writing, I keenly missed having missed this age of computer literacy. Had I learned the language of a machine code, it would have been easy for me to write a program for Single-stroke English, and I could have presented these texts in SE, with machine precision. All the letters in a word simply can be joined end to end: fairly straight-forward. The main hitch or complication is the two optional circle letters for the dipthongs, ei and ai, and they are not strictly necessary, tho a convenient extra.

[As a matter of fact, this is not my only invention that sorely needs a program. My Binomial theorem version of the Single Transferable Vote could build on the program for Meek method STV. I am writing a book, specially about it: FAB STV.]

For Single-stroke English, I followed the left-to-right order of words. The partly downward direction of SE also lends itself to the top-to-bottom direction. In any case, I devised SE so that it could be written without looking at the page, even in the dark. If following a linear direction, the writer must feel the next space on the page for the next word.

More easily, the writer in the dark can write one word from where the previous word left off. That means the text will wander, at random, in two dimensions over the page, rather than in one linear dimension, whether horizontal or vertical. This two dimensional flow writing would save time but not space.   
I have not given any 2-D examples. Nearly all my examples follow the conventional horizontal word sequence.

For convenient reference, the Gettysburg address, in SE, is printed afterwards, albeit in "Cut Speling" without redundant letters.

#### Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address (in Cut Speling):

For-scor and seven years ago our fathers brot forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that al men ar created equal. Now we ar engaged in a great civil war, testing wether that nation can long endur. We ar met on a great batlfield of that war. We hav com to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave ther lives that that nation miht liv. It is altogether fiting and proper that we shud do this. But in a larger sens we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot halow this ground. The brave men, living and ded, who strugled here, hav consecrated it, far abov our poor power to ad or detract. The world wil litl know nor long remember, wat we say here, but it can never forget wat they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining befor us - that from these honored ded we take increased devotion to the caus for wich they gave the last ful mesur of devotion; that we here hihly resolv that these ded shal not hav died in vain; that this nation, under God, shal hav a new birth of freedom; and that government of the peopl, by the peopl, for the peopl shal not perish from the erth.

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# World poem samples in Single-stroke English.

Table of contents

#### Caution:

The previous transcription of the Gettysberg address was better to see than the following free-hand samples of SE, that I wrote on an ipad. An alternative way would be to write with pen and paper. Then scan the page with an electronic scanner, connected to a personal computer, and save as a jpg image, just like the ones in this book.

I would advise against reading first the ancient Egyptian transcription, because it is written in a high-flown style that makes the short-hand meaning of words harder to guess.

Even a simple verse, translated by Helen Waddell, comes-up with the word, disquieted, which would throw most deciferers of short-hands, not including the redundant letter, q.   
In fact, for getting acclimatised to the Single-stroke script, I would advise, reading the ordinary English text, some time before. Normally, the short-hand writer knows what he has written. Tho, like the young HG Wells, he might not make head or tail of his short-hand notes, when coming back to them, only the next day or so.

Eventually, one would hope to sight read SE script, one has never seen before. Half of English text consists of the same 70 to 100 words, I have compiled in this manual. These soon would become familiar from repeated viewing. There would always be a residual number of words that looked strange, as there are in conventional English letters.

When I came back to reading my SE transcript, for example, of Helen Waddell, I had some memory of it. But I still tripped-up on a simple word, which I first took to be "pile". Then I remembered, it must be "pale". In other words, I stumbled on the ai-ei dipthongs confusion.

SE could remedy this, by using my small anti-clockwise turns for ei-dipthongs, and small clockwise turns for ai-dipthongs, whenever conventional English spellings use an e-accent to distinguish dipthongs. (These dot-like small circles are bad to read on a small screen.) Then, "pale" would be spelt with clock-ai; whereas "pail" (of water) could be spelt with the a-vowel followed by the i-vowel. This would distinguish differences of meaning between words, like pale and pail, that sound the same.

My Word List (late in the book) sometimes gives these alternative SE spellings. It also includes a few abbreviations, in SE, for the most common English words.

Further confusion is caused by the fact that ai-dipthong spellings are fonetic in southern English but not quite right in received English, which pronounces them with the ei-dipthong. This is a confusion of tongues, not a confusion of transcripts. Conventional English spelling, the orthography, fares no better, in this respect.  
Difficulties in decifering SE short-hand are not necessarily the fault of the short-hand, as such.

It was easy for me to read the psalm from SE, because I was already fairly familiar with the words. That may be the best way to start becoming familiar with SE. I admit that without such memory cues, I probably would not have guessed some of the texts meanings.

In these early trials of SE, there was the problem of knowing, on the spot, the best speling option, which requires a hurried decision, which was not always the best, on how much to conform or reform the spelling. It may be statistically inevitable that some (hopefully rare) words in SE will resist translation. Best to carry on, and hope it all works out, in the end.

Free-hand is more liable to have variations in the accuracy of letters. I am not always clear, whether I have written the short or the long version of a letter. As a result, I tended to exaggerate the difference, which is undesirable. Machine writing would cure this inaccuracy.

Sometimes ones hand-writing makes the letters slur into each other, so they are not quite distinct. Official forms require people to write in print, or unjoined capital letters, rather than a cursive script. However, I was reckoned to be neat, in my presentations, and hope that is reasonably the case, here.

The clarity of these SE transcriptions may depend on the size of the screen of ones reading device.

#### Samples of old world poems:

From the Egyptian Book of the Dead. (trans. Robert Hillyard.)

Poverty: from the Rig Veda. (trans. Arthur W Ryder.)

Psalm from the King James Bible.

From the Shi King compilation of folk poems by Confucius. (trans. Helen Waddell.)  
Observation: by Hitomaro.

Hope: by Theognis. (trans. John Hookham Frere.)

"Woo not the world" from Mu'tamid, King of Seville. (trans. Dulcie L Smith.)

Ballade of the gibbet from Francois Villon. (trans. Andrew Lang.)

Song from Heinrich Heine. (trans. James Thomson.)

* * *

### From the Egyptian Book of the Dead. (trans. Robert Hillyard.)

To samples

### From the Book of the Dead.

#### Egypt 3500 BC.

#### The dead man ariseth and singeth a hymn to the sun.

Homage to thee, O Ra, at thy tremendous rising!   
Thou risest! Now shinest! The heavens are rolled aside!   
Thou art the King of Gods, thou art the All-comprising,   
From thee we come, in thee are deified.

Thy priests go forth at dawn; they washed their hearts with laughter;  
Divine winds move in music across thy golden strings.  
At sunset they embraced thee, as every cloudy rafter  
Flames with reflected colour from thy wings.

Thou sailest over the zenith, and thy heart rejoices;  
Thy Morning Boat and Evening Boat with fair winds meet together;  
Thy face the goddess Maat exalts her fateful Feather,  
And at thy name the halls of Anu ring with voices.

O Thou Perfect! Thou Eternal! Thou Only One!  
Great Hawk that fliest with the flying Sun!  
Between the Turquoise Sycamores that risest, young for ever,  
Thine image flashing on the bright celestial river.

Thy rays are on all faces; Thou art inscrutable.  
Age after age thy life renews its eager prime.  
Time whirls its dust beneath thee; thou art immutable,  
Maker of Time, thyself beyond Time.

Thou passest thru the portals that close behind the night,  
Gladdening the souls of them that lie in sorrow.  
The True of Word, the Quiet Heart, arise to drink thy light;  
Thou art To-day and Yesterday; Thou art Tomorrow!

Homage to thee, O Ra, who wakest life from slumber!  
Thou risest! Thou shinest! Thy radiant face appears!  
Millions of years have passed, – we cannot count their number, –  
Millions of years shall come. Thou art above the years!

* * *

### Poverty (from the Rig Veda, trans. Arthur W Ryder.)

To samples

### From the Rig Veda,

#### translated by Arthur W Ryder.

### Poverty

A beggar to the graveyard hied  
And there "Friend corpse, arise," he cried;  
"One moment lift my heavy weight  
Of poverty; for I of late  
Grow weary, and desire instead  
Your comfort; you are good and dead."  
The corpse was silent. He was sure  
'Twas better to be dead than poor.

* * *

### Psalm from the King James Bible.

To samples

### Hebrew Psalm 23

### the King James Bible.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

* * *

### From the Shi King compilation of folk poems by Confucius. (trans. Helen Waddell.)

To samples

### From the Shi King, or Chinese Book of Odes.

#### Compiled by Confucius. Translated by Helen Waddell.

### The Morning Glory.

The morning glory climbs above my head,   
Pale flowers of white and purple, blue and red.   
I am disquieted.

Down in the withered grasses something stirred;   
I thought it was his footfall that I heard.   
Then a grasshopper chirred.

I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed,   
I saw him coming on the southern road.   
My heart lays down its load.

### Folk poem continued; Observation by Hitomaro.

### I Wait my Lord.

#### Translated by Helen Waddell

The gourd has still its bitter leaves,   
And deep the crossing at the ford.   
I wait my Lord.

The ford is brimming to its banks;   
The pheasant cries upon her mate.   
My lord is late.

The boatman still keeps beckoning,   
And others reach their journey's end.   
I wait my friend.

### From the Shui Shu

circa 700.

### Observation of Hitomaro.

#### Translated by Arthur Whaley.

When,   
Halting in front of it, I look   
At the reflection which is in the depths   
Of my clear mirror,   
It gives me the impression of meeting   
An unknown old gentleman.

(Comment:   
I know the feeling exactly.   
He might have been me.  
Richard Lung.)

* * *

### Hope: by Theognis. (trans. John Hookham Frere.)

To samples

### Theognis

#### Greece 540 BC

### Hope

For human nature Hope remains alone  
Of all the deities; the rest are flown.  
Faith is departed; Truth and Honour dead;  
And all the Graces too, my friends, are fled.   
The scanty specimens of living worth,   
Dwindled to nothing, and extinct on earth.   
Yet whilst I live and view the light of heaven,   
Since Hope remains and never has been driven   
From the distracted world – the single scope   
Of my devotion is to worship Hope.   
When hecatombs are slain, and alters burn,   
When all the deities adored in turn,   
Let Hope be present; and with Hope, my friend,   
Let every sacrifice commence and end.

* * *

### "Woo not the world" from Mu'tamid, King of Seville. (trans. Dulcie L Smith.)

To samples

### Mu'tamid, King of Seville

1040-1095

#### translated by Dulcie L Smith.

### Woo not the World.

Woo not the world too rashly, for behold,   
Beneath the painted silk and broidering,   
It is a faithless and inconstant thing.   
(Listen to me, Mu'tamid, growing old.)

And we – that dream youth's blade would never rust,   
Hoped wells from the mirage, roses from the sand –   
The riddle of the world shall understand   
And put on wisdom with the robe of dust.

* * *

### Ballade of the gibbet, from Francois Villon. (trans. Andrew Lang.)

To samples

### François Villon

#### France 1431-89

#### Translated by Andrew Lang

### Ballade of the Gibbet.

Brothers and men that shall after us be,   
Let not your hearts be hard to us;   
For pitying this our misery   
Ye shall find God the more piteous.   
Look on us six that are hanging thus,   
And for the flesh that so much we cherished   
How it is eaten of birds and perished,   
And ashes and dust fill our bones' place.   
Mock not at us that so feeble be,   
But pray God pardon us out of His grace.

Listen, we pray you, and look not in scorn.   
Though justly, in sooth, we are cast to die;   
Ye wot no man so wise is born   
That keeps his wisdom constantly.   
Be ye then merciful, and cry   
To Mary's Son that Is piteous,   
That His mercy take no stain from us,   
Saving us out of the fiery place.   
We are but dead, let no soul deny   
To pray God succour us of His grace.

The rain out of heaven has washed us clean,   
The sun has scorched us black and bare,   
Ravens and rooks have pecked at our eyne,   
And feathered their nests with our beards and hair.  
Round are we tossed, and here and there,   
This way and that, at the wild winds will,   
Never a moment my body is still;   
Birds they are busy about my face.   
Live not as we, nor fare as we fare;   
Pray God pardon is out of His grace.

#### L'envoy

Prince Jesus, Master of all, to Thee   
We pray Hell gain no mastery,   
That we come never anear that place;   
And, ye men, make no mockery,   
Pray God, pardon is out of His grace.

* * *

### Song from Heinrich Heine. (trans. James Thomson.)

To samples

### Heinrich Heine

#### Germany 1799-1856.

#### Mir traumte wieder der alte traum.

#### Translated by James Thomson.

### Song

The old dream comes again to me:   
With May-night stars above,   
We two sat under the Linden-tree   
And swore eternal love.

Again and again we plighted troth,   
We chattered, and laughed, and kissed;   
To make me well remember my oath   
You gave me a bite in the wrist.

O darling with the eyes serene,   
And with the teeth so white!   
The vows were proper to the scene,   
Superfluous was the bite.

To samples

# English romantic and elegaic poetry samples.

Table of contents

A noble of Edwin on the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity,  
from Bede: Ecclesiastical History.

William Blake: The Tiger.

C Wolfe: The Burial of Sir John Moore.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias.

George Gordon, Lord Byron: She walks in beauty.

William Wordsworth: She dwelt among the untrodden ways.  
A slumber did my spirit seal.

John Keats: Meg Merrilees.

Arthur Hugh Clough: Invictus.

Thomas Hardy: The Convergence of the Twain.

Rudyard Kipling: If --

Gilbert K Chesterton: The Secret People.

Edward Thomas: Lights Out.  
Adlestrop.

Siegfried Sassoon: on passing by the Menin gate.

Wilfred Owen: Dulce et Decorum est.

Keith Douglas: Simplify me when I'm dead.

John Gillespie Magee: High Flight.

Dorothy Cowlin: The Sound of Rain.

Richard Lung: The Diggers.

* * *

### A noble of Edwin on the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity,  
from Bede: Ecclesiastical History.

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So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as tho a sparrow flew swiftly thru the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat with your captains and liegemen, in wintry weather, with a fire burning in your midst and heating the room, the storm raging out of doors and driving snow and rain before it.   
For the time for which he is within, the bird is sheltered from the storm, but after this short while of calm he flies out again into the cold and is seen no more.   
Thus the life of man is visible for a moment, but we know not what comes before it or follows after it. If, then, this new doctrine brings something more of certainty, it deserves to be followed.

* * *

### William Blake: The Tiger.

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### The Tiger

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright   
In the forests of the night,   
What immortal hand or eye   
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies   
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?   
On what wings dare he aspire?   
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,   
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?   
And, when thy heart began to beat,   
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?   
In what furnace was thy brain?   
What the anvil? What dread grasp   
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,   
And watered earth with their tears,   
Did he smile his work to see?   
Did he who made the Lamb make the?

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright   
In the forests of the night,   
What immortal hand or eye   
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

* * *

### C Wolfe: The Burial of Sir John Moore.

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### The burial of Sir John Moore.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,   
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;   
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot   
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,   
The sods with our bayonets turning;   
By the struggling moon-beams misty light   
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,   
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;   
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,   
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,   
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;   
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,   
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed   
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,   
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,   
And we faraway on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone   
And o'er his cold ashes upgrade him, –   
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on   
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done   
When the clock struck the hour for retiring   
And we heard the distant and random gun   
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,   
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;   
We carved not a line, and we raised not to stone,   
But we left him alone with his glory.

* * *

### Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias.

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### Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land   
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone   
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand   
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown   
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command   
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read   
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,   
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;   
And on the pedestal these words appear:   
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:   
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay   
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,   
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

* * *

### George Gordon, Lord Byron: She walks in beauty.

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### She walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night   
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;   
And all that's best of dark and bright   
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:   
Thus mellowed to that tender light   
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,   
Had half impaired the nameless grace   
Which waves in every raven tress,   
Or softly lightens o'er her face;   
Where thoughts serenely sweet express   
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,   
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,   
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,   
But tell of days in goodness spent,   
A mind at peace with all below,   
A heart whose love is innocent!

* * *

### William Wordsworth: She dwelt among the untrodden ways.

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### She dwelt among the untrodden ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways   
Beside the springs of Dove,   
A maid whom there were none to praise   
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone   
Half hidden from the eye!   
– Fair as a star, when only one   
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know   
When Lucy ceased to be;   
But she is in her grave, and, oh,   
The difference to me!

### A slumber did my spirit seal.

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### A slumber did my spirit seal

A slumber did my spirit seal;   
I had no human fears;   
She seemed a thing that could not feel   
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;   
She neither hears nor sees;   
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,   
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

* * *

### John Keats: Meg Merrilees.

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### Meg Merrilees

Old Meg she was a gypsy,   
And lived upon the moors;   
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,   
And her house was out of doors.

Her apples were swart blackberries,   
Her currants, pods o' broom;   
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,   
Her book a church-yard tomb.

Her brothers were the craggy hills,   
Her sisters larchen trees;   
Alone with her great family   
She lived as she did please.   
No breakfast had she many a morn,   
No dinner many a noon,   
And, 'stead of supper, she would stare   
Full hard against the moon.

But every morn, of woodbine fresh   
She made her garlanding,   
And, every night, the dark glen yew   
She wove, and she would sing.   
And with her fingers, old and brown,   
She plaited mats of rushes,   
And gave them to the cottagers   
She met among the bushes.

Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen,   
And tall as Amazon;   
An old red blanket cloak she wore,   
A chip hat had she on:   
God rest her aged bones somewhere!   
She died full long agone!

* * *

### Arthur Hugh Clough: Invictus.

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### Invictus

Say not the struggle nought availeth,   
The labour and the wounds are vain,   
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,   
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;   
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,   
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,   
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,   
Seem here no painful inch to gain,   
Far back, thru creeks and inlets making,   
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,   
When daylight comes, comes in the light;   
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!   
But westward, look, the land is bright!

* * *

### Thomas Hardy: The Convergence of the Twain.

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### The Convergence of the Twain

#### (lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

In a solitude of the sea   
Deep from human vanity,   
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

Steel Chambers, late the pyres   
Of her salamandrine fires,   
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant   
To glass the opulent   
The sea-worm crawls – grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed   
To ravish the sensuous mind   
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near   
Gaze at the gilded gear   
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

Well: while was fashioning   
This creature of cleaving wing,   
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate   
For her – so gaily great –   
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

And as the smart ship grew   
In stature, grace, and hue,   
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be:   
No mortal eye could see   
The intimate welding of their later history,

Or sign that they were bent   
By paths coincident   
On being anon twin halves of one august event.

Till the Spinner of the Years   
Said "Now!" And each one hears,   
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

* * *

### Rudyard Kipling: If --

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### If -

If you can keep your head when all about you   
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,   
But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,   
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,   
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,   
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

if you can dream - and not make dreams your master;  
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster   
And treat those two imposters just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken   
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,   
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,   
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings   
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,   
And lose, and start again at your beginnings   
And never breathe a word about your loss;   
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew   
To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you   
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,   
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,   
If all men count with you, but none too much;   
If you can fill the unforgiving minute   
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,   
And - which is more - you will be a Man, my son!

* * *

### Gilbert K Chesterton: The Secret People.

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### The secret people.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,   
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.   
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,   
There is many a free French peasant is richer and sadder than we.  
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.   
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;   
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:   
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.   
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.  
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French Lords went down;  
There was not but a naked people under a naked crown.   
And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,   
And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.   
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,   
Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.   
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,   
The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:   
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.   
The new grave Lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,   
And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,   
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,   
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.   
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;   
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke   
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.   
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:   
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.   
Weak if we be forever, could none condemn us then;   
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.   
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,   
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,   
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not   
The strange fierce face of the Frenchman who knew for what they fought,   
And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;   
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.   
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain   
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched at cringing Jew,   
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.   
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,   
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:   
We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,   
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy Lords,   
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.   
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;   
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.   
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,   
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,   
Yet there is no man speaketh as we speak in the street.   
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,   
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.   
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest   
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.   
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.   
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

* * *

### Edward Thomas: Lights Out.

To top

### Lights out

I have come to the borders of sleep,   
The unfathomable deep   
Forest where all must lose   
Their way, however straight,   
Or winding, soon or late;   
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track   
That, since the dawn's first crack,   
Up to the forest brink,   
Deceived the travellers,   
Suddenly now blurs,   
And in they sink.

Here love ends,   
Despair, ambition ends;   
All pleasure and all trouble,   
Although most sweet or bitter,   
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter   
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book   
Or face of dearest look   
That I would not turn from now   
To go into the unknown   
I must enter, and leave, alone,   
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;   
Its cloudy foliage lowers   
Ahead, shelf above shelf;   
Its silence I hear and obey   
That I may lose my way   
And myself.

### Adlestrop.

To top

### Adelstrop

Yes. I remember Adelstrop –   
The name, because one afternoon   
Of heat the express-train drew up there  
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.   
No-one left and no-one came   
On the bare platform. What I saw   
Was Adelstrop – only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,   
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,   
No whit less still and lonely fair   
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang   
Close by, and round him, mistier,   
Farther and farther, all the birds   
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

* * *

### Siegfried Sassoon: on passing the new Menin gate.

To top

### On passing the new Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,   
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?   
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, –   
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?   
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.   
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;   
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,   
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride   
"Their name liveth for ever," the Gateway claims.   
Was ever an immolation so belied   
As these intolerably nameless names?   
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime   
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

* * *

### Wilfred Owen: Dulce et Decorum est.

To top

### Dulce et decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,   
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,   
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,   
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.   
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,   
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;   
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots   
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,   
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,   
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling   
And floundering like a man in fire or lime. –   
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,   
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.   
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,   
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace   
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,   
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,   
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;   
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood   
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,   
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud   
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest   
To children ardent for some desperate glory,   
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est  
Pro patria mori.

* * *

### Keith Douglas: Simplify me when I'm dead.

To top

### Simplify me when I'm dead

Remember me when I am dead  
and simplify me when I'm dead.

As the processes of earth   
strip off the colour and the skin:   
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,   
when hairless I came howling in   
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,   
so stripped, a learned man will say   
"He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

Thus when in a year collapse   
particular memories, you may   
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe   
and what I left, even my appearance   
but incidents will be no guide.

Time's wrong-way telescope will show   
a minute man ten years hence   
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem   
substance or nothing: of the world   
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen   
or love into decision hurled,   
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead   
and simplify me when I'm dead.

* * *

### John Gillespie Magee: High Flight.

To top

### High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth   
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wing;   
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth   
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things   
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung   
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there   
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung   
My eager craft thro' footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue   
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace   
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew –   
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod   
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,   
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

* * *

### Dorothy Cowlin: The Sound of Rain.

To top

### The Sound of Rain

I have almost forgotten   
The sound of rain.

Eyes must now calculate   
By size and quantity   
Of drops on spattered panes   
Whether the rain   
Falls delicate as finger-nails   
Or coarse as gravel.

From the geometry   
Of spreading rings   
Within the bird-bath   
Eyes must report   
Whether the music plays   
Pianissimo or forte.

I smell the rain   
Mixed with the summer's dust,   
And on my hand can catch   
The coolness of a shower.

But for my ears   
The rainy season's over.

_Copyright ©: The Estate of Dorothy Cowlin._

* * *

### Richard Lung: The Diggers.

To top

### the diggers

He crouched under the open sky  
like a Yorkshire miner who had worked narrow seams.

Short and broad, he came low at the ground  
attacked on its own terms.

He didn't waste strength lifting his heavy opponent  
but rolled over the clayey clods

falling out of this wrestling arena,  
always clean off the spade, under their own weight.

He dug as the wave of a plow blade  
scoops an embankment out of a trench.

As digging pistons wheel out locomotives  
this stoker dug out, in a line, coal-like slabs

that crumbled to a train of smoke, always  
with one deft stroke of the spade shoulder:

births returned to the earth they'd come from;  
volumes turning to dust, as they were unshelved,

this was to see form, of body or mind, exist  
but a moment, before merging back into all.

And he was all hard-working men,  
yet there was no-one like him.

_Copyright ©: Richard Lung._

To top

# Single-stroke English prose samples.

Table of contents

A couple of examples of prose in Single-stroke English.

In SE, I prefer to write words down the page, instead of across the page. It may be easier (for me) to write. But it is not easier to read. This can be seen from the following two samples. The Wells excerpt writes across from left to right of the page. The Mill excerpt also starts on the top left but writes down the page, in vertical rows of words, instead of horizontal rows.

#### From page one of: The War In The Air, by HG Wells.

### The war in the air

#### Chapter 1. Of progress and the Smallways family.

"This here Progress," said Mr. Tom Smallways, "it keeps on."  
"You'd hardly think it could keep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways.

It was long before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways made this remark. He was sitting on the fence at the end of his garden and surveying the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, and grew bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder – balloons in course of inflation for the South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent.

"They goes up every Saturday," said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the milkman. "It's only yesterday, so to speak, when all London turned out to see a balloon go over, and now every little place in the country has its weekly outings – uppings, rather. It's been the salvation of them gas companies."

"Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my petaters," said Mr. Tom Smallways. "Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as ballase. Some of the plants was broke, and some was buried."

"Ladies, they say, goes up!"

"I suppose we got to call 'em ladies," said Mr. Tom Smallways. "Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a lady – flying about in the air, and throwing gravel at people. It ain't what I been accustomed to consider lady-like, whether or no."

Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time they continued to regard the swelling bulks with expressions that had changed from indifference to disapproval.

* * *

#### From prefacing remarks to Autobiography of John Stuart Mill

(reading vertically).

### John Stuart Mill: Autobiography.

#### Chapter 1.

It seems proper that I should prefix to the following biographical sketch some mention of the reasons which have made me think it desirable that I should leave behind me such a memorial of so uneventful a life as mine. I do not for a moment imagine that any part of what I have to relate can be interesting to the public as a narrative or as being connected with myself. But I have thought that in an age in which education and its improvement are the subject of more, if not of profounder, study than at any former period of English history, it may be useful that there should be some record of an education which was unusual and remarkable, and which, whatever else it may have done, has proved how much more than is commonly supposed may be taught, and well taught, in those early years which, in the common modes of what is called instruction, are little better than wasted.

It has also seemed to me that in an age of transition in opinion, there may be somewhat both of interest and of benefit in noting the successive phases of any mind which was always pressing forward, equally ready to learn and to unlearn either from its own thoughts or from those of others.

But a motive which weighs more with me than either of these, is a desire to make acknowledgement of the debts which my intellectual and moral development owes to other persons; some of them of recognised eminence, others less known than they deserve to be, and the one to whom most of all is due, one whom the world had no opportunity of knowing.

The reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to blame, if he reads farther,...

To top

# Single-stroke English Word list.

Table of contents

A B C D E F G H I

### Words: Possible rendering in Single-stroke English.

A few words are given alternate spellings or short-forms.

### A

#### B

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#### C

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#### D

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#### E

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#### F

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#### G

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#### H

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#### I

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# Word list continued: j to z. (Optional spellings.)

Table of contents

J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

#### J - K

#### L

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#### M

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#### N

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#### O

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#### P

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#### Q

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#### R

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#### S

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#### T

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#### U - V

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#### W

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#### Y

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#### Z

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# Common English Words simplified and shortened.

Table of contents

This list contains nearly the same words as the word list in Single-stroke English. Neither list is meant to be set in stone. They are the best renderings, I could do, at the time, either of English, in my simplified script, or, in this list, of reformed spellings and abbreviated spellings, where practical.  
Note: ai = 1; ei = 8. There is much ambiguity, in choosing between these two dipthongs, which usually I don't entirely clear-up. Nobody does, so don't worry about "mistakes." The test is how well do you convey your meaning. Apologies for my fallings short of consistency. Generally, I have followed conventional English spelling, which is fonetic to southern speakers (Cockney and Australian). Thus, rain = r1n. I have broken this rule, and used the ei dipthong, to avoid confusion with another word. Thus, fail = f8l, to avoid confusion with: file = f1l. But it might be less bother not to shorten word, fail, because the conventional spelling conveys a foneticly spelt word to the southern English ear.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

#### Word: Simplified/Shortened.

#### A

a

able abl 8b

about abt

above abov bv

account akount aknt

acid asid asd

across akros akr

act akt

add ad

adjust ajust ajs

advantage advantaj advn

advert ad

after aft

afternoon afternwn aftn

again agn

against agns

age aj 8j

ago ag

agree agry agr

aggression agreson agrc

agriculture agricultur agri

air/heir air er

all al

along alng

also als

among mng

amnesty amnst

amount amnt

amuse amus

an a

analog anlg

and n

anger angr

angle angl ang

anguish anguic angw

announce anouns anns

annoy anoy

another ao3

answer anser ansr

ant/aunt

anti/auntie anti/anty

any en

apart aprt

apparatus aparatus aprts

appear apear apir

apple apl

approve aprov aprv

april apr

argue argu arg

arm rm

art rt

as z

ask

at

attack atak atk

attempt atempt atmp

attend atend atn

attention atencon atnc

attract atrakt atrk

august aug

author 43

authority 43t

automatic otomatik oto

awake awa'k aw8k

awkward 4kwd

#### B

To top

baby bb

back bak bk

bad

bag

balance balans blns

ball bal

band

bank

base ba's b8s

basin b8sn

basket baskt

bath ba3

be/bee b

bean byn

beauty beuty byut

because bekos kos

become becom bkm

bed

been byn bn

before befor bf4

begin bgn

behave beha'v bhv

behind bhnd

believe believ blv

bell bel

bend

berry bery

best

better beter betr

between betwyn btwn

beyond bynd

big

bike b'ik b1k

biology biolojy biol

bird

birth bir3

bit

bite b'it b1t

bitter biter bitr

black blak

blade bla'd bl1d

blood blud

blow bl0

blue blu blw

board/bored bord b4d

boast b0st

boat b0t

body bod

boil

bold b0ld

bone bo'n b0n

book buk

boot bwt

bore/boar bor b4

both b03

bother bthr

bottle botl

bottom botom btm

box boks bks

boy

brain br8n

brake bra'k br1k

branch branc brnc

bread/bred bred

break br8k

breath breth br3

brick brik

bridge brij brj

bright br'it br1t

bring brng

brother br3r

brown brun

brush bruc

bucket buket bkt

build bild

bulb blb

burn brn

burst burs

bus

business biznes biz

but bt

butter buter butr

button buton butn

buy/by buy/by b1/b

#### C

To top

cake ka'k

call kal k4l

camera kamera kam

can kan k

canvas kanvas knvs

cap kap

capital kapital kptl

car kar ka

card kard

care ker

carry kary

cart kart

case ka's k1s

cat kat

cause kaus kos

cell sel

certain sertain sert

chain tcain tc8n

chalk tcork tc4k

chance tcans tcns

character karakter krkt

charge tcarj tcj

charm tcarm tcrm

cheap tcyp

check tcek

cheese tcyz

chemical kemikal kmkl

chemistry kemistry kmstr

chest tcest

chief tcyf

child tc1ld tcld

chin tcin

church tcurtc tctc

circle sirkl srkl

city sity

claim klaim kl8m

class klas

clean klean klyn

clear klear klir

clock klok

cloth klo3 kl3

clothe kl03 kl3

cloud kloud klqd

coach koatc k0tc

coal k0l

coat k0t

code k0d

cold k0ld

collar kolar kolr

color kolor kl4

comb k0m

comfort komfort kmft

commit komit kmt

common komon kmn

company kompany kmpny

compare kompar kmpr

compass kompas kmps

competition kompeticon komp

complete komplyt kmplt

compromise kompromis kmprm

complex kompleks kmplks

condition kondicon kndc

connect konekt knkt

conscience koncens koncn

conscious koncus koncs

consider konsider knsd

continue kontinw kont

contradict kontradikt kntrd

control kontrol kntrl

cook kuk

copper koper kopr

copy kopy kpy

cork kork k4k

cost kost

cotton koton kotn

could kud kd

cough kof

country kuntry kntr

course kors k4s

cover kover kvr

courage kuraj krj

count kount

cow kow

coy koy

crack krak

crash krac

crave kra'v kr1v

credit kredit kred

crime kr'im kr1m

cruel kruel krul

crush kruc

cry kr1

cup kup

current kurent krnt

curtain kurtain krtn

curl kurl krl

curve kurv krv

caution kaucon k4c

custom kustom kstm

cut kut

#### D

To top

damage damaj dmj

danger danjer dnj

dark drk

date da't d8t

daughter dauter d4t

day d8

dead ded

death deth d3

dear dr

debt det

december desember des

decide des'id ds1d

dedicate dedika't ddkt

deduct dedukt dduk

deep dyp

defence defens dfns

degree degry deg

delicate delik8t dlkt

deliver dlvr

demand dmnd

democracy demokrasy dmkr

demonstration demonstracon demo

depend dpnd

design des'in ds1n

desire des'ir ds1r

destroy dstr

detail dt1l

develop dvlp

die d'i d1

differ difer difr

difficult difikult dfkl

dig

digest dijest djst

direct direkt drkt

dirt

discover diskover dskv

discuss diskus dsks

disgust dsgs

disease diseas dzz

distance distans dstns

distinguish distinguic dstng

distribute distribut dstrb

disturb dstb

divide div'id dvd

do

dog

door dor d4

doubt dout

down dwn

drain dr1n

draw dr4

dress dres drs

drink drnk

drive dr'iv dr1v

drop

dry dr1

duck duk

during drng

dust

duty dty

#### E

To top

each eatc ytc

ear ir

early erly

earth erth er3

ease eas yz

east yst

easy yzy

economic ekonomik ekon

education edukacon edu

effect efekt efk

effort efort eft

egg eg

either 13

elastic elastik elas

elect elekt elkt

electric elektrik elek

element elmn

empire emp'ir empr

employ empl

end

engine enjin enjn

english englic eng

enough enuf nuf

enter ent

equal ekual =

error eror er4

even evn

event evnt

ever evr

every evry

evidence evidens evd

ex eks

example egzampl eg

except eksept eksp

exchange ekstcanj ekstc

excuse ekscus eksk

exist egzist egzs

exit egzit egz

expand ekspand ekspn

expect ekspekt ekspk

experience eksperiens ekspn

experiment eksperiment ekspt

expert ekspert eksp

express ekspres ekspr

eye ey 1

#### F

To top

face fa's f1s

fact fakt fak

fail f8l

fall fal f4l

false fals fols

family fmly

famine famin fmn

far fa

farm

fat

father f3r

feather fether fe3

fear fyr

february feb

feeble fybl fbl

feel fyl

female fema'l fml

fertile fert'il frtl

few fw

fiction fikcon fkc

field fyld

fight f'it f1t

figure figur fgr

final fnl

find

fine f'in f1n

finger fng

fir/fur

fire f'ir f1r

first 1st

fish fic

fix fiks

flame fla'm fl1m

flat

floor/flaw flor/flaw fl4

flower flwr

fly fl1

fold f0ld

follow folow flw

food fwd

fool fwl

foot fut

for/four for/4 f4/4

force fors f4s

fork f4k

form f4m

forward fwd

foto

foul/fowl

frame fra'm fr1m

free frei fre

freeze fryz frz

frequent frekuent frek

frequency frekuensy frek

friday fr1

friend frend frnd

from fr

front frnt

fruit frwt

full ful

further fu3

future futur ftr

#### G

To top

garden gdn

gene jyn

general jeneral jnrl

genius jenius jns

gentleman jentlman jent

get

gift gif

gilt/guilt glt

girl gal

give giv gv

glass glas

globe gl0b

glove glov

glow gl0

go g0

goat g0t

god

gold g0ld

good gud gd

govern gov

grain gr1n

grant

graph graf

grass gras

grateful gra'tful grtfl

grave gra'v gr1v

gravity grvt

great gr8t

green gryn

grey gr8

grief gryf

grip

ground grnd

group grwp

grow gr0

guide g'id g1d

gun

#### H

To top

hail h8l

hair her

half haf hf

hammer hamer hmr

hand

happen hapen hpn

happy hapy hpy

harbor hb4

hard

harmony hrmn

haste ha'st h8st

hat

hate ha't h8t

have hav v

he h

head hed

heal/heel/he'll hyl

health helth hl3

hear/here hir

heart hart

heat hyt

heaven heven hvn

heavy hevy hvy

hell hel

help hlp

her hr r

here hir

high h'i h1

him/hymn h/hym

hint

his hs

history hstr

hold h0ld

hole/whole h0l

hollow holow hlw

holograph holograf holo

home h0m

hook huk

hope h0p

horn h4n

horror horor hrr

horse/hoarse hors h4s

hospital hspt

host

hour hr

house hous

how ow

however hwv

human hmn

humor hm4

hundred 100

hunger hngr

#### I

To top

I = 1

ice 'is 1s

idea 1d

if f

ignore ignor ign4

ill

illustrate ilustra't ilstr

image imaj imj

imagine imajin imjn

immediate imediat imdt

import impt

impossible imposibl impos

improve improv imprv

impulse impuls impls

in in i

income inkom ikm

increase inkreas ikrs

indeed indyd idd

industry idstr

influence influens iflns

inform if4m

injury ijr

ink

input ipt

insect insekt iskt

instruct instrukt istrk

instrument istrm

insure insur icr

interest intrest itrst

international internaconal itnc

into i2

invent ivnt

iron 1rn

island iland 1lnd

issue isw

it t

#### J

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january jan

jaw j4

jelly jely

jewel jwl

join

journey jurny jrny

judge juj jj

july jul

jump jmp

june jun

just j

#### K

To top

keep kyp

kettle ketl ktl

key ky

kick kik

kill kil

kind knd

king kng

kiss kis

kit

knife n'if n1f

knot not

know n0

#### L

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labor lb4

land

language languaj lngj

large larj lrj

last

late la't l8t

laugh laf

law l4

lead led

lead lyd

leaf lyf

loan/lone l0n

learn lern lrn

least lyst

leather lether le3r

leave leav lyv

left lef

leg

lend

less les

let

letter leter letr

level lvl

liberal lbrl

liberty lbrt

library lbrr

lid

lie l1

life l'if l1f

lift lif

light l'it l1t

like l'ik l1k

limit lmt

line l'in l1n

linen lnn

lip

liquid likuid lkwd

list

listen lisen lisn

little litl ltl

live l'iv l1v

load l0d

loan l0n

lock lok

logic lojik ljk

long

look lwk

loose lws

lose lwz

loud lqd

love lov

low l0

luck luk

#### M

To top

machine macyn mcn

magnet mgnt

make ma'k m8k

mail/male m8l

market mrkt

manage manaj mnj

map

mark

mass mas

master mstr

march martc mar

material mtrl

matter mater mtr

may m8

meal myl

mean myn

measure mecur mcr

meet myt

medicine medisin mdsn

member mmb

memory mm4

mercy mersy mrsy

metal mtl

method m3d

middle midl

might m'it m1t

mile m'il m1l

military mltr

milk mlk

million milion miln

mind

minute minit mnt

miss mis

mist

mix miks

moderate moderat mdrt

modern mod

moment m0

monday mon

money mony

monkey monky mnky

month mn3

moon mwn

more mor m4

morning m4n

most m0s

mother m3r

motion mocon mcn

motor motr

mountain mntn

mouth mq3

move mov mv

Mr

much mutc

muscle musl

music musik msk

must mus

my m1

#### N

To top

nail n8l

name na'm n1m

narrow narow nr0

nation nacon nac

nature natur ntr

near nr

necessary nesesary nssr

need nyd

neither n13

nerve nerv nrv

net

never nev

new nw

news nws

next nekst nks

nice n1s

night n1t

no n0

noise nois

nor n4

norm n4m

north n43

nose n0s

not nt

note n0t

nothing n3ng

november nov

now na

number nmb

nut

#### O

To top

object objekt objk

observe observ obsv

october oktober okt

of ov 0

off of

offend ofend ofnd

offer ofer ofr

office ofis ofs

official ofical ofcl

often oft

oil

old

oligarchy oligarky olgk

on on

once ons

one/won 1

only 0nl

open opn

operate operat oprt

opine op'in op1n

opinion opnn

opportune oportun optn

opportunity oportunity optnt

oppose op0s

opposition oposicon opsc

or 4

orange oranj ornj

order 4d

organ 4gn

organise organ'is 4gns

organisation organisacon 4g

ornament 4nm

other o3

ought ort ot

our au

out

oval 0vl

oven ovn

over 0v

owe ow 0

own 0n

#### P

To top

page pa'j p1j

pain p8n

paper p8p

parallel paralel prll

parcel parsel prsl

part

particle partikl ptkl

particular partikular ptklr

party

pass pas

past

paste pa'st p1st

pay p8

peace/piece pys

pen

pence pens

pencil pensil pnsl

people pypl

perfect perfekt pfkt

perhaps php

person psn

physical fizikal fzkl

physics fiziks fzk

pick pik

picture piktur pktr

pig

pin

pipe p'ip p1p

place pla's pl1s

plain/plane pl1n

plan

plant plnt

plate pla't pl1t

play pl8

please pleas plys

pleasure plesur plsr

plow

plunder plndr

pocket poket pokt

point

poison poisn

poem

polish polic polc

polite pol'it pl1t

politics politiks pltk

pollute polut plut

poor pwr

porter p4tr

position posicon posc

possible posibl pos

pot

potato ptt

pound lb

poverty pvrty

ponder pndr

power pwr

prefer prfr

preference preferens prfrn

present prsnt

president prsdn

pretty prety prty

price pr'is pr1s

principle prinsipl prnsp

print

priority prrt

prison prsn

private privat prvt

privilege privilej prvl

prize pr'iz pr1z

probable probabl prob

process proses prss

produce produs prds

product produkt prdk

profit prft

promise promis prms

property prpty

proportion proporcon prpc

prose pr0s

prosper prspr

protect protekt prtkt

protest prtst

prove prov prv

provide prov'id prvd

psychology s1kolojy s1k

public publik pblk

publish public pblc

pull pul

pulse puls

pump

punish punic

punch punc

purpose purpos pps

push puc

put

#### Q

To top

quality kuality kual

quarrel kuarel kuarl

quarter kuarter kuar

quest kuest

question kuescon kues

quibble kuibl kuib

quick kuik

quiet kuiet

quite ku'it ku1t

quota kuota

quote ku0t

#### R

To top

radiate radia't radt

radiation radiacon radc

radical radikal rdkl

radio rad0

raffle rafl

rag

raid r8d

rail r8l

rain r1n

random rndm

range ranj rnj

rap/wrap rap

rape ra'p r8p

rat

rate ra't r8t

rather r3

ratio racio rc0

ration racon racn

rational raconal racnl

ray r8

reach reatc rytc

react reakt

read ryd

ready redy

real

really realy rily

reason ryz

rebel reb

receipt resyt rsyt

receive reseiv rsyv

record rekord rk4d

red/read red

redeem redym rdm

reel ryl

refer rfr

referee refery ref

reference referens rfrn

referendum rfrnd

refute refut rfut

regard rgd

regret rgrt

regular rglr

regulate regulat rglt

relate rela't rl1t

relay rl8

religion relijon rlj

relish relic rlc

remark rmk

remember rmmb

rent

report rp4t

represent rprsn

request rekuest rkues

require reku'ir rku1r

rescue resku rsku

resist rsst

respect respekt rspk

response respons rspns

responsible responsibl rspnsb

rest/wrest

result rslt

return rturn

revenue revenu rvnu

revise rev'is rv1s

reward rward

rice r'is r1s

rich ritc

riddle ridl

ride r'id r1d

ridicule ridikul ridkl

right/write r'it r1t

ring

risk

river rvr

rob

rock rok

rod

role/roll r0l

roof rwf

room rwm

rot

rote r0t

rough ruf

round rqn

royal royl

rub

rude rwd

rule rwl

run

rust

rut

#### S

To top

sad

safe sa'f s1f

said sed

sail/sale s1l

salt solt

same sa'm s1m

sample sampl samp

sane sa'n s8n

satisfy satisf1 stsf

saturday sat

say s8

scale ska'l sk8l

scene/seen syn

school skwl

science siens s1ns

scissors sisors ssrs

screw skrw

sea/see sy

seal syl

seat syt

second sekond sek

secret sekret skrt

seed syd

seem sym

select selekt slkt

self slf

sell sel

sense sens

separate separat sprt

september sept

serious serius serus

serve serv srv

set

several sev

sew/so/sow s0

sewer swr

sex seks

shade ca'd c8d

shake ca'k c1k

shall cal cl l

shame ca'm c1m

sharp carp

she ce c

sheep cyp

ship cip

shirt cirt

shock cok

shoe cw

short cort c4t

should cud cd

show cow c0

shut cut

sick sik

side s'id s1d

sigh s'i s1

sign s'in s1n

silk

silver slvr

simple simpl

since sins sns

sing

single singl sngl

sir

sister sstr

sit

situation situacon situ

six siks 6

size s'iz s1z

skin

skirt skrt

sky sk1

sleep slyp

slip

slope sl0p

slow sl0

small smal sm4l

smash smac smc

smell smel

smile sm'il sm1l

smoke sm0k

smooth smwth smw3

snake sna'k sn1k

sneeze snyz

snow sn0

so s

social socal scl

society sosiety ssty

sock sok

soft sof

sole/soul s0l

solid

some som sm

sometimes somt'ims smtm

son/sun

song

soon swn

sorry sory s4y

sort/sought s4t

sound soun

soup swp

south s3

space spa's sp8s

spade spa'd sp8d

speak spyk

special specal spc

spend spen

sponge sponj spnj

spoon spwn

spring sprng

square skuar skwe

stage sta'j st1j

stamp

stake sta'k st1k

star sta

start

state sta't st1t

statistics statistiks stats

station sta'c st1c

stay st8

steal/steel styl

steam stym

stem

step

stick stik

stiff stif

still stil

stitch stitc

stocking stoking stkng

stomach stomak stmk

stone st0n

stooge stwj

stop

store stor st4

story st4y

straight/strait str1t

strange stranj strnj

street stryt

stretch stretc strtc

strike str'ik str1k

stroke str0k

strong stron

structure struktur strukt

style/stile st'il st1l

subject subjekt sbjk

substance substans sbstns

success sukses skss

such sutc stc

sudden suden sdn

sugar cugar cgr

suggest sujest sjst

summer sumer smr

sunday sun

supply supl1 spl1

support suport sp4t

sure cur

surprise supr'is spr1s

sweep swyp

sweet swyt

swim

system sistem sstm

#### T

To top

table ta'bl t1bl

tactics taktiks tktk

take ta'k t1k

tail/tale t8l

talk/torque t4k

tall tal

task

taste ta'st t1st

tax taks

teach teatc tytc

television televicon tv

tell tel

tend

tender tendr

test

than 3n

thank 3ank

that 3t

the th 3

their/there ther e

them 3em e

then 3n

theory 34y

therefore therfor e4

these thys 3ys

they 3ey 8

thick 3ik 3k

thin 3in

thing 3ng

think 3ink

third 3rd

this 3is

those 3os

though/tho 30

thought thort thot 34t

thousand 3au

thread thred 3red

threat thret 3ret

thresh threc 3rec

throat 3r0t

throw 3r0

through/thru 3ru

thumb thum 3um

thunder 3und

thursday 3urs

ticket tiket tkt

tight t'it t1t

time t'im t1m

tin

tip

tire/tyre t'ir t1r

to 2

toe t0

together tg3

tolerate tolera't tlrt

toll tol t0l

tomorrow tomorow tmr

too tw

tool twl

tooth twth tw3

tongue tung

top

touch tutc

toward twd

town twn

trade tra'd tr1d

trail tr8l

train tr1n

transfer trnsf

transferable transferabl trnsfb

translate transla't trnslt

transport trnspt

tree try

trend

trial tr1l

tribe tr'ib tr1b

tribute tribut trbt

trick trik

trouble trubl trbl

trousers trsrs

true tru

trust

truth tru3 tr3

try tr1

tuesday tues

turbine turb'in tb1n

turn

twist twis

#### U

To top

umbrella umbrela umbrl

uncle unkl unk

under und

understand undst

unit

unless unles unl

until til

us u

use ws

usual usul

#### V

To top

vain/vein /v1n/v8n

vague va'g v1g

valley valy vly

value valu vlu

vehicle vekl vkl

verb vb

verse vers vrs

very vy

vessel vesel vsl

vibrate vibra't v1b

vice v'is v1s

vicious vicus vcs

victory viktory vktr

video vid

view viw vw

vigor vg4

violence violens vlns

virtue virtu vrt

visible visibl vsb

visit vst

vital vtl

vocal vokal vkl

vocation vokacon vkc

vogue v0g

voice vois

volume volum vlm

vote v0t

#### W

To top

wait w8t

walk w4k

wall/whorl wal/worl w4l

want

war w4

warm wrm

was bn

wash woc

waste wa'st w1st

watch watc

water wtr

wave wa'v w1v

wax waks

way w8

we u

weak/week wyk

weapon wepon wpn

weather/whether wether w3r

wednesday wensday wed

weed/we'd wyd/w'd

weep wyp

went: d go

were wer bn

west

wet

what wat

wheel/we'll wyl/we'l

when wen wn

where wer wr

which/witch witc tc

while w'il w1l

whip wip

whistle wisl

white w'it w1t

who hw w

whole h0l

whose hwz

why w1

wide w'id w1d

will wil l

wind

window wnd0

wine w'in w1n

wing wng

winter wntr

wire w'ir w1r

wise w'is w1s

wish wic

wit

with w3

wither/whither wi3r

within w3i

without w3t

woman wmn

wonder wond

wood/would wud/d

word w4d

work w4k

world w4ld

worm w4m

worth w43

wound wwnd

wrong rong

#### Y

To top

yard yad

yarn yan

yawn y4n

year yr

yearn yern yrn

yeast yyst yys

yell yel

yellow yelow yl0

yes ys

yesterday yest

yet

yield yyld yyl

yoga yg

yoke y0k

you yu y

young yung yng

your/yore yor y4

you'll/yule yu'l/yul yl

you've yu'v yv

you'd yu'd yd

#### Z

To top

zeal zyl

zealous zelus zls

zebra zbr

zen

zenith zn3

zinc zink zn

zodiac zodiak zdk

zone z0n

zoo zw

To top

## Semi-fonetik Englic Speling sampl.

Tabl of kontents

[After note, 2018: This chapter rewrites in, by no means a definitive simplified spelling, most of an earlier version of the above chapter on the ESP alfabet. But the text is somewhat more rational and regular than conventional English spelling.]

Kapital-i, in "I, myself" now spels _Il_ as in _isle_ or _aisle_. (Number one, 1, not needing a keyboard shift, is an acceptabl alternative to I, also when a font, like Arial, does not distinguish capital-i from letter, l..)  
Leter _y_ spels _sym_ for _seem_ , but not _seam_.  
Leter _w_ spels _swn_ for _soon_.   
she = ce; which = witc.)  
Speling of naims may be untcanj'd.  
e-aksent remov'd for dipthong speling, ai: name = naim.

#### Sektions:

Introduktion.

The ESP Alfabet and Word Koud.

Haf of Englic in 100 words (kouded).

Englic Past Tens proposal.

### Introduktion

In november 1997, the BBC seris, Scare Stories feature was the population eksplosion. Robert Macnamara did komision a statistikal investigation of every konsyvabl faktor that mIt korelat with the population rait. Only uon such variabl was found. And it was praktikly a perfekt fit.

HI population raits went with hI femayl iliterasy. So, womens ekual rIts ar nyded to stabilIs the population, witc is nyded to prevent the further destroying and poisoning of world natural resorses.

In 1970, rIting of The End, Isaac Asimov play'd the grusom gaim of working out how long, at present growth raits, it wud tak for the mas of humanity to ekual the mas of the univers: les than 5000 yers. To ekual the mas of animal lIf on erth (eksept algae to fyd humans): les than 500 yers.   
(Asimov yus'd a simpl exponential formula, lIk that yus'd to work out the growth of kapital at kompound interest.)

Asimov said that unles the population problem kan be solv'd, non of the other problems kan be.   
Given that iliterasy of women is a ky faktor in the problem, the Englic-speaking peopls hav don precius litl, especialy to mak Englisc speling easier. Radikal ils rekuIr radikal remedys.

In 1998, the Human Development report found over 20% of the UK (the houm of Englic) funktionaly iliterat.   
In 1999, Save The Children promoted a skym, led by futbaler John Barnes, of: Dad reading to boys. Boys tend to be les literat than girls. They ar also mor lIkly to rebel against the konflikting speling ruls that mak no sens. From the speling reformers point of viw, the mor kompliant girls ar mor lIkly to humor rong-heded konventional literasy teatcers.

With 22% of adults having very low literasy levels, eksperts partly blaim'd "trendy" teatcing teknyks moving away from foniks - teatcing children to read by matcing leters and sounds.

Also in 1999, a government komision'd report stated adults in England hav pwrer literasy and numerasy skils than any kuntry in Europ eksept Poland and Ireland.   
Ireland is partikularly signifikant bekaus the Irish hav to lern tw of the worst spelt languajes in the world - Gaelic and English.

Sir Claus Moser reports this lak of adult basik skils is disasterus for sosiety and the ekonomy.   
The German-speaking peopls most resently mov'd to mor rationaly spelt speatc.

Even in Britain, Dr Mont Follick eventualy won "The Case For Spelling Reform" (as his posthumus bwk was kal'd). Join'd by Sir James Pitman, he led a bak-benc kampain in parliment against the kombin'd oposition of the Churchill and Attlee front bences.

The government agry'd on skwl trials of Pitman initial tytcing alfabet. ITA is stil som way off a uon-leter uon-sound alfabet. But the idea was to start tcildren off with a konsiderably mor rational version of the Englic alfabet, to help them pik up rIting mor kuikly and mak an easy transition to ordinary Englic spelings, with al the ekstra speling ruls that konflikt and konfus.

Profesor John Downing led the government tests on ITA witc, on the houl, wer positiv. But he was to dyply regret that ITA introdus'd new leters to augment the Roman alfabet. (This was reported in the journal of the Simplifi'd Speling Sosiety, edited by Chris Upward.)

ITA has 43 (or 44) karakters. 14 of thos ar unwieldy tw-leter kombinations. Mont Follick reform yus'd no new leters. He ran a languaj skwl, bomb'd-out during the war. And he knew that peopl don't lIk to lern long alfabets. ITA over-lwk'd that teatcers and parents, to say nothing of the tcildren, mIt not lIk having to lern a lot of unesesary new leters.

Every-uon knows that languaj has to be lern'd yung, or tcildren, lIk the wIld boy growing-up aloun in the wuds, never master speatc. A mathematician, hw bekaim blind in leiter lIf, told me that he kud never read brail fluently, bekaus uon lost that kind of kapasity, by forty.

By inventing new alfabets, I found out the hard way that I never bekaim fluent in them. The trubl even with establic'd cort-hands is that they tak a big investment of tIm to akuIr and kyp up.

Therfor, speling reform must work with konvention. The Roman alfabet, invented by an ancent peopl renown'd for ther rational law, is the simplest of the great traditional alfabets. Sins the nIntynth sentury, it has been aksepted for international postal adreses.

### The ESP alfabet and word-koud.

To top.

ESP or English Speling Prioritys ar the ruls of Englic speling, given priority over konflikting spelings, to sekur a cort but rational uon-leter uon-sound Englic alfabet. Ther ar no new leters to lern. (ITA had 43 or 44 leters.) Ther are no new speatc sounds or fonyms to lern. (ITA introdus'd 7 or so new leters just to mak speatc distinktions previusly thot not important enuf to inklud in the alfabet.)

Most of the 27 leters of the ESP alfabet mean eksaktly wat yu wud expekt from the traditional Englic alfabet. So, without further eksplanation, the untcanj'd leters ar given as abreviations or koud-leters for som of the most komon Englic words:

a: a/an; b: be (am/is/are); c: she; d: 'd/would/did; f: if; g: go; h: he; i: in; j: judge; k: co; l: 'l/will/shall; m: me/my; n: 'n'/and; o: of; p: up; r: her; s: so; t: it*; u: us/we; v: 've/have; w: who; y: you; z: as.

*For cort-hand, _to_ may be render'd: _2_ ; _the_ may be render'd: _3._

Word prosesing programs yus'd to automatikly transform singl leters to words of yor tcois. Prof. Abe Citron, the speling reformer produs'd a list of uon, tw, thry or mor leter abreviations for the komonest Englic words. (This apear'd in the Spelling Progress Bulletin.)

The main chanj the ESP alfabet maks to the konsonants is that leter _c_ is konfin'd to its sound valu in words lIk so _c_ ial and o _c_ ean. This was a featur of Dr Reg Deans "Britic" (pronouns'd as: British) alfabet.   
And _c_ is mayd the koud leter for "she," by far the komonest English usaj of this fonym.

In the European family of Roman alfabets, _c_ often featurs in the speling reserv'd for it in the ESP alfabet. To giv but thry exampls, French: chef; German: schnapps; Italian: Puccini. It wud be yusful if the European Union designated _c_ as the standard leter for the fonym in _sh_ e or _ch_ ez.

Folowing from this yus of _c_ , the English digraf _ch_ , as in whi _ch_ , wud be re-spelt _tc_. Which = witc.

Failur to agry by speling reformers of Englic (hw don't al hav Englic as ther first languaj) perhaps has byn kaus'd by tw distraktions.   
The leser distraktion has byn the patern (regular but not rational) of ading the leter _h_ to som other leter to mak a digraf. This presedent has enkuraj'd the yus of tw leters wer uon leter wil do.

The mor serius trap for speling reformers has byn to folow _the patern of speling dipthongs, introdus'd by William Caxton_ , the first Englic printer. He put _e_ on the end of a word to chanj a vowel, in a word, to a dipthong.   
Hens, from _mad_ to _made_ ; _cod_ to _code_ ; _wed_ to _weed_ ; _rid_ to _ride_ ; _cut_ to _cute_ , Amerikans pronouns: coot.

Thry objektions to Caxton dipthongs: Firstly, they ar not fonetik. The Caxton digrafs kan not depend on an apreciation of how vowels kombin to mak dipthongs. They hav to be lern'd by rowt - dumbly, as it wer. But lerning, as a rul, is intelijens first, only then bakt up by habit, to releas intelijens to lern new things.

Sekondly, the Caxton spelings wer not folow'd in European languajes, and ther lak of sound lojik is naturaly not akseptabl to Europeans or ther former kolonists. Uon day ther may be a standard Roman alfabet for al the languajes of Europ and ther over-seas kounter-parts. Caxton-rul'd English speling reformers ar tw parokial.

Thirdly, the Caxton dipthongs don't always lwk familiar even to English readers, wen yus'd konsistently. For instans, Caxton speling reformers render _made_ as _maed_ ; _ride_ as _ried_ ; _code_ as _coed_ ; _rude_ as _rued_.

But we kan mak gud yus of the fakt that the Englic vowels also stand for dipthongs, provided we find a beter way of distinguishing them than the first Englic printer kud. In Spelling Progress Bulletin, a reformer sujested kapital leters for the dipthongs.   
I mIt adopt this idea for the tw letters: I, O. Hens, rId=ride; cOd= code. But, ther ar lower kais substituts for I and O, in the numbers 1 and 0. Kapital leters tak longer to tIp bekaus of the nyd to pres the shift ky first. But the ESP alfabet kan even get round this for the leter O, by tIping 0 (zero) insted. So, code = c0d, as distinkt from: cod.   
And for leter I, the number uon, 1, is at lyst a posibl substitut: hide = h1d, as distinkt from: hid.

This konvention of _I_ ( kapital-i ) for a dipthong alredy exists for the personal pronoun (and uon-leter koud word), _I_ ( as in _ai_ sle). _I_ kud be riten lIk an unkros'd _t_ ; leter, _l_ wud always be riten with a lwp.

[After-nout 2018: later, I favored the apostrofe to replais the leter, e, when yus'd as an aksent to denout a dipthong.]

The dipthong in "they" is spelt fonetikly, as ar words lIk v _ei_ n. Therfor, the ESP alfabet aksepts the spelings _ei_ or _ey_.

Yusing the ESP alfabet, sentenses ar not started by kapitals. The ful stop or period servs to separat sentenses.

Leter _w_ , literaly a dubl-u, also servs for the long-u dipthong. Hens, rwd= rude, cwt= coot; ciut = cute.

By analojy, _y_ is a sort of dubl-i, yus'd in the way that the words, to the Elgar march, rIm "glor _y_ " with "free". Hens, wyd= weed.

Nout, how-ever, thys oditys that kom from ekonomising with the number of leters in the ESP alfabet: ww= woo. This is distinkt from, say, wud= wood.  
I leav aloun komon words lIk: be, we, the, he, she. Indeed, I mIt just yus one-leter cort-hands for them.

This kompleats the English Speling Prioritys alfabet.

Nout: Leter _x_ in the Roman alfabet may be given the same valu as Cyrillic (or Russian) x, deriving from Greek chi. This is the fonym in Skotic lo _ch_ or German Ba _ch_. It is also yusd in Welc but isn't nyded for the English languaj.

LIkwIs, the English fonym _th_ wud be no mor than a sekondary leter in a world alfabet. Foreiners find it hard to pronouns but we understand them and the varius Englic dialekts that only pronouns _th_ aproksimatly.   
Thry-quarters of Englic usaj of this fonym is in the word "the."   
Som languajes don't hav a definit artikl and foreners often leav it out even wen speaking English. So do news-paper kaption rIters.   
The ESP alfabet givs "th" the optional leter, number 3.

Leter _q_ is left as a sper.

### Haf of Englic in 100 words

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10 words mak up uon-kuarter of Englic usaj (if "an" also kounts with "a"): and in to the I that is of an it (corten'd: n i 2 3 1 th b o a t.) "That" dos not hav a redy cort form.

w = who.

Haf of demotik Englic usaj is kover'd by som 100 words.   
So, it wud be ekonomik to mak tw or mor leter shortenings for as many as posibl of thos 100 most komon words, having kouded al the singl leters of the ESP alfabet.   
4 words with no singl leters left to shorten them: or, on, no, at. (The thry-leter word 'out' may be left uncorten'd, tu.) 4 mIt serv to myn: or. But 4 is konfIn'd to: for.   
8 mIt be cort for: they.

#### About 22 words hav fairly klear 2-leter kouds:

sm: some

tl: till

nt: not

mn: man

wn: when

bt: but

md: made

al: all

bn: been, was, were

tm: time

gd: good

sd: said

fr: from

mk: make

sm: some

tl: till nt: not

mn: man

wn: when

bt: but

md: made

al: all

bn: been, was, were

tm: time

gd: good

sd: said

fr: from

mk: make

mt: might

lk: like

wt: what

hd: had

hw: how

yt: yet

hs: his

rt: right

#### 20 other leter pairs may not be so easy to ges:

km: come

en: any

wr: where

tu: too

kd: could

na: now

sy: see

ts: its

ms: must

ov: over

wI: why

0n: own

mc: much

hr: here, hear

m8: may

yn: even (e'en)

sc: such

nw: new

wc: which

af: after

#### 7 thry-leter shorten'd words mIt be:

yor: your

onl: only

mor: more

mos: most.

sns: since

wel: well

abt: about

7 (plus uon) komon words using the digraf _th_ ar hyr given short-hand forms (witc wud be corter stil, using th = 3):

wi: with; tht: that; oth: other; thn: than, then; ths: this; thr: thru/through; tho: tho/though.

LIkwIs for thys 3 4-letter shortenings that kontain _th_ : thos: those; thys: these; thng: thing.

Nout: short-hands rIt numbers in ther usual Hindu-Arabik form 1, 2, 3, etc.

Any list of unspecialis'd Englic from every-day speatc, jurnalism or literatur, kompil'd on a broad statistikal basis, wud mostly agry on the 100 most komon words. Diferenses wud be marjinal.   
The abov listed words total about 107, inkluding diferent versions of the saim word from iregular verbs.

I mayd my list firstly by konsulting my own experiens and baking my own intuition as to the most important words. But I bekaim kyn to tcek with other sorses. Som ar alredy sIted. Others inkluded the prIm vokabularys of varius cort-hand systems, l1k Pitman, Gregg, and Basik English.   
The 100 word list, by Helen Fouché Gaines, in "Cryptanalysis" koms to about 49% of her sampl. A les konservativ estimat is from John Dewey: haf of popular Englic in 69 words. As one of his words was uncommon, it looks as if he based his count on a few texts, perhaps only one, which might skew his result slightly from the normal.

Thys most komon words ar yus'd al the tIm to suport the vast number of les frequent words.

### English Past Tens Proposal

Ogden and Richards devis'd "Basic English" as a simplify'd Englic for world wId yus. They show'd that Englic sentenses kud be konstrukted with just 18 of the komonest Englic verbs: kom, get, giv, go, kyp, let, mak, put, sym, tak, be, do, hav, say, sy, send, may, wil.   
(Thys 18 verbs kombin'd with direktiv words, lIk: in, out, with, away, off, may replais many kompound verbs, that hav pre-fikses.)

Only uon of thys 18 verbs has a regular past tens, ading _-ed_ : "seemed." Jeneraly the les yus'd Englic verbs hav this standard past tens.   
The Englic past tens proposal ads _'d,_ for _did_ or _wud_ , __to the subjekt of the verb, just as the futur tens alredy ads _'ll_ (short for "will" or "shall") to the verb subjekt.

Hens, "I'd go" or "The man 'd go" means the saim as "I went" or "The man went" avoiding the nyd to lern or remember al the iregular past tenses of Englic.   
This kompars to the normal yus of "I'll go" or "I will go" for an Englic verb in the futur tens.

The traditional distinktion of past tens meaning betwyn "I went" and "I would go" is preserv'd, bekaus only the abreviated form, _'d_ is propos'd as the suporting verb to put al English verbs in the past tens.   
Mor-over, it dos not mater wether a regular past tens auksiliary verb, 'd, means "would" or "did." "I'd go" for "I did go" conveys a regular past tens form just as wel.   
Som traditional Englic rIters avoid the short form as kolokuial, so this regular past tens proposal for _'d_ wud not konflikt with ther usaj.

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# FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING

## by H G Wells

Table of contents

### THE DISCOVERY OF AN ART

It is curious that people do not grumble more at having to spell correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation.

Dealers in small talk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back upon the silk hat or dress suit, or some rule of etiquette or other convention as a theme, but spelling seems to escape them. The suspicion seems quaint, but one may almost fancy that an allusion to spelling savoured a little of indelicacy. It must be admitted, though where the scruples come from would be hard to say, that there is a certain diffidence even here in broaching my doubts in the matter.

For some inexplicable reason spelling has become mixed up with moral feeling. One cannot pretend to explain things in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so. Spelling is not appropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right or wrong. We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when the vogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theological eccentricity; but we esteem him "Nithing" and an outcast if he but drop a "p" from opportunity. It is not an anecdote, but a scandal, if we say a man cannot spell his own name. There is only one thing esteemed worse before we come to the deadly crimes, and that is the softening of language by dropping the aspirate.

After all, it is an unorthodox age. We are all horribly afraid of being bourgeois, and unconventionality is the ideal of every respectable person. It is strange that we should cling so steadfastly to correct spelling. Yet again, one can partly understand the business, if one thinks of the little ways of your schoolmaster and schoolmistress. This sanctity of spelling is stamped upon us in our earliest years. The writer recalls a period of youth wherein six hours a week were given to the study of spelling, and four hours to all other religious instruction.   
So important is it, that a writer, who cannot spell, is almost driven to abandon his calling, however urgent the thing he may have to say, or his need of the incidentals of fame. Yet in the crisis of such a struggle rebellious thoughts may arise. Even this: Why, after all, should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary merit? For it is less fatal for an ambitious scribe to be as dull as Hoxton than to spell in diverse ways.

Yet correct spelling of English has not been traced to revelation; there was no grammatical Sinai, with a dictionary instead of tables of stone. Indeed, we do not even know certainly when correct spelling began, which word in the language was first spelt the right way, and by whom. Correct spelling may have been evolved, or it may be the creation of some master mind. Its inventor, if it had an inventor, is absolutely forgotten. Thomas Cobbett would have invented it, but that he was born more than two centuries too late, poor man.

All that we certainly know is that, contemporaneously with the rise of extreme Puritanism, the belief in orthography first spread among Elizabethan printers, and with the Hanoverian succession the new doctrine possessed the whole length and breadth of the land. At that time the world passed through what extension lecturers call, for no particular reason, the classical epoch. Nature—as, indeed, all the literature manuals testify—was in the remotest background then of human thought. The human mind, in a mood of the severest logic, brought everything to the touchstone of an orderly reason; the conception of "correctness" dominated all mortal affairs.   
For instance, one's natural hair with its vagaries of rat's tails, duck's tails, errant curls, and baldness, gave place to an orderly wig, or was at least decently powdered. The hoop remedied the deficiencies of the feminine form, and the gardener clipped his yews into respectability. All poetry was written to one measure in those days, and a Royal Academy with a lady member was inaugurated that art might become at least decent. Dictionaries began. The crowning glory of Hanoverian literature was a Great Lexicographer.

In those days it was believed that the spelling of every English word had been settled for all time. Thence to the present day, though the severities then inaugurated, so far as metre and artistic composition are concerned, been generously relaxed—though we have had a Whistler, a Walt Whitman, and a Wagner—the rigours of spelling have continued unabated. There is just one right way of spelling, and all others are held to be not simply inelegant or undesirable, but wrong; and unorthodox spelling, like original morality, goes hand in hand with shame.

Yet even at the risk of shocking the religious convictions of some, may not one ask whether spelling is in truth a matter of right and wrong at all? Might it not rather be an art? It is too much to advocate the indiscriminate sacking of the alphabet, but yet it seems plausible that there is a happy medium between a reckless debauch of errant letters and our present dead rigidity. For some words at any rate may there not be sometimes one way of spelling a little happier, sometimes another? We do something of this sort even now with our "phantasy" and "fantasie," and we might do more. How one would spell this word or that would become, if this latitude were conceded, a subtle anxiety of the literary exquisite. People are scarcely prepared to realise what shades of meaning may be got by such a simple device.

Let us take a simple instance. You write, let us say, to all your cousins, many of your friends, and even, it may be, to this indifferent intimate and that familiar enemy, "My dear So-and-so." But at times you feel even as you write, sometimes, that there is something too much and sometimes something lacking. You may even get so far in the right way occasionally as to write, "My dr. So-and-so," when your heart is chill. And people versed in the arts of social intercourse know the subtle insult of misspelling a person's name, or flicking it off flippantly with a mere waggling wipe of the pen. But these are mere beginnings.

Let the reader take a pen in hand and sit down and write, "My very dear wife." Clean, cold, and correct this is, speaking of orderly affection, settled and stereotyped long ago. In such letters is butcher's meat also "very dear." Try now, "Migh verrie deare Wyfe." Is it not immediately infinitely more soft and tender? Is there not something exquisitely pleasant in lingering over those redundant letters, leaving each word, as it were, with a reluctant caress? Such spelling is a soft, domestic, lovingly wasteful use of material. Or, again, if you have no wife, or object to an old-fashioned conjugal tenderness, try "Mye owne sweete dearrest Marrie." There is the tremble of a tenderness no mere arrangement of trim everyday letters can express in those double _r's_. "Sweete" my ladie must be; sweet! why pump-water and inferior champagne, spirits of nitrous ether and pancreatic juice are "sweet."

For my own part I always spell so, with lots of f's and g's and such like tailey, twirley, loopey things, when my heart is in the tender vein. And I hold that a man who will not do so, now he has been shown how to do it, is, in plain English, neither more nor less than a prig. The advantages of a varied spelling of names are very great. Industrious, rather than intelligent, people have given not a little time, and such minds as they have, to the discussion of the right spelling of our great poet's name. But he himself never dreamt of tying himself down to one presentation of himself, and was—we have his hand for it—Shakespeare, Shakspear, Shakespear, Shakspeare, and so forth, as the mood might be. It would be almost as reasonable to debate whether Shakespeare smiled or frowned. My dear friend Simmongues is the same. He is "Sims," a mere slash of the pen, to those he scorns, Simmonds or Simmongs to his familiars, and Simmons, A.T. Simmons, Esq., to all Europe.

From such mere introductory departures from precision, such petty escapades as these, we would we might seduce the reader into an utter debauch of spelling. But a sudden Mænad dance of the letters on the page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader—the printer's reader—to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this authority, begging his mercy, to let the little flowers of spelling alone. Else the plough of that Philistine's uniformity will utterly root them out.

Such high art of spelling as is thus hinted at is an art that has still to gather confidence and brave the light of publicity. A few, indeed, practise it secretly for love—in letters and on spare bits of paper. But, for the most part, people do not know that there is so much as an art of spelling possible; the tyranny of orthography lies so heavily on the land. Your common editors and their printers are a mere orthodox spelling police, and at the least they rigorously blot out all the delightful frolics of your artist in spelling before his writings reach the public eye. But commonly, as I have proved again and again, the slightest lapse into rococo spelling is sufficient to secure the rejection of a manuscript without further ado.

And to end,—a word about Phonographers. It may be that my title has led the reader to anticipate some mention of these before. They are a kind of religious sect, a heresy from the orthodox spelling. They bind one another by their mysteries and a five-shilling subscription in a "soseiti to introduis an impruvd method of spelinj." They come across the artistic vision, they and their Soseiti, with an altogether indefinable offence. Perhaps the essence of it is the indescribable meanness of their motive. For this phonography really amounts to a study of the cheapest way of spelling words. These phonographers are sweaters of the Queen's English, living meanly on the selvage of honest mental commerce by clipping the coin of thought. But enough of them. They are mentioned here only to be disavowed. They would substitute one narrow orthodoxy for another, and I would unfold the banner of freedom. Spell, my brethren, as you will! Awake, arise, O language living in chains; let Butter's spelling be our Bastille! So with a prophetic vision of liberated words pouring out of the dungeons of a spelling-book, this plea for freedom concludes. What trivial arguments there are for a uniform spelling I must leave the reader to discover. This is no place to carp against the liberation I foresee, with the glow of the dawn in my eyes.

* * *
Acknowledgments to Project Gutemberg.  
http://www.gutemberg.org/  
This is a chapter taken from their free e-book: Certain Personal Matters. H G Wells, 1897.

Wells was an early member of The Simplified Spelling Society.  
The Outlook For Homo Sapiens (1942) shows that, in old age, he still supported English language reform: Note 9c...."I think of it as stripped of any remaining idiomatic complications with a reformed spelling and a continually expanding vocabulary."

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## Single-stroke English (Summary edition)

This is the booklet of essentials for learning Single-stroke English.

## Guide to five volume collected verse by Richard Lung

Table of contents

The following descriptions give information on my other books. My up-to-date books list, with links, can be found on my profile page: here.

* * *

### The Valesman.

The first volume is mainly traditional nature poetry.   
(160 poems, including longer narrative verse in section three.)  
The nature poet Dorothy Cowlin reconnected me with my rural origins. Many of the poems, about animals and birds and the environs, could never have been written without her companionship.

The unity of themes, especially across the first two sections, as well as within the third section, makes this volume my most strongly constructed collection. I guess most people would think it my best. Moreover, there is something for all ages here.

1. How we lived for thousands of years.

Dorothy thought my best poems were those of the farming grand-father, the Valesman.

2. Flash-backs from the early train.

More memories of early childhood on the farm and first year at the village school.

3. Trickster.

Narrative verse about boyish pranks and prat-falls.

4. Oyh! Old Yorkshire Holidays.

Features playtime aspects of old rural and sea-side Yorkshire.

* * *

### Dates and Dorothy

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Book two begins with eight-chapter review of works, plus list of publications & prizes by Dorothy Cowlin.  
(Seven of these chapters are currently freely available as web pages.)

This second volume continues with the second instalment of my own poems, classed as life and love poetry.  
The Dates are historical and romantic plus the friendship of Dorothy and the romance of religion.  
169 poems plus two short essays.

Prelude: review of Dorothy Cowlin.

Dates, historical and romantic, and Dorothy:  
1. dates.  
2. the Dorothy poems.  
3. loves loneliness loves company.  
4. the romance of religion.

The hidden influence of Dorothy, in the first volume, shows in this second volume. The first two sections were written mostly after she died. Thus, the first section, Dates, reads like a count-down before meeting her, in the second section, as prentice poet.

She was warmly responsive to the romantic lyrics of the third section. This was reassuring because some originated in my twenties. (I gave-up writing formal poetry during my thirties, to all practical purposes. There were scarcely three exceptions.) These surviving early poems, like most of my out-put, under-went intensive revision.

The fourth section probably stems from the importance attached to religion at primary school. Here humanitarian Dorothys influence slightly made itself felt by her liking to visit churches.

The prelude review of Dorothy as a professional writer is freely available, at present, on my website: Poetry and novels of Dorothy Cowlin.   
Nearly all the text is there, except a preface and last section, which I didn't upload before losing access to the site in 2007. Some of the material, there, has been revised.  
The fotos, I took of Dorothy, are published for the first time.

The continued availability of my Dorothy Cowlin website is not guaranteed, so I welcome this opportunity to publish my literary review of her work, as an extra to volume 2.

* * *

### He's a good dog. (He just doesnt like you to laf.)

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The third volume is a miscellaneous collection of 163 poems/pieces, making-up sections, one, three and four, with the arts and politics the strongest themes, as well as themes found in other volumes. There is also a story, and a final short essay.

1. with children  
2. or animals  
3. never act  
4. the political malaise  
5. the lost  
6. short essay:  
Proportional Representation for peace-making power-sharing.

One section includes a sort of verse novela and dramatic poem with an eye on the centenary of the First World War. The idea stemmed from an incident related by Dorothy Cowlin (yet again). Her uncle was stopped flying a kite on the beach, because he might be signaling to the enemy battle fleet.

In this miscellany, previous themes appear, such as children, animals and birds. Verse on the arts comes in. I organised these poems on the WC Fields principle: Never act with children or animals.  
The fourth section collects political satires from over the years. The fifth section reflects on loneliness.

This volume is classed as of "presentatives" because largely about politics and the arts, with politicians acting like performing artists or representatives degenerating into presentatives on behalf of the few rather than the many.

However, the title poem, He's a good dog..., hints how eccentric and resistent to classification is this third volume. (There are six dog poems in the volume.) This title poem is based on a true war-time air incident. The good dog is also derived from a true dog, whose own story is told in the poem, the bleat dog (in volume 1).

* * *

### In the meadow of night

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The fourth volume is of 160 poems and three short stories on the theme of progress or lack of it.

part one: allure.

The allure of astronomy and the glamor of the stars.

part two: endeavor.

The romance and the terror of the onset of the space age and the cold war.

part three: fate.

An uncertain future of technologies and possible dystopias. Ultimate questions of reality.

This fourth volume is of SF poetry. SF stands for science fiction, or, more recently, speculative fiction. The verse ranges from hard science to fantasy.  
This literary tradition of HG Wells and other futurists exert a strong influence.  
Otherwise, I have followed my own star, neither of my nature poet friends, Dorothy and Nikki, having a regard for SF poetry.   
Yet science fiction poetry is a continuation of nature poetry by other means.  
This may be my most imaginative collection. Its very diversity discourages summary.

* * *

### Radical!

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Volume 5 opens with a play (since published in a separate book) about the most radical of us all, Mother Teresa: If the poor are on the moon...  
This is freely available, for the time being, on my website: Poetry and novels of Dorothy Cowlin. (Performers are asked to give author royalties to the Mother Teresa Mission of Charity.)

The previously unpublished content consists largely of fairly long verse monologs, starting with artistic radicals, in "The dream flights of Berlioz and Sibelius," which is a sequence of The Impresario Berlioz, and The Senses of Sibelius.

Next, the intellectual radical, Sigmund Freud, followed by short poems on a sprinkling of more great names, who no doubt deserved longer. (Art is long, life is short.)

The title sequence, Radical! is made-up of verse about John Stuart Mill, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, George Orwell and JB Priestley.

Volume five ends with an environmental collection, some are early works, if somewhat revised versions of drafts, currently available on my website, Poetry and novels of Dorothy Cowlin.  
Should that website close down, I hope the green verses and the Mother Teresa play can be obtained in this volume five.

_If you read and enjoy any of these books, please post on-line a review of why you liked the work._

_My website: Democracy Science.  
has current URL or web address:_

_http://www.voting.ukscientists.com_

_While preparing this series, I have made minor changes to arrangement and content of the material, so the descriptions of companion volumes, at the end of each book, might not always quite tally._

Seperately from "Radical!" the play about Mother Teresa, also appears as a book, on its own, here.

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* * *

## Guide to two more book series.

Table of contents.

## The Commentaries series

#### Commentaries book one:

### Literary Liberties

Literary Liberties with reality allow us to do the impossible of being other people, from all over the world. Our imagined other lives make the many worlds theory a fact thru fiction.

This book of books or illustrated reviews span fiction, faction and non-fiction.  
It goes some way to substantiate the belief of Benedetto Croce that history is the history of liberty.

I only wrote of books that I appreciated, so that I could pass on that appreciation to others. It must be admitted that I went with novels that looked over horizons confined to family values. (Family is, of course, a basic trial of liberty, compromised by obligations to partner and children.)

Likewise, these reviews themselves need not be bounded by the horizons of literary criticism but reach out to solutions for the problem novel or the non-fiction book with a cause.

In promoting others writings, I hoped to promote my own, any-way, the liberal values that inform my writings. It took a lot more preparation than I had anticipated. This is usually the case with my books.

Literary Liberties is the first of a series of Commentaries. This author also has a Democracy Science series. The series of Collected Verse was the first to be completed.

* * *

#### Commentaries book two:

### Science and Democracy reviews

As they separately pursue their shared ethic of progress, scientific research and democratic reform conduct themselves as two different journeys, both here followed, as the evidence mounts that they depend on each other to meet the stresses that survival poses.

Works reviewed and studied here include the following.

The physicist, John Davidson under-took an epic investigation into the mystic meaning of Jesuses teachings, as for our other-worldly salvation, supplemented by a revelation in non-canonic texts of the gnostics.

The Life and Struggles of William Lovett, 1876 autobiography of the "moral force" Chartist and author of the famous six points for equal representation.   
Organiser who anticipated the peace and cultural initiatives of the UN, such as UNESCO.

Jill Liddington: Rebel Girls. Largely new historical evidence for the role especially of working women in Yorkshire campaigning for the suffrage.

"How the banks robbed the world" is an abridged description of the BBC2 program explanation of the fraud in corporate finance, that destroys public investments.

David Craig and Matthew Elliott: Fleeced!  
How we've been betrayed by the politicians, bureaucrats and bankers and how much they've cost us.

The political system fails the eco-system.  
Green warnings, over the years, by campaigners and the media, and the hope for grass roots reforms.   
From Paul Harrison, how expensively professionalised services deprive the poor of even their most essential needs. And the developed countries are over-strained, on this account, drawing-in trained people from deprived countries.  
Why society should deprofessionalise basic skills important for peoples most essential needs, whether in the third world or the "over-developed" countries.

The sixth extinction  
Richard Leakey and other experts on how mankind is the agent of destruction for countless life forms including possibly itself, in the sixth mass extinction, that planet earth has endured in its history. Why world politicians must work together to counter the effects of global warming.

On a topic where science and democracy have not harmonised, a few essays from 2006 to 2010, after "nuclear croneyism" infested New Labour and before Japans tsunami-induced chronic nuclear pollution. There's a 2015 after-word.

Some women scientists who _should_ have won nobel prizes.   
Lise Meitner, Madame Wu, Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell, Alice Stewart, to name some. Reading of their work in popular science accounts led me, by chance, to think they deserved nobel prizes; no feminist program at work here.

Julian Barbour: _The End Of Time._   
Applying the Mach principle, to an external frame-work of Newtonian absolute space and time, both in classical physics and to Schrödinger wave equation of quantum mechanics, by which the universe is made properly self-referential, as a timeless "relative configuration space" or Platonia.

Murray Gell-Mann: _The Quark and the Jaguar._   
Themes, including complex systems analysis, which the reviewer illustrates by voting methods.

Brian Greene: The Elegant Universe.   
Beyond point particle physics to a theory of "strings" that may under-lie the four known forces of nature, and its material constituents, thru super-symmetry, given that the "super-strings," as such, are allowed to vibrate, their characteristic particle patterns, in extra hidden dimensions of space.

Brian Greene: The Hidden Reality.   
A survey of the more extravagant physics theories that have invoked many worlds or a multiverse..

Lee Smolin: Three roads to quantum gravity.   
Reviewing the other two roads (besides string theory) namely black hole cosmology and loop quantum gravity. All three approaches are converging on a discrete view of space and time, in basic units, on the Planck scale. General relativitys space-time continuum is being quantised, rather as nineteenth century thermo-dynamics of continuous radiation was quantised.

Lee Smolin: the trouble with physics.   
Impatience with the remoteness of string theory and hope for progress from theories with more experimental predictions. How to make research more effective. Smolin on a scientific ethic. Reviewer criticises the artificial divide academics make between science and ethics.

### Commentaries book three.

### Echoes Of A Friend: Letters from Dorothy Cowlin.

#### Comment by Richard Lung.

Dates And Dorothy started with a literary appreciation of the professional writer, traveler, nature walker, and poet, combined with my second book of verse, that includes the story of our friendship. My second book, about Dorothy, is a memorial, she graces. by speaking thru letters to me, as well as assessments of this writer, she made into a maker and aided as a reformer.  
In widowhood, she yet became companionable and widely liked. Her quiet and sunny disposition held in reserve a deeply serious nature.

### Commentaries book four:

### War from War.

Biography of the authors father, in his faraway origins, over-taken by war, on two fronts, and how to confront it!

Table of contents.

* * *

## The Democracy Science series.

To top.

The Democracy Science series of books, by Richard Lung, also is edited and renovated from this authors material on the Democracy Science web-site.

### Book 1: Peace-making Power-sharing.

The first book on voting method, has more to do with electoral reform. (The second is more about electoral research.)

"Peace-making Power-sharing" features new approaches to electoral reform, like the Canadian Citizens Assemblies and referendums. I followed and took part in the Canadian debate from before the assemblies were set-up, right thru the referendums.  
This was a democratic tragedy and an epic in the dashing of idealistic hopes.

Some developments in America are reviewed.

The anarchy of voting methods, from the power struggle in Britain, is investigated over a century of ruling class resistance to electoral reform.

A penultimate chapter gives the simplest way to explain transferable voting, on to the more formal treatment of a small club election.

The last chapter is the earliest extant version of my work on scientific measurement of elections (in French).

* * *

### Book 2: Scientific Method of Elections.

The previous book had a last chapter in French, which is the earliest surviving version of the foundation of this sequel, Scientific Method of Elections. I base voting method on a widely accepted logic of measurement, to be found in the sciences. This is supported by reflections on the philosophy of science.

The more familiar approach, of judging voting methods by (questionable) selections of basic rules or criteria, is critically examined.

This author is a researcher, as well as a reformer, and my innovations of Binomial STV and the Harmonic Mean quota are explained.  
This second book has more emphasis on electoral research, to progress freedom thru knowledge.

Two great pioneers of electoral reform are represented here, in speeches (also letters) of John Stuart Mill on parliamentary reform (obtained from Hansard on-line). And there is commentary and bibliography of HG Wells on proportional representation (mainly).

Official reports of British commissions on election systems are assessed. These reports are of Plant, Jenkins, Kerley, Sunderland, Arbuthnott, Richard, and (Helena Kennedy) Power report.

The work begins with a short history on the sheer difficulty of genuine electoral reform. The defeat of democracy is also a defeat for science. Freedom and knowledge depend on each other.   
Therein is the remedy.

* * *

### Book 3: Science is Ethics as Electics.

Political elections, that absorbed the first two books in this series, are only the tip of the iceberg, where choice is concerned. Book three takes an electoral perspective on the social sciences and natural sciences, from physics to metaphysics of a free universe within limits of determinism and chance.

### Book 4:

### FAB STV: Four Averages Binomial Single Transferable Vote.

 4

Forth-coming. General discussions about voting method, followed by a technical account of FAB STV.

In French/En Francais:

### Modele Scientifique du Proces Electoral.

On pouvrait considérer le problème de la représentation comme va problème scientifique de mesure. Pour cela, il y a à notre disposition quatre échelles possibles pour mesurer la représentation. L'échelle classifiée ou nominale, l'échelle ordinale, l'échelle à intervalles, et l'échelle à raison.

Le scrutin transférable (ST, ou STV, en anglais) est un système co-ordonné du vote au dépouillement, dans un ordre de préférence empirique 1, 2, 3,.. à l'ordre rational de 1, 2, 3,.. membres majoritaires.

Table of contents.

