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NuEnglish spelling rules

NuEnglish will not change how you speak English, only how you spell it. All dialects are represented. Thus "zebra" is "zēbru" in American English and "zebru" in British English.

1. Each letter or combination of letters has only one sound, as follows:

	5 short vowels: use A, E, I, O, and U for the more-often-used sounds, as in “That pet did not run.” 5 long vowels: use macrons [mākronz] (lines over vowels) for the less-often-used sounds, as in “Thā ēt frīd tōfū" ("They eat fried tofu"), or add an E to the vowels (AE, EE, IE, OE, or UE) if macrons are not available, as in “Mae Green tried roe glue”. (Note: "short" and "long" as used here are traditional and popular, but not phonetic, terms.) 4 other vowel sounds: use AU, OO, OI, and OU for the sounds in “Haul good oil out.” 18 consonant sounds represented by a single letter: use the letters that are used most often as in “Yes, Val 'Zip' Kim hid our big fan-jet win.” 6 consonant sounds represented by digraphs (two letters): (1) use TH and TT for the sounds as in "then" and "thin", respectively; (2) use C ONLY in CH as in "chip"; (3) use SH and NG for the sounds in "wishing"; (4) use ZH as in "muzhik" (= a peasant in czarist Russia), for the sound of Z in "azure", of S in "treasure", and of G in "massage". Use Q ONLY as follows: use Q (not QU) for the KW sound as "qit" ("quit"). Use X ONLY as follows: use X for the KS sound of "exit", as in "suxes" ("success") and for CS, which has a KS sound, as in academic subjects: "fizix", "mattumatix", and "ekonomix" ("physics", "mathematics", and "economics"). Use KS instead of X for plurals and possessives ending in K, as in "duks" and "duk's" ("ducks" and "duck's"). There are two "long U" sounds in English, as in "fuel" and "sue". To distinguish them, NuEnglish spelling of the English word "fuel" is "fyūl". This is equivalent to adding the sound of the letter F before the English word "yule". All WH- words with the W- sound are spelled HW- (the actual sound) in NuEnglish.

2. There are no silent letters and no double letters that make a single sound, except OO and TT—and EE if macrons aren't used.

3. All sounds must be shown, except for the NG sound in NK and NX, as in "bank" and "jinx".

4. For consistency, the "-able" and "-ible" suffixes are always written "-ubul" in NuEnglish, as in "kāpubul" and "terubul" ("capable" and "terrible").

5. So that no words seem foreign, all words, including proper names and trademarks such as “Jon” and “Drānō" (“John" and "Drano"), are spelled phonemically.

6. When proper nouns and trademarks are first used, for clarity and legality the traditional spelling will appear between square brackets after the proper noun or trademark, as in " Mattyū [Matthew]" and " Tīlunaul [Tylenol]". The only exceptions are the names of the months and days ("Janyūarē", "Mundā", etc.), and proper nouns used as common nouns, as in "Mok" ("Mach" number).

*7. An apostrophe (), pronounced “star”, immediately precedes a primary stressed vowel(s) or semivowel, as in “qōtāshun”,* *“suround”, “dābyū” (“quotation”, “surround”, “debut”), unless the primary stress is on the first syllable, as in "hapē" ("happy").*

8. Compound words (words composed of 2 or more words) are hyphenated, as in "hot-daug" and "finggur-print" ("hotdog" and "fingerprint"). A prefix is considered a separate word when its meaning is clear and the meaning of the rest of the compound word is clear also, such as “a-“, “anti-“, “dis-”, “non-“, “re-“ and “un-“ in “ā-mōrul”, “antī-statik”, “dis-u-pir”, “non-profit”, “rē-dū” and “un-butun” (“amoral”, “antistatic”, “disappear”, “nonprofit”, “redo” and “unbutton”). This special consideration for prefixes will improve sight understanding, and may not burden a word with more punctuation, as the hyphen may substitute for a star. Care must be taken with “re-": meaning “again”, it is written with a long E and hyphen, as in “rē-dū” (“redo”), whereas with the meaning “back”, it is written with a short E and hyphen, as in “re-mīnd” (“remind”). Chemical names hyphenate all prefixes, such as “polē-tetru-flurō-ettilēn” (“polytetrafluoroethylene”).

9. Use an apostrophe to show contractions, as in "kan't" for "kan not", or possession, as in "Tom'z" ("Tom's").

10. The only deviation from phonemic spelling is for numbers of less than a million. Thus: "U 3-fōld inkrēs", "1 and 1 iz 2", "Sum-1 iz at thu dōr", and "Ī'l bē u-wā fōr 4 dāz". The reasons are because numerals are universally understood, are very compact, and are easily distinguished from "won", "to", "too", "for", "fore", and "ate". Ordinal numbers are written as a numeral plus "tt" or "ett": "4tt", "10tt", "100tt", "20ett", "30ett", excepting "1st", "2nd", and "3rd", and the pronunciation of "5tt" (fiftt). The use of numerals instead of spelling the numbers is optional and should not be used when filling out forms such as bank checks which specify spelling out the numbers, or whenever the number 1 could possibly be confused with the letters I or L, or when the letter O could possibly be confused with zero.