A blog about rook script, an alternative writing system for English
by Reductive Group
Rook script was designed to fit as well as possible to English. Unfortunately, not everyone speaks the same English. My dream for rook script is a proliferation of standards, people spelling words according to the entity they are representing. In most contexts people will represent themselves and can choose to spell words to fit their own intended tone and style. This page outlines some strategies for choosing spellings based on pronunciations differing across a few major faultlines in North American English.
My English is from the United States. Most importantly, that means I pronounce my /ɹ/s and flap my /t/s. If you pronounce “ska” and “scar” as homophones, then rook script may not have enough vowels for your phonetic needs. And if you pronounce the /t/s similarly in the words “beetle” and “detail”, you might find syllable boundaries arbitrary and difficult to remember. In either case I don’t want to advise you not to learn rook script, but I don’t know what to recommend to fit rook script as tightly to your language as to mine. Maybe adapting into something other than a syllabic alphabet is a plausible approach.
Below are a few non-universal features of North American English and some recommendations for editing rook script spellings to adapt to them if necessary.
I have a very complete cot-caught merger, meaning I pronounce the words “cot|kaat” and “caught|kaat” identically. To represent the vowel sound in “cot” distinctly from that in “caught”, at least one additional vowel is necessary. To help with this, I have designed a letter “o”, not used in official rook script, which looks like “ou” with one fewer stroke. See the bottom of the page on the alphabet for the design.
For most people who pronounce the words differently, the “caught” vowel is typically /ɔ/, while the “cot” vowel is typically /ɑ/. It is thus recommended to use “o” for “caught|*kot” and “aa” for “cot|kaat”. There is some inconsistency between speakers in which other words have the “caught” vowel, with some people even using it far more frequently than the “cot” vowel.
I have written about the approach rook script takes to the single phonemic weak vowel in my English. If you do not have weak vowel merger, it should be easy enough to always use the most appopriate letter, between “i” and “ə”, for the appropriate unstressed vowel sounds. One thing to be aware of is that they may not line up with traditional spellings in any case—probably not all words traditionally spelled with “i” or “e” have a /ɪ/ sound truly distinct from /ə/.
Another pitfall to be aware of is that using “ə” in syllables with codas makes it more difficult to find stress when reading. One option may be to use both “i” and “ə’ in unstressed syllables without codas and always use “i’ in unstressed syllables with codas.
Some people, especially outside of North America, pronounce the three words Mary, merry, and marry in three distinct ways: Mary with something like a long a, /eɹ/ or /eəɹ/; merry with a short e, /ɛɹ/; and marry with a short a, /æɹ/. I pronounce all three the same—with /eɹ/—and the official rook script spelling of all three words is “meir·ii”.
While I have heard people pronounce words like “merry” with a central vowel /ɜɹ/, I have not heard a distinct short e and long a before r in North America. If you are the person who does that, you may choose to spell “merry” and words like it (“terrible”, “very”, etc.) with “er”. If you use /ɜɹ/, you may prefer “ər”.
What is more common, especially in the northeastern US, is pronouncing “Mary” and “merry” the same, but pronouncing “marry” differently. If you do this, you may want to spell words like “marry”, “barrel”, and “narrative” with “ar”.
This was the most frustrating merger to consider for the dictionary. In my own voice the merger is very nearly complete, but not entirely, so I feel rook script official spellings should continue to allow “uur” to appear. However, I find the /ʊɹ/ sound somewhat difficult to pronounce. Words with a historical /ʊɹ/ sound are spelled a few different ways in rook script.
Most frequently, they have evolved into /ɜɹ/, as in words like “sure|shər”, “endure|en·dər”, “mature|mə·chər”, “pure| and “juror|jər·ər”, and “neuron|nər·aan”. If you lack the poor-pour merger, then you might want to spell these words with “uur”. More likely, in your dialect they may have evolved into /ɔɹ/ instead of /ɜɹ/—in that case you may prefer “our”, at least for some of them. In my own dialect this is pretty rare, with “poor|pour” the only example I can think of.
However, I maintain several words that seem best described by the “uur” spelling. Some, like “pure|pyuur”, I usually pronounce with /jɜɹ/, but not consistently. You may prefer “yər” or “yor” in these cases if you are more consistent about either than me. The rest I struggle with every time I have to say them. Words like “tourism|tuur·iz·əm”, “masseur|mə·suur”, “entrepreneur|aan·trə·prə·nuur”, and “Coors|kuurs” may come out of my mouth with any of /ʊɹ/, /ɔɹ/, /ɜɹ/, or even /u.ɜɹ/. If you are more consistent in one of these alternate spellings (i.e. if your poor-pour merger is more complete than mine) then pick the most appropriate.
I pronounce “pen|pen” and “pin|pin” distinctly, and their official rook spellings are different to reflect that. However a common feature of southern accents is to merge the two. To my ear the merged sound typically sounds closer to “in” (though it is a diphthong, the same is true of my pronunciation of /æn/). If you have pen-pin merger, you may wish to avoid the “en” spelling altogether and always use “in”.
Many words historically pronounced with a short o followed by r, /ɒɹ/, at some point became rhotic and split somewhat unpredictably between /ɑɹ/ and /ɔɹ/. In modern North American pronunciation they form two main sets.
One set has a clean division line at the Canadian border, with most Canadians choosing /ɔɹ/ or something like it for words like “tomorrow”, “sorry”, and “borrow”, while most Americans (including me) use /ɑɹ/. If you use the Canadian pronunciation you may prefer “our” over the official rook spelling “aar”.
The other set consists of those words that I pronounce with /ɔɹ/, with some people in the northeastern US often preferring /ɑɹ/. These include words like “orange|our·ənj”, “foreign|four·ən”, “authority|ə·thour·it·ii”, and “horrible|hour·ə·bəl”, which each may be spelled with “aar” if you prefer.
One note about the word “orange” is that although I and many others usually pronounce it as one syllable, “*ournj”, I don’t recommend spelling it that way in formal contexts.
Most differences between my and typical Canadian pronunciation are not phonemic (see “about”). However, in addition to the “borrow”-type words mentioned above, there are several other words Canadians typically pronounce differently at a phoneme level, following a few themes.
Canadians use /æ/ rather than /ɑ/ for borrowings spelled with a. See words like “llama|laam·ə”, “pasta|paast·ə“, “drama|draam·ə”, etc. Canadians will likely want to use “a” rather than “aa” for these.
Canadians often pronounce French-borrowed words more like French. These include “niche|nich”, “clique|klik”, and “foyer|foi·ər”. Canadians (and others, to be honest) may prefer “*niish”, “*kliik”, and “*foi·ei” or even “*fwaa·yei”.
And finally, there are subtle differences in some prefixes and suffixes. See words like “resource|rii·sours”, “process (noun)|praa·ses”, and “produce (noun)|prou·duus”. Canadians may opt for “*rii·zours”, “*prou·ses”, and “*praa·duus”.
Every spelling in the rook script dictionary is based on a favored, primary pronunciation. This involved decisions about words I may pronounce differently in different situations—words like “data|deit·ə”, “economical|iik·ə·naam·ik·əl”, “feral|fiir·əl”, and “either|iidh·ər” as opposed to “*dat·ə”, “*ek·ə·naam·ik·əl”, “*feir·əl”, and “*aidh·ər”. There are also regional variations: “caramel|kaar·məl” vs “*keir·ə·mel“, “aunt|ant” vs “*aant”, “bury|beir·ii” vs “*bər·ii”, “creek|kriik” vs “*krik”, etc. If a word looks wrong, you probably just don’t vibe with a particular pronunciation, whether for personal or regional reasons. For your personal use, feel free to choose a different spelling based on how you think a word should be pronounced.
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