English is a powerful language, rich in subtlety and precision. Unfortunately, it’s plagued with inconsistent spelling and pronunciation, and lacks any kind of uniformity. Still, with 500,000 words and another estimated 500,000 technical words, English is about the best language in town for communicating clearly. The Germanic and Romance languages have far less than half the words of English. French has only one-third. Russian one-quarter.

The UES aims to improve English by making it consistent and uniform, in both spelling and pronunciation. Why should some English speakers pronounce the word "three" as free, while others pronounce it thur-ree, and many still tree? The correct pronunciation of the symbols is three. 1 centimeter should always = 1 centimeter. Mangling a word is not regional charm but regional ignorance.

There are many ideas and schemes to improve English. But few attempt to fix all of the major problems. Any reform should tackle the following:

Logical Spelling

  • Eliminate silent letters (Psychology, Knife)
  • Eliminate unnecessary letters (cloCk, morE)
  • Eliminate redundant letters (rudDer)
  • Spell similar sounds consistently (sweet, cheat)

Consistent Pronunciation

  • Both in international speech and in sound rules

Distinguish between Heterophones

  • (read/read, live/live, etc) 

Consistent Grammar and Tense

  • One rule that works for everything (bind/binded instead bind/bound)

No special characters or accents should be required. Characters are a hindrance, the DVORAK keyboard proves humans won’t be changing the typing keys anytime soon. Accents can be confusing.

UE is not complete. There are problems to be overcome, and there are still flaws. But UE makes a serious, progressive effort. We think it’s worth pursuing.

 

Ancient History

English is evolving, but while meanings change and words are added, spelling is often left behind in Medieval times. By the turn of the 17th century the English slowly stopped pronouncing the "k" in words like know, knife, and knee. Previously these were pronounced kah-no, kah-nife, kah-nee. But 400 years later we still spell them with the "k."

So, Low, & Wow.

So and low are pronounced the same, but use different spelling rules. Low and wow are pronounced different, but use the same spelling rules. For consistency, so and low should really be spelled so and lo. The famous old advice to students studying English holds true . . .

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead-
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!

 
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