[Traditional English spelling] was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain. (Ha, ha! I shall spell ‘could’ with an ell! They will be powerless to stop me!)
David J Peterson, The Art of Language Invention
Penguin Books, 2015
(In Ñspel “could” is spelt cd. Because that’s how it śd!)
• • •
Ñspel (pronounced “Ingspell”) is a new way of spelling English I’ve devised, with a view to being as unmisanthropic and unmegalomaniacal* as possible. Apart from being much more phonetic and regular than traditional spelling, its main features are:
- Brevity – Ñspel is approximately 20% shorter than traditional spelling.
- Accents.
- Short forms for common words and for some prefixes and suffixes.
- Harmonisation between American and British pronunciations, in that Ñspel follows whichever produces the clearer or simpler spelling in any particular instance.
BASH for short.
Frank Johnson
1 January 2017
• • •
* In particular, I’m not so megalomaniacal as to think that Ñspel is about to take the anglophone world by storm, or even by gentle breeze; but I hope you’ll find it – particularly as presented in Classics in Ñspel and Articles from the Guardian – an interesting new way of looking at the English language, and a not unwelcome addition to life’s rich tapestry.
PS: Lamentably, Ñspel has no connection whatsoever to Unwinese.
EXAMPLESALPHABETCONSONANTSVOWELSPREFIXESSUFFIXESSHORT FORMSVERBAL CONTRACTIONSCOMPOUND WORDSHOMOGRAPHSHOMOPHONESFOREIGN WORDSGLOSSARY