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« Previous PageNēū Ēnglish (The Definitive Edition)
This one is the only good one. All the other versions are obsolete.
Stephanie M. Dare
Please note: Our (as of 2024-09-03 at some undefined hour) current branch of American English will be used to write this document unless otherwise stated. Read “en-nu.7z/Real World Application.odt”[page 3] for a full document written in Nēū Ēnglish. You probably should read this document first, though, so that you actually understand what is written.
Additionally: This proposal is mainly tasked with lining up written English with its phonetic counterpart. All English pronunciations written here should be assumed to be from American English.
As us English speakers know all too well, the current English language may very well be one of, if not the worst language in the Latin series, possibly even worse than French. This proposal aims to hopefully change that, and maybe make, at the bare minimum, written English, bearable.
Let’s start with lining up the alphabet for our personal firing squad:
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
The most obvious things to do here are to remove the letters C, Q, and X. This is simply because the phonetic sounds they make are all covered by other, more useful letters, see:
- C – K and S
- Q – Kw
- X – Z and Ks
This poses an immediate problem, however. The “ch” sound is obviously now impossible without the letter C. Nēū Ēnglish, however, is not opposed to adding new letters to the language. The new letter in question will be the eth (Nēū Ēnglish “eþ”, Ðð). This letter was previously used as a softer “th” compared to the thorn (Nēū Ēnglish “þorn”, Þþ, will be later discussed), however it will now be used to replace the “ch” sound. A word demonstrating this change would be:
- chin → ðin
As defined earlier, the thorn will retain its original function of replacing the “th” sound (both of them, unlike Ænglisċ), just for the funsies. Affected words include:
- thorn → þorn
- ethel → eþel
One of the most differentiating things between English and most other Latin languages is the lack of diacritical marks. Unlike the lack of gendered language and (in most cases) conjugation, this works to the language’s detriment. There are two diacritical marks that are being added to the language.
The first diacritical added will be the macron (Nēū Ēnglish “mākron”, ◌̄). It will serve the same function that “silent E” currently does. For example:
- cheese → ðēsë
- rain → rān
- wide → wīd
Keep in mind however that since it is extremely convoluted (or even outright unsupported on some platforms) to insert macrons on arbitrary characters on digital platforms (via UTF-16 character 0x0304 – combining macron), my proposal only supports diacritics on vowels, in an attempt to be more cross-platform1.
The second diacritical added will be the diaeresis (Nēū Ēnglish “dīeresis”, ◌̈), and it will be used for silent letters, used either for decoration or standing in as a consonant’s macron, of which a table of usage will be provided in the “Consonants Table.odt”[page 2] document in the archive. Usage includes:
- cheese → ðēsë
- teenager → tënājër
- trebuchet → trebuðāë
Like the macron, the diaeresis (per this specification) can only be placed on vowels.
As you saw, even though the first E in “tënājër” should use a macron, because it serves the purpose of giving the T a voice, the diaeresis takes precedence.
Part of this proposition is all about spelling things phonetically. That means more than diacritics and alphabet modifications. Generally, just spell the word you want by how it sounds to you, and you will almost always be correctly spelling it. Take:
- complete → kūmplēt
- signal → signlë
A good way to think about this is: If a toddler wouldn’t spell it like that, Nēū Ēnglish probably doesn’t, either.
While the letters that haven’t been removed from Nēū Ēnglish have been retained for a reason, some of their purposes are redundant, and should therefore be reduced for simplicity’s sake.
For example, the letter G can also make the sound of a J. Since J is still in Nēū Ēnglish, it does not need to serve this extra purpose. Therefore spelling for words using G as J should be changed like this:
- angel → ānjlë
- gelatin → jelatin
Likewise, the letter Y as a vowel should not exist, as in most cases it is covered by the letter I or E. Examples include:
- sky → skī
- why → wīë
- hymn → him
- capacity → kapasitē
When writing words from other languages, the rules of that language apply, instead of Nēū Ēnglish’s. Similarly, written names actually do not have a defined rule set. They can be written in Nēū Ēnglish if intended for it, otherwise they can be spelled as you please. I’m sure this will absolutely not result in any Catahstrohphieas whatsoever. Examples of both include
- Latin reginae –x→ reginī
- Name Aphrodite --?→ Afrōdītē (if you are so inclined, but generally, don’t. I do not like it.)
The different versions of English need to be descriptively renamed. What we think of as Old English now could be what our current English is thought of as in the future. Therefore, they should all be renamed. Old English should be referred to as Anglo-Saxonic Ēnglish, or simply Ænglisċ, as the Anglo-Saxons were the main speakers of Ænglisċ.
Midlë Ēnglish could probably get away with staying as-is, since it was developed about halfway through the Middle Ages.
Our current brand(s) of English could be renamed to Flatenëd Ēnglish, since many things that were present in previous revisions were either reduced or outright exterminated from the language, such as the thorn in everyday use.
As for this proposal, Nēū Ēnglish, I’d pick the future-proofed name of Dīacriticlë Ēnglish, since I believe that the addition of diacritical marks to the language was my most important one.
It should be noted that this document is absolutely not final, and very well may never be, as this language feels like it has seemingly infinite problems. Therefore, expect this document to change at any given moment.
Speaking of problems, let’s address some of the shortcomings of this current proposal as it stands:
- Phonetic spelling will inevitably lead to word overlap. Without outright creating new words, there is most likely no satisfying way to fix this.
- Silent consonants exist, and due to the restrictions of digital (mainly mobile) keyboards, diacritics like the diaeresis can (for the most part) only exist on vowels. Therefore, there is no way to effectively create distinguishable silent consonants (and this is part of how word overlap became a problem)
- This language, thanks to all these rules, is very slow to write, and it is very easy to make tiny and simple mistakes due to how many there are and how slow it is to write.