In the early 1800's, Noah Webster wrote, "Letters, the most useful invention that ever blessed mankind, lose a part of their value by no longer being representatives of the sounds orignally annexed to them."  The effect is, "to destroy the benefits of the alphabet."

Is it possible to reclaim the benefits of the alphabet by finding the sounds that were originally annexed to the letters?  Is it possible to reclaim the benefits by restoring the Saxon alphabet?

Add Twain's observations

In the 10th century, English had a highly consistant spelling system known as the West Saxon standard.  The sounds that corresponded to the letters A E I O U used to be ah, eh, ee, awe, oo. 
Restore these consistent relationships and English would once again have a functional alphabet.

When England adopted the Roman alphabet, they also adopted the sounds associated with the letters.  To make a 5 vowel alphabet work with a Germanic language that had 12 vowels, the Latin alphabet was augmented.  The West Saxon standard (ca. 900 AD) added several runic letters for the missing sounds. The ash [ae] provided a way to reference the sound that differed from the Italian A.  The West Saxon alphabet had 6 vowel letters, each letter had a long and short pronunciation.

West Saxon Std. 840-1060 Letter Checked Free A uh, ago ah, can Æ æ ash, æx hæt E eh *ape heeth I ih, ich ee, *eel O aw holy=holly oh [ow] good=o: U hook hwk hoop houre e  eR uh uhr

An alphabet is an ordered set of sound-signs.  The alphabet (or correspondence table) makes it possible for the letters (signs-symbols) to RE-present sounds.  The chief benefit of an alphabet is that with a set of just 35 symbols, one can transcribe all the significant sounds in the English (Englisc) langauge.  This consistent set of relationships between letters and sounds makes it possible to easily spell any word that you can pronounce and pronounce any word you see spelled.

It is the correspondences between symbols and sounds that define an alphabet. The original English alphabet was the augmented Latin alphabet that became known as the West Saxon standard.  In the year 900, English (Anglo-Saxon) words were written and spelled as they were spoken.  There was a clear correspondence between letters and sounds (graphemes and phonemes). Like many of the European languages of today, Old English was over 90% phonemic or consistent with its correspondence table. Each letter was associated with a sound or in the case of vowels, a long and a short pronunciation.

Bett, following Dewey, estimated that 60% of the functionality of the alphabet has been lost.  Today's writing system is only 40% alphabetic or consistent with its pronunciation guide.  Most of that loss of consistency came after the Great vowel shift (ca. 1400) when the pronunciation of many vowels changed without a correponding change in the way words were spelled.  Most of the traditional spellings are from pre shifted Middle English [1200-1500] but they are no longer pronounced the way that Chaucer pronounced them. 

Both Wijk and Paul Hanna [1969] have suggested that 84% of dictionary spellings are in acordance with a regular pattern. This is true but there are a half dozen regular patterns for each vowel sound.  For instance, there are 29 ways to spell the vowel in cool and rule.  The first four ways account for about 75% of the dictionary spellings.  So there is regularity in English, but being able to guess a spelling with a 75% probability after 4 tries doesn't make English spelling any less of a guessing game. 

The traditional (mid 18th century) English spelling system [TES] is 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. The playwright George Bernard Shaw (1941)] argued that this reduced the alphabet to absurdity.  TES can be called non-alphabetical since the spelling of more than 50% of the words do not match the dictionary pronunciation guide.
 

The 10th Century West Saxon Standard - 14 vowels   a æ e i o u 'r long ah * eh-ey eel awe-oh hoop her short ago æsh ej-edge ill awe* hook other æ can be merged with a or marked with a double consonant

Why make such big changes as A=ah, I=eel, O=awe, U=ooze?  The main reason is that this set of correspondences allows learners to use spelling pronunciation.  Pronouncing all A's as ah produces understandable results.  Pronouncing Ha and Hay doesn't quite work.  Pronouncing all o's as awe unless in the terminal position also works better than other alternatives.  [à  è  ì  ò  ù æ]

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The spelling ice which according to the Saxon corresondence table would be pronounced /ees-uh/ comes from the original Saxon spelling: [is] /ees/.  The current spelling does show how the word was historically spelled in the 13th century.  (To understand how it was pronounced, one would have to consult the Saxon correspondence table) As etymological or historical spellings, most high frequency words go back to Middle English.  Few go all the way back to Anglo Saxon: [e.g.,  eye-ogle].  The problem comes from the fact that we no longer pronounce the word /ees/ or /ees-uh/.  To maintain the alphabet, when the pronunciation of [ice] changed in the early 14th century, the spelling should have been changed to [ais].

Dr. Johnson, who wrote the first popular dictionary,  felt that it was folly to imagine that the dictionary could embalm language and preserve its words and phrases from mutability.  He saw no reason to standardize English spelling beyond the word level because he felt that what changed the most was pronunciation.  As it turns out, English pronunciation is probably more standardized today than in 1755.  Compared to the changes that occured in the 14th century, English pronunciation has hardly changed at all from the way it was spoken in London in 1755.  Some words and phrases have dropped out of favor and new words and phrases have been added.  Most of Johnson's spellings have survived intact.

We have a choice, either we can obscure the etymology or historical spelling of the word or we can obscure the pronunciation of the word.  Traditional English Spelling [TES] obscures the spelling. 

School [skool] is spelled that way because it used to be spelled scul and pronounced shu:l.  sc=sh as in Englisc for English.  The pronunciation is the same.  Old English c = tS so scip makes sense particularly if it was pronounced /sss-chip/.  This is certainly a better approximation than /s-hip/.  The mute H in [ship] is a marker rather than a pronounced letter. 

The proposal is not to restore the old Saxon consonants because the new consonant digraphs are just as good as the old ones. Knowing the old Saxon consonants, however, makes it possible to understand spellings such as school /sku:l/.  As in Italian, the saxon c = ch /tS/.  ciao = chee-ah-ow, circ=church, scip=schip.  Ship was probably pronounced close to the way that a scottsman would proncounce the word ship today [listen to Sean Connery's speech patterns]:  ship school=/shkip shkool/. 

In the first century, School was spelled scul  and pronounced /schu:l/.  In Middle English, tS was represented as ch, thus scul became schule.  In many English dialects today, School is now pronounced skool /sku:l.  Some of the same variance is found in the pronunciation of schedule.  Those who pronounce schip as ship also want to pronounce schedule as /shed-jul/.  [see chart]
 

History of Spelling and Pronunciation
in 1200, spelling changed with no change in pronunciation
In 1500, pronunciation changed with no change in spelling

Old 700-1066	Middle 1300-1400	Modern 1500-2000	Pron 1	Pron 2
scip	schip	ship	schip	ship
/stSip/	/stSip/	/Sip/	stSip	Sip
scedul	schedule	schedule	skejul	shejul
/stSedul/	/stSedul/	/skedZul/	skedZul	shedZul
scul	schule	school	shkool	skool
stSu:l	stSu:l	sku:l	Sku:l	sku:l
stan	ston	stone	stawn	stown
/sta:n/	/sto:n/	/stoun/	ston	stoun
sercl	cercle	circle	srrkl	suhkl
/s3rkl/	/s3rkl/	/s3kl/	/s3rkl/	/s3kl/
luv-luf	luffe-love	love	luv	lauv
lu:v	lu:f-@	luv / lov	l^v / l'v	lov
writ	write	write	wryt	ryt
wri:t	wri:t'	rait	wrait	rait
neur	neure	never	never	nevuh
nev'r	nev'r	nev'r	nev'r	nev'
hus ham	house home	house home	hous	hoam
hu:s ha:m	hu:s haum	haus houm	haus	houm

 The eth [ Ð ð ] is a part of the Old Saxon alfabet that is not included in New Saxon.

Sample transcriptions: Spanglish vs. IPAand ALC Fonetik
CCS takes 7 lines, other notations take 9 lines to say the same thing.
What needs to be tested is the relative ease of reading and writing in these alternate notations.
 

Saxon - Spanglish	IPA Notation '=shwa   ':=3:   ò =sh   Z=zh
Wans apon a taim the byutiful dotr ov a gret majician wanted mor prlz tu pwt among her trezhrz.  "Lwk thru the centr ov the mun wen it iz blu." sed hr mother in ansr tu hr question, " Yu mait faind yur hartz dezair."	W'ns 'pon ' taim ð' bjutif'l do:t' 'v ' greit m'dZiò'n want'd mo:': p':lz tu: put 'm'ng h': treZju':z."Luk thru: ð' sent': 'v  ð' mu:n hwen it iz blu:," sed h'r m'th' in æns': tu: h': kwestò'n, "Ju: mait faind j': ha:'tz di:zair."
ALC Fonetik (Ver. of New Spelling)	OGD positional
Wuns upon a tiem, the buetiful dauter of a graet majishan wonted mor perls to puut amung her trezhers. "Luuk thru the senter of the moon when it is bloo,"  sed her muther in anser to her question,"You miet fiend yur harts dezier."	Wuns upon a tym, the biutiful dawter ov a grait majition wonted mor perls tu puut amung her trezhers. "Lwk thru the senter ov the moon when it is blu." sed her muther in anser tu her question, "Yu myt fynd iur harts desyr.