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Friday, December 22, 2006

Yntrodxkshxn tu Nuspelynh

No, that's not a quote from Cult Cthulhu. It reads 'Introduction to New Spelling' and the line between genius parody and stupidity is so blurred on this one, I'm not going to hazard a guess as to whether it's exclusively one or the other...

In Nuspelynh, each vowel has one sound. The letters c, q, and x are no longer needed as consonants, so we recycle them into vowels. c has the sound of short a, so it may be helpful to see the c as an a without a stem. q has the sound of short oo, so it may be helpful to see the q as a modified o. x has the sound of short u, so it may be useful to see the top half of the x as a very short u. The vowels a, e, i, o, and u have sounds like in other languages, including Spanish, Hawaiian, and Japanese.

The c is a vowel with the sound of short a except when it is followed by an h. The y is a vowel with the sound of short i except when it is followed by a vowel.

Thus, in Nuspelynh, 'book' becomes bqk. 'Casual' becomes kczhuxl. And 'undoubtedly' becomes the amazing xndcutydli. I mean, now that I see it in action, this all makes sense! Too bad there isn't another unnecessary letter in the English language: nuspelynh doesn't appear to have a hard 'a' sound. Maybe it should use an emoticon of a smiley face screaming or something.

Look, at the risk of seeming foolish if Nuspelynh is a parody, let me point this out: spelling reform that bases proper spelling upon pronunciation is an idea that is inherently flawed because people pronounce words differently. For example, Nuspelynh's founder spells father fadhxr... or as a homonym for "foddar." But I pronounce it with a clear theta sound, because I'm not fucking Fran Dreischer.

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