• Does the inefficiency of the English spelling code result in lower literacy rates? 
• Could a consistent spelling system [such as ITA] reduce teaching time by 50%? 
• What were the results of the experiment with ITA? How much did ITA help children with reading?. 
• Can the English alphabet [1 symbol-1 sound] be restored? [currently 561 symbols-42 sounds] saxon-spanglish.html  
• Is spelling pronunciation possible. Is it possible to pronounce words as they are spelled? 

There have been hundreds of articles on our declining literacy rates and the problems that some children have in learning to read and write.  Some of these articles suggest that the fault is with the learners [some are dyslexic] or the teachers [some are poorly trained].  Teaching methods, television, and society in general have also been faulted.  Only recently have researchers begun to suggest that part of the blame might be with the complexity of the spelling code used for English.  Are the children dyslexic or should this term be applied to the overly complex code we ask children to learn? 

McLuhan wrote that the alphabet, unlike previous writing systems, could be mastered by anyone in a few hours.  By an alphabet, McLuhan meant a consistent set of correspondences between the simple sounds [or phonemes] of the language and the written symbols used to represent these sounds [graphemes].  What could be mastered in a few hours was 20 to 40 sound signs - the exact number depending on the language being represented. The task of associating 40 sound categories with 40 graphic shapes is not that daunting.  

It is true that the average person can memorize 40 paired associates in a few hours particularly if a mnemonic is employed.  For example, the Phoenician letter names were typically the names of common objects that started with the letter's sound.  It would be as if our letter names were ox, building, [cup], door, goad, ...instead of ey, bee, [see], dee,... To make things simpler, the shapes of the letters resembled their names, the letter Ahks [alef] looked like an ox head, the letter Building [beyt] looked like a building or a floor plan for a house, the letter Door [daleth] looked something like a door...  The notion that an alphabet should be pictographic [shape suggests name] and acrophonic [name suggests sound] was borrowed from the Egyptians.  The Semites added an alphabetic order because the same collection of shapes were used for their number system.  A=1, B=2, D=3, etc.  Historians have attributed the rapid spread of the northern semitic alphabet to its simplicity and ease of teaching. [alphabet defined ] [history] 

Compare the task of memorizing 20 to 40 sound-signs to the task of learning what remains of the English alphabet.  There are only about 40 simple sounds in the English language but the traditional code represents them over 400 different ways. This suggests that English employs a very inefficient code and that the English writing system might be ten times as difficult to learn as the writing systems or codes for Spanish or Italian.  According to Dewey (1971), each simple sound in the English language is associated not with one but with and average of 14.7 different letters or letter combinations.  [letters associated with the vowel in RULE] 

Some researchers who have compared reading and spelling skills across languages have concluded that most of the
problems identified as dyslexia or associated with low literacy rates in the U.S. are directly attributable to the needless
complexity and unpredictability of the traditional English spelling system [TES].  This complexity is largely lacking in the
writing systems of most languages.  Cases of dyslexia and illiteracy after four years of schooling are extremely rare in Italy,
Spain, Turkey, Finland, and other countries with highly phonemic or transparent orthographies.  

Simpler codes lead to greater mastery of reading and writing, fewer failures, and reduced learning time. If the English
spelling system or code is ten times as complex as the spelling systems for Spanish and Italian; it is no wonder that school
children in Spain and Italy can achieve in one year what it takes English speaking children four to six years to achieve.  

When words are spelled the way they sound, it is relatively easy to spell any word you can pronounce. In an alphabetic or
highly phonemic writing system, such as Italian or Spanish, the way a word is spelled is a guide to its pronunciations. 

Literacy expert, Frank Laubach, claimed that English had the worst spelling system in the world. It is certainly true that it is
ten times more complex and inconsistent than it needs to be. Dr. A.J. Ellis showed that the 26 letters could have 658
different significations.  40 sounds should be represented with about 40 symbols not 600*.  [The number of different
spellings one can identify depends on the size of the dictionary.  In an abridged 70,000 word dictionary, Dewey found
561 different ways to represent 42 sounds. ] 

In 1890, the philologist, Henry Ellis, suggested a simpler code for English.  This was later promoted as New Spelling and
in 1960 became the basis of Pitman's Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA).  ITA was not a methodology but simply a
correspondence table where each symbol was associated with one and only one sound.  In English, each of the 42 sounds
in the language can be spelled an average of 14.7 different ways. In ITA, each sound was spelled just one way. 

The table below shows 18 of the 29 different ways that the /u:/ sound is written in English and illustrates the complexity of
the English writing code or transcription conventions.  

        
                  *The percentages in column 1 are from Hanna et al. 1966.  Some spelling frequencies may be over-rated  
                  due to the particular methodology employed.  The percentages in column 1 reflect dictionary frequencies. 
                      Samples of text from newspapers, books, and magazines would yield different frequencies. 
                   ITA is similar to WES but replaces [oo] with a symbol that looks like overlapping zeros for the /u:/ sound.

Fortunately, 75% of the words that rhyme use only 4 different vowel spellings.  In other words, knowing the sound, a
student should be able to guess the correct spelling 75% of the time after four tries.  With ITA [Pitman's Initial Teaching
Alphabet], the student should be able to guess the correct spelling 100% of the time after one try.  ITA spelling was
basically a systematic alternative to invented spelling.  ITA was an alternative to guessing or inventing the spelling of
familiar pronunciations or guessing the pronunciation of unfamiliar strings of letters.  

In the 1960's, Sir James Pitman promoted an augmented roman alphabet to be used as an initial teaching alphabet or
ITA.  Pitman believed that a consistent orthography would simplify teaching across any methodology.  There was some
basis for this optimism.  Phonics is often not the approach used to teach children in Spain or Italy.  

                   In the late 1960's, the British House of Parliament  passed a bill funding a bold experiment with
                   consistent spelling. British schools were given the books and collateral materials they needed to
                   introduce this new medium of instruction: the Initial Teaching alphabet or ITA. Teachers were
                   given a crash course in IPA but were not told specifically how to teach it. 

                   ITA was extensively researched in the early 1970's [see Downing].  Children could learn ITA
                   almost as easily as children in other countries could learn their consistent spelling system.  The
                   shortfall has be attributed to the inability of parents to help and the shortage of books written in
                   ITA.  In the U.S. and England, most parents were not literate in ITA. 
  

Since the goal of ITA was to find a better way to teach children to read and
write, ITA tried to look like TES [Traditional English Spelling].  Unfortunately,
there is no way for a systematic spelling system to look much like a chaotic one. 
ITA spelling matched TES or traditional dictionary spelling only 40% of the
time. No phonemic rendering of English speech will match traditional or
historical spellings more than 40% of the time. To test this claim, count the
number of times the dictionary pronunciation guide matches dictionary spelling. 
In the chart above, the phonemic or consistent sound spellings [ITA, IPA]
match the traditional spellings for only one group of words.  ITA correctly spells
*moon and cartoon but fails to match 17 other [TES] spelling patterns. IPA
matches TES when spelling *guru and flu but fails to match 17 other [TES]
spelling patterns. [See: How many ways can you spell *day?] 

With ITA, student's quickly picked up the  idea of how an alphabet is supposed to work but were left to their own
devices when the time came to transition to TES.  No organized attempt was made to help children get from toon as in
*cartoon to *tune.  In the 4th grade, children were expected to abandon ITA for TES.  The reading transition went fairly
smoothly and children trained in ITA were able to retain their advantage.  When learners transferred from ITA. to
traditional English spelling, the solid foundation in basic literacy techniques showed up as long term benefits.  Downing
(1987) called this the transferability of skills once properly mastered. This could explain why welsh middle schools that
first teach the consistent welsh orthography achieved better results even in English. Starting with a code that makes sense
gives welsh students a competitive edge. 

Spelling was another matter.  Many children had problems trying to respell ITA words that did not match TES.  This is
understandable since 60% of the words did not match. 

Given the fact that ITA worked regardless of the teaching methodology and with serious gaps in the support system
[insufficient materials, no assistance from parents, no consistent teaching methology, lack of linguistic sophistication on the
part of the teachers...], why was it abandoned?  Basically, it was a fad and all fads soon loose their luster.  ITA was not
understood by parents. ITA was not supported by the major educational publishers.  It was more costly than traditional
approaches to the teaching of reading and was deemed administratively inconvenient.  Had the ITA been incorporated in
a proven teaching methodology it would have been twice as effective but this never happened.  

Interest in phonics has been revived.  Is there any chance that ITA could be revived?  It is possible. Except for
government support, the conditions are as favorable as any time in history. In 1970, a school had to buy a library of ITA
books and materials.  Today, an individual teacher with a classroom computer could generate all of the needed materials. 
There is a vast library of digitized books on the Internet as well as an on-line converter that will change the spelling from
TES to New Spelling. [New Spelling and Fonetic are non-ligatured versions of ITA]. Teachers could easily generate their
own materials. 
 

Except for its spelling code, English would have the simplest grammar of all European languages.  Clearning up the code
would make English easier to learn and the clear choice for an international language. 
 

In the early 1800's, Noah Webster remarked, "Letters, the most useful invention that ever blessed mankind, lose a part of 
their value by no longer being representatives of the sounds originally annexed to them."  The effect is, "to destroy the
benefits of the alphabet."  

Webster was aware that there was a time in English history when the language had a functional alphabet. Tenth Century
clerics devised a Latin based alphabet for English that made it possible to "spell words as they were pronounced and
pronounce words as they were spelled."  

Could the restoration of the benefits of the alphabet be as simple as restoring the Saxon alphabet?  Could the usefulness of
the alphabet be restored by restoring the sounds originally annexed to the letters?  

Spelling reformers such as Webster and Franklin desired a closer connection between spelling and pronunciation.  Both
desired alphabets that allowed people to pronounce words as they are spelled. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade,
even produced one.  

The link between spelling and pronunciation was lost in the Great Vowel Shift [ca. 1400 AD].  Prior to that time there had
been some quirky spellings introduced by Norman French scribes but the basic sound system still matched Latin. Now
60% of the words in the dictionary do not match the pronunciation guide.  To make matters worse, the vowels in some
words did not shift.  This created code overlaps where words that are spelled the same have different pronunciations. 
This is the theme of the poem below and a more famous one called The Chaos.  

It is important for teachers to be clear about the problem.  It is important to be clear about the complexities of the English
writing system and their social impact even if no solution is at hand.  This paper suggest a possible solution: the restoration
of the alphabet.  However, the restoration of the last consistent alphabet used for English is probably more difficult today
than it was 300 years ago when Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin made their recommendations. 

Almost anyone can come up with a more consistent way to spell English words. Two alternative phonemic codes are
shown above [and also below].  The new spellings are consistent but appear odd.  They can be easily sounded out by
referring to a correspondence table.  However, they are not what we are used to:  Until the new associates [such as a=ah
and i=ee] are fully memorized, they may cause us to stumble.   

The sheer number of alternatives to TES has tended to dilute the support for any one proposal and prevent any
rationalization of the orthography. With 1000's of simpler more efficient codes, agreement on one is difficult.  

Any phonemic reform of English would require respelling 60% of the words in the dictionary. This is no problem for
children or ESL learners, but it is more of an adjustment than most adult English speakers want to handle. Although IPA is
a little hard to read, there are a number of phonemic proposals that can be easily deciphered.  The objection to them is
that they cannot be read as fast as TES.  Speed readers read word patterns.  They do not try to sound out words.  

Half way reform proposals which preserve word patterns such as removing all of the silent letters [for example, the silent e
in give and have] have not fared any better than full reforms. Those who have completed primary school prefer to keep a
familiar code no matter how inefficient and inconsistent to having to learn a new one. Given the choice, they prefer to spell
giv, liv and hav with a redundant and misleading terminal e. 

Most people are unaware of the fact that English lost its alphabet in 1400.  An alphabet is a consistent set of
correspondences between sounds and symbols (letters).  Alphabetical writing systems are highly phonemic.  Old English
(Anglo Saxon) was over 90% phonemic or consistent with its correspondence table.  Modern English is only 40%
phonemic. It is consistent with its pronunciation guide only 40% of the time.  

What values  should be assigned to the letters  
that they may be most easily learnt, read, and written?  
   

The traditional English spelling system
[TES] uses historical spellings but not
the historical long vowel sounds or
the consistent historical alphabet.  As
a result, about 60% of the words are
not pronounced as they are spelled.  

Most of the separation between
spelling and pronunciation occurred
during the 14th century during what
was called the "great vowel shift." 
The vowel shift did not affect the
short vowels but shifted the long
vowels to a more closed jaw
pronunciation: In many words, /a/ [ah] came to be pronounced /ae/ [ash], /ae/ became /e/ [eh], /e/ became /i:/ [machine,
si], and /i:/ became /ai/.[aisle] . 

Pronunciation changes over time. To preserve a consistent alphabet, when the pronunciation of a word changes, its
spelling also has to change. Countries that set up academies to revise spelling to keep it aligned with pronunciation have
managed to maintain their alphabets.  England never set up an academy and the 18th century dictionary writers were
reluctant to reestablish a connection between speaking and writing after the great vowel shift of the 14th century. 

The solution that has been suggested for the past 300 years is to adopt a phonemic notation and spell words as they are
spelled in the dictionary pronunciation guide.  The chief  problem with this solution is that it changes the spelling of 60% of
the words in English.  Two examples of the phonemic spelling of English are shown above. Literate readers read
logographically or in terms of whole word patterns - they rarely sound out a word on the basis of individual letters.  Thus
changing the look of a word for speed readers will reduce their reading speed. 

It is not that literate readers cannot read a passage that is spelled phonetically, it is just that they cannot read it as fast. 
After a phonemic reform, it may take as long as a year for whole word English readers to recover their reading speed.  

The ones that benefit from alphabetical or consistent spelling are the young not the old. With a better code, the young
could acquire a high level of literacy four to ten times as fast as they do at present.  

Literacy is largely a decoding and encoding skill. Readers and writers begin by associating written symbols [graphic
shapes] with spoken sounds. Since there are only about 40 significant sounds in English speech, an efficient code would
associate them with 40 symbols. 40 sounds would be referenced 40 ways.  Each sound [phoneme] would be referenced
by one and only one letter or letter combination.  

With the traditional code, however, the 40 sounds are referenced in 615 different ways [Ellis, 1900].  Each letter is
associated with an average of not one but 14 different sounds [Dewey, 1971]. [Here is a list of 18 of the 29 different
symbol configurations used to represent the /u:/ sound].  Students must associate 26 letters with 40 sounds in over 400
different ways.  Instead of learning 40 paired associates students must learn over 400.  The complexity of the orthographic
code makes the learning task ten times more difficult. It is over 10 times easier to associate a shape with one sound than it
is to associate it with 14. 

The advantages of an alphabetic reform are not quite as great as reformers claim.  One reason is because the base
pronunciation is not necessarily the same as the one the child uses.  After the alphabet was restored, the spelling
pronunciation of  [tomato] would be taw-mah-tow -  not tow-mey-tow.  The child might have to learn two dialects, one
for spelling and one for conversing with his or her peers.  A phonemic spelling reform would not have an immediate effect
on the way that people pronounced words.  

The traditional (mid 18th century) English spelling system [TES] is based on the notion that the business of spelling is to
represent the origin and history of a word instead of its sound and meaning. The playwright George Bernard Shaw
(1941)] argued that this reduced the alphabet to absurdity.  TES can be called non-alphabetical since the spelling of
more than 50% of the words do not match the dictionary pronunciation guide.  The disconnect between spelling and
pronunciation limit the effectiveness of the phonics approach to the teaching of reading. 
  
. 
The spelling ice which according to the Saxon correspondence table would be pronounced /eesuh/ comes from the original
Saxon spelling: [is] /ees/.  The current spelling does show how the word was historically spelled in the 13th century.  (To
understand how it was pronounced, one would have to consult the Saxon correspondence table) As etymological or historical
spellings, most high frequency words go back to Middle English.  Few go all the way back to Anglo Saxon: [e.g.,  eye-ogle]. 
The problem comes from the fact that we no longer pronounce the word /ees/ or /ees-uh/.  To maintain the alphabet, when the
pronunciation of [ice] changed in the early 14th century, the spelling should have been changed to [ais]. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first popular dictionary, felt that it was folly to imagine that the dictionary could
embalm language and preserve its words and phrases from mutability.  He saw no reason to standardize English spelling
beyond the word level because he felt that what changed the most was pronunciation.  As it turns out, English
pronunciation is probably more standardized today than in 1755.  Compared to the changes that occurred in the 14th
century, English pronunciation has hardly changed at all from the way it was spoken in London in 1755.  Some words and
phrases have dropped out of favor and new words and phrases have been added.  Most of Johnson's spellings, however,
have survived intact. 

We have a choice, either obscure the etymology or historical spelling of the word or obscure the pronunciation of the
word.  Traditional English Spelling [TES] obscures the spelling.  

An Alphabet for Spelling Pronunciation - an alternative to a prescribed dialect 
  

There is an alternative.  Instead of using a base pronunciation such as GA
[General American] or RP [educated british], one could use spelling
pronunciation [SP].  Spelling pronunciation would not match up with any
particular dialect of English but it would be intelligible to all. SP would be as
pan-dialect as the traditional English spelling [TES]. 

To make SP work,  the letters and letter combinations would have to be
associated with specific sounds.  Spelling pronunciation requires a real
alphabet.  To deal with the shortage of vowel letters relative to the number of
vowel sounds in English speech, vowel letters could have up to two sounds
each.  To distinguish which of the two sounds is being referenced, pronunciation
guides could continue to use diacritics. [itch = 'ich,  each = ich].  Saxon usually
marked the short or checked vowel with a double consonant [tch, ck] but this
practice was not extended to all the French and Latin loan words. 

What symbol-sound [grapheme-phoneme] correspondences make the most sense?  Many linguists recommend the
historical one:  The one used for OE [old English] and ME [middle English].  This augmented Latin alphabet is basically
the same one used by most countries that adopted the Roman alphabet.  

In the 9th Century, English had an alphabet and a highly consistent orthography known as West Saxon. The alphabet was
augmented by the addition of the wynn,  thorn,  eth, and the ash.  Wynn was replaced by the W, and the thorn and eth
were replaced by the digraph, TH.  The ash [æ] is still needed to distinguish the sound of [at, ash, parallel] from three
other a-sounds [are, want, water], [ago, sofa], [all, what].  

Besides [æ], English has several other vowel sounds that are not found in Latin.  The mid vowel in Latin was simply an
unstressed A as in [ago and sofa].  In English the mid vowels have much more importance and IPA distinguishes three
related but slightly different sounds with [3:, the turned v, and the turned e].  The sound in HER and HURT  /h3:_/ is
different from the sound in HARE /her/, HEART /hart/ or OTHER /^th'r/ 

One can make these distinctions by using a marked r, e, and a.  [h'er, h'ert, her, hart, 'ago, 'ath'r].  The marker changes
the letter that follows into a lax central vowel.  Except for tradition, one could use the marker alone: h'r, h'rt, her hart 'go. 
The apostrophe could indicate an elision and mean that the vowel symbol has been left out or alternatively that the
apostrophe is actually a schwa-postrophe: [h'r, h'rt, her hart 'go].  [The symbol font, available on all modern computers,
replaces the apostrophe with a turned epsilon (') which is quite similar to IPA's turned e.]  

Latin recognized a long and short pronunciation of five vowel letters but did not distinguish them.  In other words, five
vowel letters were used to represent 10 vowel sounds.  It was possible for some countries, e.g., Spain, to do away with 3
vowel sounds /^-', i, u/ so that a referred solely to [ah] and not ambiguously to [ah or uh]  and i referred solely to [ee]
and not [ee and ih].  [o] can still refer to two sounds [owe] and [awe] and the long e is typically represented as a digraph
[ei or ey] as in [rey].  There is no [uh] or [ih] sound in Spanish:  [Only gringos say, "hahs-tuh and cah-muh" (hasta
cama)]. The short u [as in hook] is also absent. 

Conclusion 

Spelling pronunciation [or pronouncing words as they are spelled] can work if an alphabet is restored.  It doesn't work
when a letter can refer to a dozen different sounds.  The best alphabet to restore, according to the Oxford linguist, Henry
Sweet, is the historical one.  The augmented Latin alphabet is [with a few exceptions] the same one that is used in every
country that adopted the Roman alphabet.  

Spelling pronunciation, since it requires that every letter be articulated, still requires a mild spelling reform.  Words that
cannot be pronounced and understood by a native speaker need to be respelled.  Misleading silent letters probably need
to be removed.   There is no point, other than tradition, to retain the e in have.   This only confuses the use of e as a long
vowel marker in words such as behave.  To be consistent, "You have to behave." should be written "Yu hav to behave."
Spelling pronunciation would dictate that behave be pronounced beh-haav-uh, the way the word was pronounced
before the 14th century.  Today the word is generally pronounced biheiv [bee-hay-v], but behave [beh-haav-uh] can still
be understood.  As long as a native speaker can understand the meaning of a spelling pronunciation, respelling is not
required. 

The number of words requiring respellings may be quite low.  Certainly nothing close to the 60% required by a phonemic
reform.  Once the student knows that f and v are so closely related that the letter f was used in Saxon for today's v
sound, perhaps there is no need to change of to 'ov.  Most people prononce what as /hwot/ or /wot/ where o=awe. If A
is always pronounced [ah] /a:/ and a new symbol is used to distinguish hat from hot, the what spelling can probably be
retained. Spelling pronunciation does not have to match a particular dialect such as General American or educated
British.  It just has to be close enough to be understood. 

ITA worked but not as well as predicted.  It should have been nearly ten times as easy as TES but the research only
documented a 200% improvement in the mastery of reading and writing skills.  About half of this gain was lost when the
student started reading and writing in TES.  Much of this loss can be attributed to the fact that no lessons were given on
how to move from ITA spelling to TES spelling.   Children whose traditional spelling is logical and consistent, of course,
retain their 200%+ advantage.  Spanish students never have to learn that the traditional way to spell thru is through. 

ITA is one of hundreds of viable alternative phonemic notations for English.  The ITA code is not quite as elegant as
Saxon, the original phonemic notation for Old English, because it tries to retain the shifted long vowel sounds.  As a result,
diphthongs cannot be sounded out but must be memorized as unique two letter symbols.  ai [ah+ee] = ie    yu = ue   ei/ey
[eh+ee] = ae.  The addition of a silent e to mark long vowels works but doesn't make much phonological sense.  For
spelling pronunciation to work, every letter needs to be sounded out or pronounced.   

The updated Saxon code seems to be optimal if the goal is to restore the English alphabet for use in spelling
pronunciation.  An alphabet is basically a sound - symbol correspondence table.  The Saxon alphabet associated no more
than two sounds with each letter.  The compromised alphabet in use since 1875 associates an average of over 14 sounds
with each letter.  

The spelling pronunciation approach gets around two key objections to a more phonemic reform such as ITA: [1] It does
not respell nearly as many words and [2] it is pan-dialect.  The artificial spelling pronunciation dialect can be understood
by all English speakers. Unlike many proposed reforms of English spelling, the SP proposal does not sever the connection
with the past.  Restoring the Saxon alphabet makes Old English and Middle English more accessible. 

ITA could be revived today in any classroom with an Internet ready computer. However, there may be some better
options available that are more in line with international spelling and less visually disruptive.  One could, for instance,
restore the Saxon alphabet and use it for spelling pronunciation.  Being able to pronounce words as they are spelled
would have definite advantages.  

One can memorize a symbol-sound correspondence chart in about  2 hours and become literate in an consistent code in
40 hours or less.  Learning how to deal with the code overlaps, irregular spellings and the other inconsistencies of
traditional English orthography takes considerably longer.  The goal of an ITA is to get children up to speed quickly and to
postpone frustration.  With an ITA, children can employ their entire vocabulary in their writing since it allows them to spell
as they speak.   

In the digital world, codes are updated every six months or so.  It is much more difficult to update a spelling code due to
the weight of habit and tradition and the fact that there are so many code choices.   Any one of the improved codes would
assist those struggling to learn how to read and write in English.   
  
  

Go back to the top and see if you can answer the 5 questions.  Dyslexic is probably not a the best adjective for either learners
who are having trouble with words or writing systems that are troublesome. Please send your answers to the author at
sbett@mailcity.com.  A digital version of this article with links to 20 related articles on ITA and spelling reform is available at
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/MSJ-article.html.  
  
 
 

SPELLING LINK PAGE victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/sitemap-l.htm 
  

References  Extended Bibliography Yule Bibliography 

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Bett, S and Bird, S. On-line orthographic converter  
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Carney, Edward. (1994) A Survey of English Spelling. London:Routledge 

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Laubach, Frank C. (1996). Let's Reform Spelling -- Why and How. New Readers Press. New York.  

Lindgren, Harry. (1969). Spelling Reform: A New Approach. Alpha.  

Sampson, G. (1985) Writing Systems. London: Hutchinson.  

Scragg, D.G. (1974) A History of English Spelling. Manchester: Manchester University Press 

Sweet, Henry (1891) A New English Grammar 

Thorstad, G. (1991) The effect of orthography on the acquisition of literacy skills , British Jour. Psych. 82: 527-537
     Comparison of literacy acquisition in England and Italy

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http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Dictionaries/English/   Dictionary 

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Analysis of the list of the 500 most frequent words in English.