Single-stroke English (long edition)
Publisher Description
In conservative youth, this spelling reformer attempted fruitlessly to make English spelling regular. In middle age, I tried to invent radical new alphabets, also to no avail. In old-age, radicalism and conservatism combined, to produce, after a good few years trial and error, Single-stroke English (SE).
I found out the hard way, that only a short-hand based on ones native alphabet, was memorable and therefore usable, without more effort then it was worth. That is why the general public has no hand-writing system as efficient as its speech.
But this innovation would by-pass the orthography, as a broken English communications medium.
The anarchy of English spelling has rendered more than a fifth of its users “functionally illiterate.” It is a blight on peoples prospects, with well-known social and economic draw-backs. As HG Wells said, English never learned to spell.
Attempts at reform have centred on the ill-conceived notion of extending, rather than discarding, additional use of the vowel letter, e, as an accent to signify diphthongs.
That expedient of the first English printer, half a millennium ago, will never serve in a World Roman Alphabet.
This long edition of SE also contains many English language learning tips and tricks. Like learning an English alphabet, true to standard English speech, and some of the most common English words, at the same time. Moreover, learning a hundred words that contain half of English usage. Or how to avoid having to learn all the irregular past tenses of English verbs.
Also, main snags and pit-falls, to confound English learners, are explained, for instance, when confusions of spelling are actually down to a confusion of tongues.