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The
New Age of Reason
By
John Culkin
"Let's
meet for lunch on September 30"
To
produce that sentence I used four media: a typewriter, an alphabet, a number
system, and a
calendar. The Arabic number system is unambiguous and efficient. Let's keep it.
The other three
media are a mess. Let's change them.
THE ALPHABET
And the worst shall be first. An alphabet by definition, a system for
mapping the sounds
of a language is an invention of a high order. Ideally, one letter stands
for each sound
and one sound for each letter. The genius of our phonetic system (as
opposed to
pictographic systems) is that the written symbols do not refer directly
to the object
described but to the pieces of sound that fallout of our faces.
The current English alphabet, however, is not as easy as ABC. Our
26 letters are at
once too few and too many to handle the roughly 40 pieces of sound
(phonemes) that
constitute today's spoken English, the variety of speech used by Walter
Cronkite and
John Chancellor and scientifically analyzed by Bell Labs and most
dictionaries. The
alphabetic principle suggests that we have 40 letters in order to
describe this spoken
code accurately and completely. In fact, we have more than 200 spellings
for the 40
basic sounds of spoken English. This is five times the number required;
it produces an
efficiency rating of 20 percent for our written code. A piano with that
degree of
effectiveness would have 440 keys.
Ask any child or foreigner about the vagaries of written English. They will
chronicle the
agonies of "one" and "eight" and "tough" and
"through" and "though." English is a verbal melting pot and
we have never had an Academy, as do the French, to establish linguistic
standards. As a result, we have 15 spellings for the long 0 sound (owe,
beau, though, doe, etc.) and another 15 for the long a sound (may, maid,
gauge, great, weight, etc.). Imagine the efficiency of our Arabic number system
if any digit could randomly take on several other values: “7 (frequently)
times 6 (occasionally) equals 42 (more or less)."
"Why," one asks, "can't we have a code that does for language
what Arabic numerals do for mathematics?"
We can!
The question is whether we really want it. Alphabet reform has been
around as long as there has been an alphabet. English alphabet reform dates back
to at least 1568; the movement has included Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and
George Bernard Shaw. The "most voluble player" in alphabet reform has
been Shaw, who left part of his estate to establish a competition for the
creation of a new phonetic alphabet. He wrote:
"This
alphabet is reduced to absurdity by a foolish orthography
[spelling system] 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. Thus an intelligent child who is bidden to spell debt,
and
very properly spells it d-e-t, is caned for not spelling it with a
b
because
Julius Caesar spelled it with a b."
Mark Twain also had a few words on the subject:
"The English alphabet is pure insanity. It can hardly spell any word
in the language with any large degree of certainty. ...The silliness
of the English alphabet is quite beyond enumeration. Whereas the
English orthography needs simplifying, the English alphabet needs
it two or three million times more."
Twain wanted a one-for-one alphabet in which each letter stood for one sound
and vice versa.
To date, more than 300 new alphabets have been devised for the English
language.
You may have noticed that none of them has yet been adopted. The
psychological and
cultural resistance to such a change is obviously strong. In the past,
formidable
technological and economic barriers halted the move toward a new
alphabet. Today,
alphabet reform has a chance to work its logic because of technological
and economic
considerations. The presence of 25 million adult functional illiterates
in our population
and the increasing role of English as a world language provide additional
impetus.
Have I got an alphabet for you!
One hundred percent efficient, it
is related to the existing
alphabet and compatible with all computer technologies. It works as a
reading system; it
fits most other languages. Called UNIFON, the alphabet was devised
by John Malone, a
Chicago economist, 20 years ago.
ONE-FOR-ONE SYSTEM
UNIFON
(single sound), a totally consistent 40-character alphabet, maps and matches the
40 sounds of standard spoken English. It is an isomorphic (one-for-one) system
of 24 consonants and 16 vowels. One and only one letter stands for each sound.
One and only one sound corresponds to each letter. Students need learn only one
rule for its use: Spell everything as it sounds, sound everything as it is
spelled. No silent letters and no double letters exist.
Here is how the UNIFON alphabet works:
UNIFON is a "capitalist"
tool, based on the uppercase letters of the Roman
alphabet. The new alphabet retains 23 existing letters. The three dropped
letters
are unnecessary: the abecedarian duties of C are taken on by either K or S, Q
becomes KW, and X becomes KS.
Seventeen letters are added, all based on existing letters. The 6 new consonants
include a symbol for the ng sound and 5 that contain the h sound (ch.
sh. zh and the two sounds for th). The 11 new vowels include the 5
long vowels, 5 diphthongs and the e
before an r sound.
Much of the complexity of English is in the richness of its vowel system -16
sounds. They can be remembered in their UNIFON
order through the following mnemonic list of five names:
Cat Face Hall
Red Peters
Big Mike
Otto Cook Cowboy
Mud Mule Blue
If UNIFON or something similar
became the alphabet, these improvements could follow:
-
Economics:
UNIFON takes up 14
percent less space, with consequent
savings in labor, storage, ink and paper.
-
Decline
in Dyslexia:
One author believes that more than 60 percent of the
world's dyslexia occurs in English-speaking countries and
blames the gap
between our spoken language and our alphabet.
-
Voice-Activated
Machines: UNIFON's one-for-one correspondence would
simplify the programming of voice-activated computers and
typewriters,
-
Foreign Languages: Already the official alphabet of
several American Indian
tribes, UNIFON also fits the major European languages with
minor
adjustments, The new alphabet can ease the
acquisition of languages; it
could be particularly useful in teaching English to
those, such as Spanish
speakers, who already have a consistent alphabet.
-
English
as World Language:
English has become the de facto world
language, taught in the elementary schools of more than
100 countries,
Although relatively easy to speak, English is one of the
most difficult languages
to learn from written materials, A sensible alphabet
would greatly facilitate this
process.
-
Spelling
Bees:
No more. Our current
alphabet and the reading thereof
involve a
"sort of" phonetic base, but school children must learn some
words, like one
and eight, as if they were Chinese symbols.
At
present, UNIFON is being used as an initial reading system in the public
schools of Indianapolis. First-graders spend six months with UNIFON, then
transfer to traditional orthography, because their first experience with print
has been logical and consistent, the children score high in reading and writing
skills. First-graders exposed to UNIFON
before any traditional language scored high in reading and writing skills.
Two books currently in preparation
will make the system available to teachers and parents: Reading for the TV
Child and The UNIFON Double-Entry Dictionary, which will allow
readers to look up a word either according to its traditional spelling (e.g.,
physics) or according to its pronunciation (FIZIKS).
Click here to continue reading John Culkins article on the changes needed
for THE TYPEWRITER
and THE CALENDAR
John
M. Culkin, Executive Director of The Center for Understanding Media wrote
substantially this article for the Science Digest, August 1981.
Kind permission to electronically re-create this material has been given
by his family to continue his kwest for an augmented alfubet for future
generations of English writers. In his memory we dedicate this version
of his article.
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