User:Ro Thorpe/Spelling reform

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

This is a sketch for a pragmatic spelling reform in English.

1. Homophones to be homographs. Many already are (such as port, which means, among other things, a drink and a harbour, whence it is derived), and for the rest, if they do not need to be distinguished in speech, neither do they in writing. Thus is saved a lot of annoying work for learners, whether children or non-anglophones. No longer any need to worry about the rite way to rite The Rite of Spring.

2. Unstressed endings schwa + r to be rendered as r alone. Thus: fathr, colr, colandr, calendr, razr, molr, lemr, tir. A tricky case is soldir, best phoneticised to soljr.

3. ir, ur and er (and ear as in earth, and or after w) all to be rendered as er (thus rendering the pronunciation of tir, above, unambiguous): ferst, erth, bern, tern, berth, werth, werk.