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RITE RULES

U may think spelling reform meens havving tu lern all over agen. It dus not. Just reed belo.

P stands for a principle, R for a rule, S for a sub-rule and E for an explanation.

 

PRINCIPLES:

P1 - When british and american speakers (or a considerable number of them) would spell a word differently, keep TS (schedule)(TS stands for Traditional Spelling). In the case of other variants: keep TS too, unless there is one shorter and/or clearly more common variant, plus the TS form if that would be one of the variants (offen, often).

P2 - Root words (respelled or not) don’t change when suffixes are added or compounds are built, if it is not misleeding for pronunciation and no other rule applies. Thus slite>slitely, activity>activitys.

P3 – Proper names and the root words in their derivatives are not respelled, but derivatives are not capitalized.

P4 – Capitals are used for sentence beginnings, proper names, titles, abbreviations, but not for common words like i’, ‘friday’, ‘march’, ‘english’.

P5 - If a new word by these principles would be spelled the same way as an existing RITE word and they don't have the same pronunciation, we refrain from changing. For instance we have ‘putfor TS ‘put’, so we can’t change ‘puttto ‘put’.

P6 – Apostrophes can be dropped if the resulting respelling isnt misleading for pronunciation (thus ‘wasnt, but not ‘hell’ for ‘he’ll’. ‘Dontand ‘wontcan be spelled without apostrophes, optionaly.

 

CUTTING REDUNDANT LETTERS

R1 - Cut all redundant letters, namely those wich do not serv any function in the pronunciation of the word. This means that the most likely way (acording to TS patterns) to pronounce the respeld word has to be the real one. Note: between a short stressd vowel and another vowel, we need at least 2 consonants, wich means that we spel 'yel', but 'yelling', 'bak' but 'backing', 'stif' but 'stiffest'.

hed, dout, exept, hankerchif, hav, foren, thru, wat, frends, nees, haf, dam, yung, sycological, iland, wach, corse, sho, acommodate, acomodation for

head, doubt, exept, handkerchief, have, foreign, through, what, friends, knees, haf, dam, young, psychological, island, watch, course/coarse, show, accommodate, accommodation

S1 - Wen a shwa is represented by a digraph, we spel ‘e’ (certen, mounten), but the ending –OUS becomes –US (famus).  

S2 - In morpheme boundaries we keep the double consonant if both word elements ar recognized as having a meaning, eg unnecesary, unnatural, teammate but inate, inocuus for innate, innocuous.

E1 - Cut double consonants wen they ar not folloing a short stressd vowel and preceeding another vowel, (acommodate, realy, basicly), but:

E1a - we leav LL after U with a sound other than the usual short vowel sound as in 'annul, dul(l), eg full, pull, bull

E2 -TS-ending 'ure' remains ure, including the preceeding consonant(s), eg mesure, plesure, pressure, future.

R2 - /@/ (shwa) can be dropd optionally if it is short vowel + consonant + (shwa) + L or R + vowel, eg evry, intrest.

 

STRESSD SHORT VOWELS

R3 – short a, e, i, o, u ar speld with a, e, i, o, u, eg and, plad forand, plaid’, sed, wen, eny, for ‘said, when, any’, it, is, simbol for ‘it, is, symbol’, got, lot for ‘got, lot’, sum, cum for some, come.

R4. If a short vowel is folloed by a consonant and a vowel or final -le, dubble the consonant: latter, matter, happen for ‘latter, matter, happen’, wedding, hedded for ‘wedding, headed’, wimmen, bitter for ‘women, bitter’, robber, offer for ‘robber, offer’, munny, sudden, dubble for ‘money, sudden, double’.

S3 - We dont dubble J, Q, X, eg project, liquid, taxi, but we do use dygraphs wen TS does it (eg adjectiv), exept X wich isnt dubbled in enny case. And no R-dubbling after ‘a, e’ and ‘o’, unless TS dus it.

S4 - We dont dubble befor sillables with  IC, IT, OJY/OJI since the vowels befor these endings ar usualy short and stressd (exept U wich is long and stressd), eg economic, political, gravity, ideology.

S5 - No dubbling takes place where the result could lead to mispronunciation, eg decisions, visual, not ‘decissions, vissual’.

S6 - Short O/U after W or QU remains WA/QUA (in the US sum of them hav short U-sound, and the difrence between short O and au/aw-sound isnt clear), eg was, wat, want, quality.

 

STRESSD LONG VOWELS

R5 - Spel long a with ‘a’ befor a vowel (caos) or a consonant and a vowel (data), ad an ‘e’ after a final consonant (date), spel ‘ay’ at the end of a root word (day, days). Befor consonant clusters: ai (chainj, paist).
 
R6 - Spel long ‘e’ as ‘ee’, exept where TS has ‘e’ (be, he, me, she, the, we) and befor uther vowels (theater).

R7 - Spel i-o-u for long i-o-u (bi, so, nu, dial, poet, cruel, mity, pony, buty), and ad an ‘e’ after a final consonant sound (lite, bote, cute) or ad the ‘e’ imeediatly after the vowel befor consonant suffixes (he dies, it snoes, the trueth). Befor consonant clusters y-oa-ue (fynd, moast, nueclear).

S7 - For the diferentiation between long U and OO: considder it a long U wen it is pronounced /yu:/ in one of the 2 standard dialects or in both, or after CH, J, L, R, S, SH: buty, mute, fu, chu, ju, luny, rule, thru, super, shu. Utherwize considder it a long OO and spel OO: boot, food. Exeptions: to, two, do remane as thay ar.

UTHER VOWELS

R8 - /3r/ and /@r/ (shwa) as in ‘were’, ‘over’ - spel ‘er’ in stressd sillables or after them, eg her, after, ferst, werd, tern, terminal.

R9 - The unstressd suffix ‘able’ remanes, ‘ible’ becums ‘able: possable, avalable.

R10 - /@nt/ is speld ‘ent’, eg atendent, difrent, /@ns/ is speld ‘ense’, eg ballense, expeeriense.  

R11 – Final /Er/ as in ‘air’ - spel ‘are’, eg thare, care, pare for there/their, care, pare/pear.

R12 - /u/ as in ‘put, look’ - spel cud, shud, wud for ‘could, should, would’, utherwize leev the TS spelling (good, bull, bush, put).

R13 - /w/ as in ‘with’ – befor a vowel as in TS (usually ‘w’ (sweet), sumtimes ‘u’ (languaj)), ‘w’ wen final and ‘u’ befor a consonent in the rute werd: plow, thow, doun, law, laun for plough/plow, thou, down, law, lawn.

R14 - Final unstressd /i/ or /i:/ as in ‘belly’ - spel ‘y’, eg simply, history, coffy, taxy (altho taxi is alowd), apostrofys.

R15 - Exept for initial y (yet), intervocalic (loyal) and final (silly), spel ‘y’ that has short I with ‘i’, eg sistematic.

R16 - /o:t/ with ‘ought’ spelling becum ‘aut’: thaut, baut, faut.

 

CONSONENTS

R17 - /ch/ as in ‚church’ - spel ‚ch’, eg wich, children, but keep ‚t’ wair TS has ‚t’ (since this isnt very cleer all the time), eg fortune, eventual.

R18 - /d/ as in ‘Dad’ - spel ‘d’, eg had, doun. Menny peeple say /dzh/ for certen d’s, as in ‚soljer’ for ‚soldier’, but we ignor that.

R19 - /f/ as in ‘for’ - spel ‘f’, eg from, enuf.

R20 - /g/ as in ‘go’ - spel ‘g’, eg gess, good. /gz/ is speld with ‘x’, for example ‘example’.

R21 - /dzh/ as in ‘joke’ - spel ‘j’, eg just, larj.

R22 - /k/ as in ‘king’ - spel ‘k’ befor ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘y’, eg keep, kik, at the end of one sillable rute werds and thair derivvativs, eg bak, think, spel ‘q’ befor the sound /w/, eg quite, question, spel ‘x’ befor /s/ or /sh/, eg box, axident, anxius but not in inflections, eg books, soks, inflection, and ‘c’ in other cases, eg came, fact, muzic.

R23 - /s/ as in ‘so’ - spel ‘s’, eg serten, just, pallas, notis

S8 - but spel ‘ss’ at the end of a rute werd if TS has ‘ss’, eg less, across, and ‘se’ after a digraf or a consonent, eg goose, house, sense.  

R24 - /sh/ as in ‘shake’ - spel ‘sh’, eg british, short, shure

S9 - Spel /sh@/ with ‘ci+vowel’ after a short vowel, utherwise ‘ti+vowel’ (the vowel used in TS): politician, special, pacion, micion, ignicion, inicial, nation, motion, mention. Of corse this dusnt aply for instense for werds hoos root werd ends with –sh (fisher, not ficier). 

R25 - /z/ az in ‘zebra’ - spel ‘z’, eg az, lazy,

S10 - but keep ‚s’ for inflections, eg cars, she sels, Bobs house. Also has, was, is, thees.

The sounds /b, h, l, m, n, p, r, t, th, v/ ar speld az in TS.

 

LINKS:

RITE INTRODUCTION

RITE JOKES

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