English is an ugly dirty mongrel dog that needs a good bath, and some TLC.
In 1806 good old Noah Webster published his first dictionary which included a commentary on the oddities of English spelling which helped to reform ridiculous English spellings such as colour to color, but of course the British held on to their colour because they are such colourful chaps after all.
But why didn't Webster go even further?
Let's start with the ph for example. Why does the combination ph even exist? It's only purpose is to indicate etymology. Good on the Italian language for getting rid of all these damned ph's and replacing them with old fashioned f's. Yes, I love how the Italians just said F' it these ph's F'in suck balls.
How ironic is it that even the very word that means it is spelled exactly how it sounds isn't even spelled exactly how it sounds? There's nothing phonetic about phonetic! We could at least have to common decency to spell phonetic fonetikly!
And why does the letter c even exist? I mean the letter C totally has a case of associative identity disorder: sometimes it's an S and sometimes it's a K and sometimes it's a sh and sometimes it's a ch. My poor dear letter C you need some counseling.
Science is such an unscientific word... siens would make more sense, but damn it siens looks like seens! How do we fix this mess?
Well for starters if the C is making an S sound let's write an S instead, if it's making a K sound then let's write a K instead. Am I suggesting we get rid of c altogether? Not at all. I'm suggesting we give the letter C new purpose and meaning by replacing the CH sound with C and the SH sound with CC since the SH sound is just a sustained CH sound anyway. AND while we're on the topic all these words that end in tion or sion or cion let's just replace all that crap with cun (yeah the o to make schwa sound makes no sense, and schwa, really? did you have to be spelled that way? You're cwa to me from now on).
So English, let's have a cat about your other iccues.
Why does x exist? Why? It's easy (damn s should never make a z sound I mean what the hell do we have z for if we don't use it!)... it's eezy to say that x makes an ks sound and culd be replased with ks, but it's not even that simple (what is that e even doing at the end of simple? That's not simpl at all) for example: example isn't said eksampl, it's said egzampl. So sometimes the x needs to be replaced with gz not ks, but either way the letter x is useless. You're utterly (why the useless double letters?) utterly useles you letter X! So let's cros you out of the Englic language.
Don't get me started on the qu kombinacun. Wy (useless h's we don't pronounce anymore) does this egzist? The letter q is even mor useles than x. Al q's can be replased with k's and al qu kombinacuns can be replased with kw. So, kwik and eezy even an MS word find and replase funkcun could do it... ugh, hold on the n in function isn't an n sound at all it's an ng sound like in among or going. I guess we could replace the ng sound everywhere with ng but then fungcun looks too much like an exkrecun frum a fungus... and isn't fungus an interesting word in that ng doesn't just make the ng sound like in among it also makes the g sound. So, we're not using the stupid letter q anymore and it looks kind of like a g so let's just replace all the ng sounds with q's. I wonder how that would fugcun in praktis?
Damn... this is getting complicated, and we haven't even looked at the worst part about English phonetics! The fact we only have 5 vowels, but well over 14 vowel sounds! For example:
The o in for is not the same o sound in toe, which is not the same o sound in operation, which is not the same o sound in sound which is not the same o sound in does which is not the same o sound in do, which is not the same o sound in book which is not the same o sound in function!!!!! How does this even function when we are using the same letter for more than 8 different vowel sounds? And we wonder why it's difficult for foreigners to learn English....
There are standardized ways of writing English phonetically using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) but the IPA requires special characters now found on the English keyboard. If we were really to put into practice a phonetic version of English then we would either need to replace the millions of keyboards out there with ones containing phonetic characters or we could re-purpose the Latin ones and create an orthography like this one:
a - awesome
u - but
e - hello
i - bit
ay - eye
ae - apple
ey - ate
y - eat
o - oat
oo - book
uu - too
oy - boy
h - hat
y - yes
m - man
w - water
p - pat
b - bat
f - fat
v - vat
th - thin
dh - there
t - tin
d - dare
s - sin
z - zoo
n - never
l - list
c - chat
j - jerky
cc - shoe
x - confusion (I thought about replacing it with jj since it's just a sustained j sound but x would be lonely and unused otherwise)
r - rat
ny - lasagna (actually an Italian word, but who doesn't love lasagna?)
k - kill
g - girl
q - among
Even with this orthography we needed to have some double letter combinations because there are more consonant sounds in English than there are letters. Also, this is even oversimplified there are multiple R sounds in English (some that use the tip of the tongue others use the back of the tongue and palate/uvula area) the same with the L sound. Also, like I said, English has 14+ distinct vowel sounds but some are similar enough (like the o in does and function) that the distinction only exists for ease of pronunciation due to the accenting or surrounding consonant characters. If we combine these very similar vowel sounds we are left with 12 basic distinct vowel sounds (including a few diphthongs).
So what would phonetic English look like?
It wood look sumthiq layk dhis. Ay don't thiqk it looks very nays tuu bee anest, but hey, aet leest it's fonetik aend ey lat uv dhu werdz didn't eeven ceynj. Dhu best thiq ubaewt it iz wee kaen stil yuuz dhu Laetin keebord! So, no need to reepleys al uv aewr teknalogy.
So, nekst taym sumwun seyz it's speld haew it saewnds cal dhem aewt for beeiq dhu filthy layr dhat dhey ar.
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