Other than function words, many approaches to reading attempt to postpone the introduction of inconsistent spelling and irregular words.  Since over 60% of the words in English are not spelled consistently, this often results in a very reduced vocabulary.  With i.t.a., children  have immediate access to the over 3,000 words that are already in their vocabulary at age 6.  i.t.a. does not postpone vocabulary, it postpones exposure to inconsistent spelling.  In addition, an i.t.a. reduces or eliminates the need for children to invent spellings.  A practice advocated in many non-phonic approaches.

Devised in 1959 by Sir James Pitman [1901-1985], i.t.a. was a system of 44 lower case letters [see chart] .  Each letter in the augmented roman alphabet was supposed to correspond to a single phoneme.  In the case of [c & k] , two letters referred to the same phoneme.  24 traditional letters were retained. Only q and x were discarded.  The 20 new letters were usually ligatures of familiar digraphs.  Capital letters were larger versions of the lower case letters, not a new shape. 

The 26 letters are not the alphabet.  An alphabet is the correspondence table used to encode speech [see below].  The alphabet is the complete set of sound-signs corresonding to the 40 or so basic speech sounds or phonemes.   An ideal alphabet would have a symbol for every significant  sound in the language.  With only 23 non-redudnant letters [c q x are not needed: c=k/s, q=kw, x=ks] for 40 or so sounds, it is clear that some of the letters are going to have to do double duty.  When two letters stand for a new sound-sign [eg, Sh, Ch] they are called digraphs. 

 ALPHABET: A type of writing system in which a set of symbols [letters] represents the important sounds [phonemes] of a language. 

DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE & LANGUAGES

According to Downing [1990], the child should learn to read in his or her native language and with a consistent phonemic writing system first.  If the the first language is Spanish, there is not need to invent a phonemic alphabet and writing system, Spain adopted one in 1713 and have been using it ever since with minor reforms every 50 years or so. 

Literacy once learned, is a skill that can be transferred.  It is like learning to ride a bike with training wheels before learning to ride a motorcyle.  One can go immediately to the more complex task but it usually involves more effort, more failures, and more frustration. 

A consistent writing system can be learned in less than 40 hours.
 

The Complete  i.t.a. Alphabet  An alphabet is a  grapheme-phoneme  correspondence table: A key to the 44 sound signs:  17 vowels - 27 consonants An alphabet  A collection of sound signs [or phonograms] linking visible marks  to speech sounds [i.e., phonemes]

The complete alphabet [click to enlarge] is twice as complex as the ordered character set that is usually referred to as the alphabet. Counting digraphs, the traditional writing system actually uses 104 symbols. Only 26 appear in the alphabet. Unlike the i.t.a. alphabet, most of the 104 symbols refer to more than one sound. Most of the added complexity in the i.t.a. is with the vowels, 17 instead of 5.  The consonants include 9 ligatured digraficsound signs: wh ch sh th & th plus ng er oo & uu The i.t.a. alphabet is almost the same as the New Spelling alphabet. Pitman's augmented alphabet had phonograms, for ng, wh, the terminal z and syllabic r [more]

i.t.a., the name attached to Pitman's augmented roman script, was the subject of a major educational experiment funded by the British government in the 1960's.  i.t.a.  or Augmented Roman was based on New Spelling .  ITA's distinguishing characteristic was to turn digraphs such as TH, CH and EE into ligatures.  (See the  slate on the right which  illustrates 14  i.t.a. ligatures or connected characters).  Short vowels and most consonants are spelled according to the dominant pattern found in traditional English spelling.  e=eh, any=eny, g=gig not gem, phone=foen.

Unlike traditional English spelling, i.t.a. can be taught in two weeks to two months.  There are 42 i.t.a. characters plus a few duplicates for the 42 sounds found in English speech. This quickly enables  children to make full use of their existing vocabulary in their writing.   Young children like consistency and the confidence that their spelling is correct.  With a consistent orthography, it is relatively easy to spell any word you can correctly pronounce and pronounce any word that you see spelled. 

littl red hen
Wuns upon a tiem littl red hen livd in a barn with her fiev chicks
a pig, a cat and a duck maed ther hoem in the saem barn
eech dae littl red hen led her chicks out tuu lwk for fuud
but the pig, the cat and the duck wwd not lwk for fuud.

From this fragment of i.t.a. text, it appears that i.p.a. never found a way to deal with redundant consonants. Double consonants to mark short stressed vowels was never a stated rule as in RITE.   [er] appears to have been used for both [there] and [her], two different sounds as does the [e] in [red] and [the].  The same passage in U2 indicates where i.t.a. deviates from phonemic regularity. 

litcl red hen ritcn in UnifOn
wcns xpon a tIm litl red hen livd in a bqrn with hcr fIv Ciks
a pig, a kat and c dck mAd ther hOm in Dc sAm bqrn
EC dA litl red hen led hcr Ciks aut tu lvk for fud
bct Dc pig, Dc kat and Dc dck wvd not lvk for fud.

Let th=D, ch=C,  ee=E, uu=U, 
Digraphs can be substituted for unigraphs to achieve a more traditional look.
Note the use of the lazy u for the schwa.  A phoneme missing from i.t.a.

wcns xpon a tIm litl red hen livd in a bqrn with hcr fIv chiks
a pig, a kat, and c dck mAd ther hOm in thc sAm bqrn
eech dA litL red hen led hcr chiks aut tu luk for fuud
bct thc pig, thc kat and thc dck wud not luk for fuud
 
 

Comments . [more to be added - why not send in your comments]  send to saundspel@yahoogroups.com
 

[SB]  Pete, I do not disagree with your statement. You make a good point. You go on to say that you would not expect that learning with an ITA would have any lasting benefits. The early gains would be cancelled out when students had to switch to T.O. In the research literature, however, there is a clear expectation of a transfer of learning and a gain for those who learn the simple skills first. I have indicated elsewhere that a task analysis would indicate that children should be able to learn a consistent system ten times as fast as TO. There is that much less to learn. 50 spellings vs. 500+ spellings per sound. There has been research indicating that i.t.a. trained children progress twice as fast as TO trained kids but that is nowhere near ten times as fast. Learning is not matching the theoretical prediction. At the time of transition - usually the third grade or when the school ran out of ita books - there would be a setback but the ita trained group should be able to regain most of thier early lead. This is what Downing found in the UK but it doesn't seem to have been matched by the U.S. experience.

OPINION

    Pete wrote: > Steve,  Regarding the effectivness of ITA (see belo), hu du yu beleve? The results so stated ar not contradictory. Wunse I got a computer and lernd how easy it was tu re-rite, re-arrange and revise, I wood never go bak tu paper and pencil or tipe-riter tu du any sereus composishon. I call the computer my enabeller because it led directly tu my erning a collej degree twenty-wun years after completeing hi skool. Being abel tu poot my thots tugether on paper made me very smart. Trying tu du so tuday with paper and pencil or on a tipe-riter wood set me bak tu the medeocrity I experiensed thruowt hi skool. So, yes, ITA students advansed mor rapidly than "TO" students. And yes, the transishon to TS (tradishonal speling) was difficult and strongly resisted. The owtcom, the ultimate acheivmant in litterasy by ITA students did not exceed that of "TO" students. Nor wood I expect it tu. The tradishonal speling of English limits litterasy, no matter what aproach is taken tu it. That sum manaj a hi degree of fasility with TS in no way diminishes its limits tu litterasy for moast. The arguement sugjests that the students or the ITA was at fault. What is clear from the perspectiv of a speling reformer is that the TS (TO) is at fault, boath empirically and theoretically.  Pete B

ITA was handicapd by:- 
1. There were not enough books to read in ITA, and the whole world around the pupils was not ITA 
 

2. The script was unnecessarily different, which retarded transition to TO. Otherwise transition could have commenced 'naturally' from the start, as with J H Martins' 'Writing to Read' 

3. There was often confusion and lapses when teacher or pupils moved schools - ITA was taught in some schools and not others; teachers had to be traind to teach ITA and when they left a school untrained teacher might not continue in ITA, etc. valerie y >

Daily Telegraph, Saturday 2 June 2001  Weekend. Features. Parents & education. p5. "A cleer case of educashunal lunacie."  Scathing attack on ITA. Nearly a full page, with pictures of the Ladybird ITA books. It misses the point that ita was easier to learn, but that it was the transfer to traditional spelling that was very hard/impossible for some.
------------------------------------------ 
Times Educational Supplement. 1 June 2001. >News. p3. "Spelling test 'too hard' for age seven." Having looked at the list of words for Key Stage 1 tests, I quite agree. Never, mind, they will make sure that this cohort is asked relatively easier spellings in KS2 tests, and then say how much they have improved!

OPINION
TEACHING TWO SYSTEMS - 

DE: I agree that i.t.a. or enny spelling that is eezier tu lern than TS shood not be taut tu lerners tu the exclusion of TS. But my oen experience having moved among 3 skools in my ferst yeer, oanly wun teeching fonnics, convinced me that fonnics is the mane esential contribution of the ferst literacy teecher. It did not caus the sort of frustration, confusion and disillusion Jennifer experienced becaus sounds wer taut in conjunction with illustrations of objects with the common graffemes as initial letters and with texts exclusively uzing TS. 

My feeling thairfor is that i.t.a. or uther foneemic sistem wood be harmless and probably helpful if taught with
TS on alternate lines with eech werd directly abuv or below its counterpart in the uther spelling, uzing a less prominent font or color for the foneemic sistem much as pronouncing dictionaries commonly use. 
    --    Doug Everingham
 

OPINION
i.t.a. has a destructive effect on children's ability to spell traditionally
There is no transfer of training effect.  Learning i.t.a. makes learning TO more difficult

On Sat, 19 May 2001
Jennifer Sipple wrote:

.      In the early 70's, many schools within the UK subscribed to the ITA system 
      as a means to teach English to primary age children. A system that was 
      quikly abolished due to the destructive effect it was haveing on children 
      and there ability to progress in English.

      I was one of the many who had this method forced apon them at the protest of 
      my family and myself. I still remember the frustrations of not being able to 
      read the simple words that apeard in print around me, as I required special 
      books containing special words. This frustration was compounded when the day 
      came that I was told to forget all that I had worked hard to master as it 
      was wrong and I would now be taught the corect method to read and write. 
      This is a vivid memory bringing back the emotions of betrayal, mistrust and 
      resentment which I felt so strongly at that time.

      We moved back to the simple books with the simpler words to start again. I 
      was older and wanted to read text of my age, books that had advanced as I 
      had, I lost interest in reading and learing, and harboured a resentment to 
      the system. When asked to do my work I asked what was the point I had done 
      it before and gained nothing.

      I cannot begin to tell you about the alienation I felt when I then moved to 
      a school that was unfamilure with ITA and unequiped to deal with an ITA 
      student. I was alienated from my fellow pupils. I was ridiculed for being 
      stupid. My IQ was tested and proved to be far above nomal yet I was sent to 
      remedial classes as the system did not know what to do with me.

      In the end I left school with no qualifications, barely able to spell my own 
      name.

      It has taken me several years of hard work to finaly provide myself with the 
      education I should of had at school. Studying in an adult environment I 
      regained the controle I was denied, I regained some of the confidence that I 
      had taken from me and I determined my own course of study, involveing 
      learning the basics that I was denied as a child.

      Even yet as you can see from this letter my spelling ability is apauling. I 
      could, going back, correct some of the words by slowly sounding out and try 
      other ways to see what looks wright, but this is a slow and painful method 
      for me besides I think it best you see the effect ITA has had.

      I have a Bachelors in Science, a Postgraduate in Information Science and a 
      Masters, yet every day I struggle with the spellings of simple words.

      Please do not arbitrily inflict this on other children. You have no write.
      .....
      In the early 70's, many schools within the UK subscribed to the ITA system 
      as a means to teach English to primary age children. A system that was 
      quikly abolished due to the destructive effect it was haveing on children 
      and there ability to progress in English.

      I was one of the many who had this method forced apon them at the protest of 
      my family and myself. I still remember the frustrations of not being able to 
      read the simple words that apeard in print around me, as I required special 
      books containing special words. This frustration was compounded when the day 
      came that I was told to forget all that I had worked hard to master as it 
      was wrong and I would now be taught the corect method to read and write. 
      This is a vivid memory bringing back the emotions of betrayal, mistrust and 
      resentment which I felt so strongly at that time.

      We moved back to the simple books with the simpler words to start again. I 
      was older and wanted to read text of my age, books that had advanced as I 
      had, I lost interest in reading and learing, and harboured a resentment to 
      the system. When asked to do my work I asked what was the point I had done 
      it before and gained nothing.

      I cannot begin to tell you about the alienation I felt when I then moved to 
      a school that was unfamilure with ITA and unequiped to deal with an ITA 
      student. I was alienated from my fellow pupils. I was ridiculed for being 
      stupid. My IQ was tested and proved to be far above nomal yet I was sent to 
      remedial classes as the system did not know what to do with me.

      In the end I left school with no qualifications, barely able to spell my own 
      name.

      It has taken me several years of hard work to finaly provide myself with the 
      education I should of had at school. Studying in an adult environment I 
      regained the controle I was denied, I regained some of the confidence that I 
      had taken from me and I determined my own course of study, involveing 
      learning the basics that I was denied as a child.

      Even yet as you can see from this letter my spelling ability is apauling. I 
      could, going back, correct some of the words by slowly sounding out and try 
      other ways to see what looks wright, but this is a slow and painful method 
      for me besides I think it best you see the effect ITA has had.

      I have a Bachelors in Science, a Postgraduate in Information Science and a 
      Masters, yet every day I struggle with the spellings of simple words.

      Please do not arbitrily inflict this on other children. You have no write.

Hi Jen, 

Thanks for your comments. 

This may be a duplicate copy because my system crashed just as I was sending out the earlier one. 

There is sufficient evidence to conclude that ITA did not prevent people from becoming good spellers. There is also some evidence that the i.t.a. program did not provide much assistance for those who needed help coping with the complexity of the traditional spelling system [TS]. 

Those who developed the i.t.a. program underestimated the importance of having a method and underestimated the difficulty of the transition from a simple phonemic system with one or two spellings per pronunciation to a complex non-system with at least five spellings per pronunciation. Dewey claims that phonemes can be spelled an average of 14 different ways in the traditional writing system. 

Check out http://www.unifon.org/polyvalence.html 

My statistic does not prove that an ITA is a good idea. It does prove that those who argue that ITA training results in poor spelling performance need to come up with a better argument. You are trying to establish a causal relationship between i.t.a. training and poor dictionary spelling. Thus, the burden of proof is on you. You cannot just generalize from your own experience. 

I think that the value of an ITA is to enable children to almost immediately use their 3000 word vocabulary to write with some confidence. ITA is a simple alphabetic code that can be taught in 2 months. In fact any phonemic system can be taught in two months. So it is a relatively rapid and painless way to get started. The who point of an i.t.a. is not to overburden and frustrate the child with the illogical complexities of the traditional writing system. It is the traditional system that inflicts pain and suffering, not the i.t.a. 

The pain that you encountered was with the transition. The i.t.a. project never addressed this problem until rather late in the experiment. 

It should be pretty easy to determine what kind of errors can be traced back to ITA. If someone spelled [show] as [shoe], it would be pretty clear that they had been influenced by i.t.a. If they spelled it [shew] or [shough], then it would be clear that they were not taking their cues from i.t.a. 

Lets take a quick look at some of your mismatches with the dictionary. 

[method] according to ita might be spelled [methud] or [method]. You spell it "meathod". This suggests that you have been tripped up, not by your i.t.a. training, but by TS words such as [measure]. 

[draged] on the other hand would be spelled [dragd] in i.t.a. so the dropping of the second g could be
attributed to i.t.a. [dragged] would be spelled [draggd] in Spanglish. 

[abandond] is i.t.a. [abanndand or abanndond] would be Spanglish. The traditional system usually uses standardized morphemes for past tense [ed] rather than phonemic spelling. 

[experament] would be [experiment] in i.t.a. and the same in TS. Your spelling does match [temperament] which would be misspelled in i.t.a. [temprument/tempriment-ita; temmprament-ss] 

This is another error which cannot be traced back to Pitman's i.t.a. If you had learned with Spanglish as your i.t.a., then you might have a case because [experrament] or [experriment] would be a legitimate spellings in Spanglish where a @ or schwa and the consonant is doubled after stressed short vowels. 

[persentage] [ i.t.a.- persentij, ss- percentaj] I am not sure about this one. Possibly i.t.a. could be faulted. 

[intresting] This would be the correct i.t.a. spelling of interesting. Traditional spelling does not match
current pronunciation. I.t.a. could be faulted. 

[applaude] This error of adding a silent e on the end cannot be attributed to i.t.a. [aplaud]. This is a case where the ITAs get it right and TS adds a misleading double consonant [applaud]. TS usually makes these mistakes because it is spelling a pre 1600 pronunciation rather than today’s pronunciation. 

[creat] The i.t.a. spelling would have been creaet. Most i.t.a. students transitioning to TS are informed of the magic e which marks the long vowel sound from a distance giving you [create]. [ITA’s ae ee ie oe ue become ate, ede, ite, ode, ute] 

[nonsence] ita nonsens. TS adds an e to indicate an [s] rather than a [z] pronunciation. The –ence spelling does not come from i.t.a. 

[finnaly] [i.t.a. fienuli] [ss fainaly] This looks like your personal invented spelling or a typo rather than something that could be attributed to your ITA training. I can’t think of any case in TS where /fain/ was spelled [finn]. There are plenty of cases, however, where TS will use redundant and misleading double consonants. The chief function of a double consonant in TS is to mark a short stressed vowel. 

A quick analysis of your spelling errors does not provide much ammunition for your charge that i.t.a. was responsible for your inability to spell well. The error patterns do not appear to be related to i.t.a. but rather to trying to match similar traditional spellings. 

I think you were short changed in your early education but you are wrong to put all the blame on a simple medium, the initial teaching alphabet. Many kids are shortchanged who have never been exposed to a consistent phonemic alphabet. 

The “look-say” approach to reading may also be getting a bad rap. There are hundreds of ways to teach reading and writing and they can all work if done right. 

You have not indicated how you would teach reading and writing to kids. You have just said that you do not want them to experience what you experienced. I agree that the worst thing that can happen to a kid is to feel that he or she is being left behind and that no matter how much effort is made to do better, they continue to be at the bottom of the class and eventually just give up. 

I was the director of a job corps center for two years so I know what it means to be turned off with schooling. All of our efforts during the first six months was to build self esteem. To do this we used a mastery teaching model where you could not fail and if you tried you would make visible progress. You did not move ahead until you had mastered the fundamentals and your progress was never measured against anyone else’s. 

We went back to square one with respect to reading, writing, and spelling and were able to help 90% of the students. We did not use i.t.a. but we did use some explicit phonics training to reveal what regularities exist in the traditional spelling code. One thing that made the job corps approach work was the existence of a vast library of reading materials carefully graded by reading level. This way, you could find something you were interested in reading at your reading level. The basic way to improve your reading and writing is to spend more time on the task - to read and write more. You are trying to keep the student in that state of flow between being overwhelmed and frustrated and being “underwhelmed” and bored. 

I think that most methods of training young people are flawed to the extent that they do not address the needs of individuals performing in the bottom quartile. 

Regards, Steve 

05 Jun 2001- Jennifer Sipple wrote: 

While i do acknowledge that your bizzar ways of spelling comes with small benifits to small groups of people i cannot, do not, advocate teaching this meathod indiscriminatly to children as there first introduction to english.  to be honest it apears to me that this meathod is being promoted by people from a purely selfish
standpoint. they had problems at school learning the system so sod the system creat a new one. usualy i would aplaude such actions as i feel we should all be free to decide what is right for ourselves, but when children are draged into this system against there will then that is wrong. As a child i never wanted to learn ita and i never benefited from learning ita. my right to a proper education was denied. for many years i turned my back on school and learning, bitter that they had made me the subject of an experament that toyed with my future, my carrer and my ability to communicate effectivly with others. in your letter to me you stated: 

"The majority of literate English speakers are poor spellers. Only 1% were taught by ITA so your logic doesn't qutie hold up." 

english, i know, is a difficult language to learn being a bastardisation of many ueropean languages; it encompases many idsycronies that conform to no one rule. you are right to say that in the majority of cases
bad spelling is the norm, and of these cases very few were taught ita. unfortunatly your statistic proves nothing. this low persentage is not due to ita working but instead to ita only being taught to a very unfortunate few. its like saying: "the majority of people are bad at maths. only 1% were taught a nonsence form of maths so therefor teaching nonsence is ok." 

4 + 4 = 44 
go on teach that to your kids. why not it has a logic? put to fours together and you will get 44. because maybe it would mess up there chances with maths? that doesnt matter, chances are they wouldnt be good at it anyway. see what im getting at? 

to prove your point you need to show me statistics of poor spells taught the conventional way compared with poor spellers of the ita method. it would also be interesting to note how many ita students did worse in other subjects. there is a case that, like myself, ita students just gave up on the system. another intresting statistic would be how children who moved from an ita school to a none ita teaching school faired as they struggled to adapt to a system that had abandond them. 

and finnaly back to the '1%' thing. children put there trust in us to properly equip them for their life ahead. we have a duty to teach all equally and to the best of our abilities. we cannot allow ouselves to experamint with a small persentage of them, because whether its only one in 100 or a million its one to many. all children have the right to be treated equaly. 

sorry about the rant but you have no idea how i have struggled to undo the damage of ita. i dont mind yous fruitlooping around with english just DONT inflict it on kids. 

jen 

23 May 2001

Hi Jennifer, 

The research on ITA generally indicated that [1] children learned the system very fast and made significant gains in writing because they could use their entire vocabulary not just the 100 words that are generally introduced in the first grade. 

[2] Those who implemented the program underestimated the difficulty of switching from ITA to TS [traditional spelling]. By the time they figured out that there was a problem with 50% of the students, the fad had just about run its course. 

I have never seen the materials that were created specifically to help students with the transition.

 There are "lunatics" advocating an ITA like system. One is TRUESPEL which can be found at http://www.unifon.org/truespel.html 

I advocate a system called SAXON SPANGLISH which is derived from the last consistent alphabet for English. Around 1500, English speakers started to pronounce some words in a different way. hu:s [hoos] spelled <house at the time began to be pronunced as haus [hous]. The brackets indicate ITA spelling if you still remember this.
http://www.unifon.org/ss-1.html 

Spanglish is a hybrid spanish-english system by virtue of the fact that it uses the Latin sound-symbol conventions. I thought it might be useful in a bilingual classroom. 

Spanglish is also an ascii-IPA. In other words, it matches the pronunciation guide in many dictionaries such as Longman's Dictionary of American English widely used in ESL studies. 

please send your comments to sbett@lycos.com

I had a 20 min chat last evening with Tom Robbins of the (UK) Sunday
Times. He is drafting an article on ITA for this weekends edition,
drawing on a letter they'd had from a woman who complained that ITA had
ruined her reading (I suggested she may have been likely to have
difficulties anyway, and ITA may not actually have caused them). 

He asked me a lot about ITA (where, when etc), and I professed my almost
total ignorance; he mentioned a backlash, which I said came mostly from
the childrens parents and grandparents who found they were unable to
read bedtime stories with/to the kids.

He sounded broadly interested in what spelling reform involved and what
the SSS was up to. So there may be some mention of it in the article.

Briefly, I told him that the main aim of SSS at present was to raise
awareness that spelling reform is sensible, achievable, and worth doing.
He asked about specific reforms and proposals and I said that this was
not our main aim at present, but we could give several examples where
modest reform would be easy and very beneficial; the examples I chose
were the "ough" words, and silent letters. Relieving teachers and pupils
of learning those would release time for them to actually enjoy reading.
I pointed to the government's investigation into literacy, and our
submission to them, and their decision basically to tell the teachers to
try harder, which completely misses the point. "Our children are not
thick, our teachers are not incompetent". The number of dyslexics in
English speaking countries compared to those with a more sensible
spelling was not a coincidence. I mentioned the research into this, and
Valerie's letter in the New Scientist.

He asked about loss of homonym differentiation, so I pointed out that
there are lots of cases where we don't worry anyway, eg "you are right
to go right" doesn't worry us, so why should "you are right to [write]
it down" (whatever spelling... - remember this was spoken, not written).
He understood.

I drew an analogy between silent letters and how people would struggle
with arithmetic if we had "silent numerals" - eg if "354" were written
"3574" with a silent 7. Or if we said that the value of a 4 was doubled
if followed by an even number, like we say that the pronunciation of <c>
is different before e,i and before o,u.

And that etymology, though interesting, was a distraction, having to
tell children that the "t" in <castle> was there because the Romans had
one 2000 years ago.

He thought these were fascinating analogies and clearly hadn't thought
of it in this way before.

He predicted fear and objection; I said yes of course, just like
decimalisation and metrication. But unlike decimalisation you don't need
to force everybody to do it simultaneously, but can phase it in over
even a couple of decades if necessary, as has happened in other European
countries.

I said much of the objection could be based on "destroying the language"
and "losing Shakespeare's spelling"; but we dont, because he didn't
spell like modern editions anyway (he actually was aware of this, but
still took the point).
 
 

back to i.t.a.
alc fonetic [new spelling updated] see also Zachrissen's Anglic]
truespel - truespel is 90% new spelling + a stress marker [check it out]
see also spelreit for a detailed problem-solution explanation
RITEspelling is a less than phonemic proposal that resembles the traditional orthography
Quick Refrence
go to the indexpage
phonetic keyboard
writng samples
writing systems
the beautiful princess story in various transcriptions
Quick Refrence

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