Phase 1: Letters & Stress

• add stress diacritic

• retaining spelling system

• changing digraphs for new monographs

Phase 1 combines Steps 1 & 2: Mark stress, and Letter conversion.

Phase 1 transition should be easily readable by anyone who spends a few hours familiarising themselves with the substitutions. The new letters are easily writable by just paying attention to the pronunciation of the current digraphs and mentally double-checking for the pronunciation patterns of any obviously-related words.

Step 1: Mark stress

Marking stress is simple and easy, as this is a feature in a lot of languages: á.

In handwriting, this is extremely simple. The angle must be enforced because a future phase (Layer 5) will introduce 3 other diacritic marks which have the potential to look similar: á à ā ȧ.

In typing, a key can be repurposed for the stress diacritic, or

Stress only needs to be marked on words with multiple syllables.

Layer 5 introduces diacritics for vowels. If a vowel has a diacritic, it is assumed to take stress. If that vowel is the stressed syllable, no stress diacritic is required. If the stressed syllable is elsewhere, the correct vowel requires a stress diacritic.

Examples

Step 2: Letter conversion

In the letter conversion transition layer, all standard digraphs are replaced with monographs, primarily new letters.

Limitations

To ease transition within the current generation of people and technology, all new letters must exist within Unicode and have an upper and a lower case glyph available. Preferably the cases are linked in their Unicode definitions, but sometimes that is not possible (Ʞ and ʞ are appear to not be connected correctly in the Unicode definition, and most apps also have not made the connection).

Letters

The current English digraphs are:

H-series: ch gh ph sh th th wh

Other: ck

Qu is not a digraph. The q represents a /k/ (a pharyngeal allophone) before a /w/, a non-syllabic allophone of u.

Vowels: ae a_e ai au aw ay / ea ee e_e ei ew ey / ie i_e / oa oe o_e oi oo ou ow oy / ue u_e ui uy

Consonant digraphs can be replaced easily; vowel digraphs are dramatically messier.

Consonants

• ch → ч — /ʧ/ in English and /ʃ/ in French words

• ch → ʞ — /k/ in Greek words and /ʃ/ in Greek words via French

• gh → ȝ — /ɣ~ɸ~f~(x)/ and silence (modern phonology)

• ph → φ — /f/ in Greek words

• sh → ʃ — /ʃ/ in English words

• th → þ — /θ/ in English and Greek words

• th → ð — /ð/ in English and Greek words

• wh → ƕ — /ʰw~ʍ/ in English words (probably P/Q Celt division)

Vowels

The only vowels being replaced at this stage are the four true digraphs:

• ae → æ — /e/ in Latin & Greek words, maybe also Old English

• oe → œ — /y/ in Latin & Greek words

• oo → ꝏ — /uw/ and /ɵ~ʊ/ in English words

• ou → ȣ — /uw/ and /ɵ~ʊ/ in English etc words