An alternative spelling for English: contemporary approaches and simplification criteria

The history of English spelling is characterised by periods of discontinuity and a slow and relentless shift from a phonemic orthography to a morphophonemic system. There have been two periods when spelling reform of the English language has attracted particular interest: the first was from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, when a number of publications and dictionaries outlining proposals for reform were published; the second was between the 18th and early 20th centuries and linked to the development of phonetics as a science. For example, Noah Webster’s dictionary included an essay on the oddities of modern orthography and his proposals for reform (some of which would become hallmarks of American English spelling). The purpose of this study is to review proposals for English-language spelling reform since the 1950s – New Spelling, Regularised English, Spelling Reform 1, Cut Spelling, Shavian, Interspel, and the Petersonian English Alphabet – to identify their main common traits by highlighting the underlying ideas of simplification. All the models under consideration show a preference for a phonemic spelling system as an ideal in the direction of linguistic simplicity.