Yusa:Apcbg/Basic Roman spelling of English

The Basic Roman spelling of English is a en:2002 proposal for English en:spelling regularity based on five underlying principles:

• reliance on the en:Basic modern Latin alphabet, with no additional characters or en:diacritics used;

• single-valued spelling, with no en:phoneme rendered by two or more en:graphemes;

• en:short vowels are spelled by single letters, while en:long vowels and en:diphthongs are spelled by digraphs;

• diphthongs are spelled in accordance with the spelling of their components, and long vowels either as diphthongs or by doubling the letters spelling the respective short vowels;

• short vowels and en:consonants are spelled in a way that is common for the traditional orthography of most Romanized languages including English.

In compliance with these phonemic principles, Basic Roman explicates the vowel alternations in stressed syllables originating in the en:Great Vowel Shift of en:Early Modern English, offering a wider international perspective that transcends Chomsky’s defense of traditional spelling. The Basic Roman system serves no particular standard of en:English pronunciation, but rather provides the means that could be used for the spelling of different en:varieties of English. The system uses 22 Roman letters to represent the set of English phonemes considered by J.C. Wells; the letters ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘w’ and ‘x’ are not used (letters ‘j’ and ‘w’ are used in an extended version of the Basic Roman spelling, see below).

IPA	Basic Roman spelling (Extended Basic Roman in parentheses)	word
en:monophthongs
iː	iy	bead
ɪ	i	bid
ɛ	e	bed
æ	a	bad
ɒ	o	box
ɔː	oo	pawed
ɑː	aa	bra
ʊ	u	good
uː	uu	booed
ʌ	a	bud
ɜr	non-rhotic: aa │ rhotic: aar	bird
ə	a	Rosa's
en:diphthongs
eɪ	ey	bayed
oʊ	ou	bode
aɪ	ay	cry
aʊ	au	cow
ɔɪ	oy	boy
ɪər	non-rhotic: ia │ rhotic: iar	near
ʊər	non-rhotic: ua │ rhotic: uar	boor
ɛər	non-rhotic: ea │ rhotic: ear	fair
en:consonants
m	m	me
n	n	name
ŋ	ng	sing
p	p	peak
b	b	best
t	t	top
d	d	do
k	k	kiss
g	g	green
ts	ts	tsar
tʃ	ch	cheer
dʒ	dzh ( j )	joy
f	f	fix
v	v	view
θ	t ( th )	think
ð	d ( dh )	this
s	s	sea
z	z	zoo
ʃ	sh	ship
ʒ	zh	vision
x	h ( hh )	loch (Scottish)
h	h	he
ɾ	r	river
j	y	yes
w	u ( w )	west
l	l	like

By way of illustration, the following reference text by V. Yule is given in traditional spelling and in Basic Roman (shown is the non-rhotic version; in the rhotic one, relevant words like ‘daughter’, ‘heart’, ‘pictures’ etc. are spelled ‘dootar’, ‘haart’, ‘pikcharz’ etc.):

Once upon a time, the beautiful daughter of a great magician wanted more pearls to put among her treasures. “Look through the centre of the moon when it is blue,” said her royal mother in answer to her question. “You might find your heart’s desire.” The fair princess laughed, because she doubted these words. Instead, she used her imagination, and moved into the photography business, and took pictures of the moon in colour. “I perceive most certainly that it is almost wholly white,” she thought. She also found that she could make enough money in eight months to buy herself two lovely huge new jewels too.

Uans apon a taym, da byutiful doota av a greyt madzhishan uontid moo paalz tu put amang haa trezhaz. “Luk tru da senta av da muun huen it iz bluu,” sed haa royal mada in ansa tu haa kueschan. “Yu mayt faynd yoo haats dizaya.” Da fea prinses laaft, bikoz shi dautid diyz waadz. Insted, shi yuzd haa imadzhineyshan, and muuvd intu da fotografi biznis, and tuk pikchaz av da muun in kala. “Ay paasiyv moust saatanli dat it iz olmoust houli wayt,” shi toot. Shi olsou faund dat shi kud meyk inaf mani in eyt mants tu bay haaself tuu lavli hyudzh nyu dzhuualz tuu.

Apart from respelling of English, the Basic Roman could also be used as the target spelling of a universal algorithm for the designing of superior, user-friendly Romanization systems transliterating and transcribing a variety of languages. This ‘streamlined approach’ has been successfully tested in the case of Bulgarian language, with the 1995 Streamlined System for the Romanization of Bulgarian becoming established in Bulgaria (eventually codified in a 2009 law), and adopted also by United Nations in 2012, and for official United States and United Kingdom use by BGN and PCGN in 2013. Recently this approach has been used to design the 2017 Streamlined System for the Romanization of Russian aimed at replacing the plethora of systems currently occurring in the non-academic practice of transliteration of Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English

A more elaborate version of the system is the Extended Basic Roman spelling of English, which uses also the letters ‘j’ and ‘w’, and has two specific en:digraphs for the English voiced and voiceless dental fricatives. The above sample text would appear in Extended Basic Roman (en:non-rhotic version) as follows:

Wans apon a taym, dha byutiful doota av a greyt majishan wontid moo paalz tu put amang haa trezhaz. “Luk thru dha senta av dha muun hwen it iz bluu,” sed haa royal madha in ansa tu haa kweschan. “Yu mayt faynd yoo haats dizaya.” Dha fea prinses laaft, bikoz shi dautid dhiyz waadz. Insted, shi yuzd haa imajineyshan, and muuvd intu dha fotografi biznis, and tuk pikchaz av dha muun in kala. “Ay paasiyv moust saatanli dhat it iz olmoust houli wayt,” shi thoot. Shi olsou faund dhat shi kud meyk inaf mani in eyt manths tu bay haaself tuu lavli hyuj nyu juualz tuu.

The Extended Basic Roman is close to one-to-one en:phoneme-en:grapheme correspondence, paving the way to a en:pronunciation respelling for English by means of the closely related Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English.

See also

• en:English spelling reform
• Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English