á rə̀t ðis pə̀st tù əksplén má sistəm fə rátiŋ iŋgliʃ yùziŋ ə fənemik (ofən kōld fənetik) skript. dí igzakt fōm əv ðə sistəm həz dəveləpt ən cénjd ə̀ve mʌltəpəl yīz, bət it həz ōlwéz bín ə komprəmáz bətwín ðə simbəlz yùzd tə rát fənemik ingliʃ in ðí əfiʃəl intənaʃənəl fənetik alfəbet (/IPA/), ən ðə simbəlz yùzd kənvencnəlí in standəd ingliʃ speliŋ. má mʌðə tʌŋ iz nonrə̀tik britiʃ ingliʃ frəm ístən iŋglənd (kémbrijʃī), sə̀ ðə sistəm əz á yùz it wə̄ks best fə ðis dáəlekt əv ingliʃ
I wrote this post to explain my system for writing English using a phonemic (often called phonetic) script. The exact form of the system has developed and changed over multiple years, but it has always been a compromise between the symbols used to write phonemic English in the official International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and the symbols used conventionally in standard English spelling. My mother tongue is non-rhotic British English from eastern England (Cambridgeshire), so the system as I use it works best for this dialect of English.
This is the alphabet extended to include extra letters and diacritics needed to write in this system:
a ā á à b c d ð e ē é ə ə̄ ə̀ f g h i ī í j k l m n ŋ o ō ó ò p r s ʃ t θ u ū ù ʌ v w y z ʒ
English spelling is known for being difficult and taking a long time to learn both for native speaker children and non-native adult learners. This is mostly because there is a many-to-many mapping between symbols (letters) and sounds (phonemes). In English, if you come across a new word you don’t reliably know how it should be pronounced. For example should the made-up word ‘tead’ be pronounced to rhyme with ‘mead’ or with ‘head’? In the other direction, if you hear a new word, you can’t necessarily tell how it is spelled. For example should the made-up word pronounced /dait/ (rhymes with ‘write’) be spelled ‘dite’, ‘dyte’, or ‘dight’?
If you grew up only speaking English, it’s not obvious that spelling doesn’t have to be so complicated. English spelling is actually uncommonly complex, and has inspired a long tradition of people trying to ‘fix’ the problem – it’s even got its own wikipedia page. Many languages have a much more straightforward mapping between letters and phonemes. Spanish and Polish are examples of languages with high degrees of correspondence between letters and phonemes. See here for a longer list of languages and more detail.
I use this system for almost all of my handwritten text (mostly to-do lists and journaling), and increasingly for my typed text. The reasons I like using this system:
Other reasons why you might like this system:
My main criteria for this spelling system were:
Here I’ll go through the phonemes of English group by group to slowly build up from more familiar to less familiar symbols.
p, t, k, b, d, g, a, i, u, e, o
five short vowels:
stop consonants:
ʌ, m, n, ŋ
short vowel: ʌ, as in:
nasals:
r, l, y, w
ə
The schwa: ə, this vowel is found all over English in unstressed syllables, it’s sort of a nothing placeholder vowel.
indefinite article:
syllabic nasals and liquids:
unstressed syllable nucleus:
ā, ī, ū, ē, ō, ə̄
These are the lengthened versions of the 5 ‘cardinal’ short vowels we encountered in Step 1, plus a lengthened version of the schwa vowel. I chose to use the macron diacritic to indicate the long vowels.
f, v, s, z, h
í, é, á, ó
There are four diphthongs ending with the /i/ sound, see English after RP for an explanation of why the long í vowel is included here. I write these front-closing diphthongs using an acute accent.
c, j
c is mostly ‘ch’ in Standard English spelling
j is mostly ‘j’ in Standard English spelling
affricates:
ù, ə̀, à, ò
there are four diphthongs ending with the /u/ sound, see the book English after RP for an explanation of why the long ù vowel is included here. I write these back-closing diphthongs using a grave accent.
θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ
θ and ð are mostly ‘th’ in Standard English spelling, but they’re actually two separate phonemes
ʃ is mostly ‘sh’ in Standard English spelling
ʒ has no particular consistent spelling
fricatives:
éə, áə, óə, ùə, àə, ə̀ə
I write the ‘triphthongs’ using the relevant diphthong symbol plus the schwa.
A single word can sometimes have multiple parts (morphemes), for example, the word ‘walked’ is made up of two morphemes, the ‘walk’ part which gives the core meaning, and the ‘-ed’ part which gives the past tense.
Sometimes a morpheme can have different pronunciations depending on the word to which it is attached. These different pronunciations are called ‘allomorphs’. In Standard English spelling, they are usually spelled the same way, but in my spelling system they’re written as they sound, and therefore have different spellings. This is how most languages with phonemic writing systems represent allomorphs.
Below, I’ve laid out some of the most common allomorphs in English.
1) The ‘-ed’ past tense morpheme has three allomorphs depending on the final sound of the word to which it is attached:
2) the ‘-s’ plural morpheme has three allomorphs:
3) the ‘-‘s’ genitive morpheme, follows exactly the same pattern as the plural morpheme
4) the definite article “the” has two allomorphs:
5) the indefinite article “a/an” has two allomorphs, which are actually already visible in Standard English spelling:
Coming soon.
Coming soon.
Writing the vowels is quite different to standard English spelling. This is because there is an extremely poor mapping between vowel phonemes and the letters used to spell them: there are so many different options to represent a given vowel phoneme, often using digraphs, patterns split out into different parts of the word, patterns which combine with consonant letters, etc. There are also only five ‘vowel’ symbols in English spelling, while there are ~13 pure vowel phonemes and ~8 diphthongs.
I indicate long vowels using a macron diacritic. This is used in other transcription systems to indicate long vowels, although not in the IPA.
I write diphthongs using diacritics with the acute accent representing a front-closing diphthong (ending in /i/) and the grave accent representing a back-closing diphthong (ending in /u/). So when reading a diphthong, the initial vowel quality is shown in the letter, and the ending vowel quality is shown by the direction of the diacritic.
I find using diacritics for the diphthongs and the long vowels makes the words easier to parse when reading and quicker to write (especially by hand) as there are fewer full characters, but the vowel qualities are all still clearly visible.
I also really like that this is a featural aspect of this writing system – syllable nucleus weight is visible from the presence or absence of a diacritic, long monophthongs are visible from a flat diacritic, and diphthongs are visible from an angled diacritic.
The following examples shows how the feature of syllable nucleus weight is visible:
| mostly light syllables | mostly heavy syllables |
|---|---|
| ðə fantastik projekt prəzentid ə difikəlt probləm | dí əméziŋ báə̀dávēsətí əv ðə kə̀stlán iz nə̀twə̄ðí |
| (the fantastic project presented a difficult problem) | (the amazing biodiversity of the coastline is noteworthy) |
The table below lays the diacritic pattern out more clearly with separate columns for each of short vowels, long vowels, front-closing diphthongs, and back-closing diphthongs. The rows are for the initial vowel quality:
| short | long | front-closing | back-closing |
|---|---|---|---|
| a had |
ā lard |
á buy |
à cow |
| o odd |
ō lore |
ó boy |
ò coal |
| e head |
ē lair |
é bay |
|
| i hid |
ī leer |
í bee |
|
| ə uhuh |
ə̄ lurk |
ə̀ cone |
|
| u hood |
ū lure |
ù coo |
|
| ʌ bud |
Geoffrey Alan Lindsey (2019). English after RP: standard British pronunciation today. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wikipedia. (2020). Phonemic orthography. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography
Wikipedia. (2020). English-language spelling reform. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform
Wikipedia. (2022). English orthography. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography
Wikipedia. (2025). Stress and vowel reduction in English. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_and_vowel_reduction_in_English#Weak_and_strong_forms_of_words