THE PROPOSED NEW ENGLISH SPELLING SYSTEM USING 36 CHARACTERS - to be known as the 'kalfabet'

Apart from idioms, prepositions and the foreigner-unfriendly, dreaded phrasal verbs, the spoken English language is relatively easy to learn as it is free from genders and cases, which are apparent in most European languages; however, English remains a major problem in the written form. How can one possibly justify the different vowel and 'gh' sounds of 'ough' to any foreigner: bough, cough, rough, though, through? We can't. Look at the four ways we use the 'k' sound: 'kangaroo','quiet','choir' and 'cattle'. Do we really need to uphold such a crazy system?

Dyslexia is very evident in Britain - moreso than in any other European country. Is this really surprising when we look at our present system? Believe it or not, there are dyslexic teachers of English! So as we enter the third millennium with the increasing globalisation of the English language, it is urgent that a new system be introduced now rather than later. This system should essentially be easy for British children and at the same time, European-friendly without creating any new characters. Ideally it should be kept as British as possible because the introduction of accents, for example, would invite a barrage of complaints by the purists and traditionalists alike.

We must first answer the question: which is more important, the preservation of language derivatives and appeasing the purists, or the facilitation of both the reading and writing of the language for the benefit of British children and foreign English language students alike, not least European international business? Surely there is no hesitation in answering 'the latter'?

The proposed system does not change the basic grammar of the language, well, very little. However, it gives licence to regional accents, which will be able to be expressed in the written form for the first time. Once the basic sounds are learnt, the choice of the spelling will be left to the individual. Let us devise something that will not be American influenced. They took our language, corrupted it - OK, but the problem is that many British are now using the corrupted form. For example: 'I seen……', 'I done……', 'He fell off of……' let alone the use of the short vowels, and the use of adjectives in place of adverbs etc. All this we find both in the spoken word and in school exercise books together with a whole new vocabulary. Another problem has been in the hearing: 'Must have..' has been reduced to the form 'must've', but many people hear this as 'must of……'. There is no possible grammatical case for this usage - it's just crazy and adds to the corruption of the language!

If we show the letter 'i' to Europeans, they will pronounce it 'ee' - the English language is the odd one out. The existing five vowels are known by their long sound - a big mistake and a hindrance in the learning of the language. If we quote the letter 'r', to non-English Europeans, they believe that we are referring to 'a'.

Some of the major problems of our system are (1) doubled letters, which are used to shorten a preceding vowel as in 'sitting' etc. How, for instance, would we differentiate between 'hoping' and 'hopping' you may ask? With this system, that problem disappears - all will become evident as we travel through each character of the new alphabet. (2) silent letters: 'know', 'comb', the 'e' at the end as in 'hate' etc. (3) similar sounding different letters as the 's' sound in 'some' and 'city'. (4) the use of 's' in plurals because the sound is often 'z' (5) the most problematic letters of C,H,J,Q, W,X and Y, used differently throughout Europe need rethinking because most are superfluous because of duplication and could therefore be utilised to form other sounds.

It is essential that the new system be free from numerous rules and their exceptions and sometimes exceptions to the exceptions, such as 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' but then we have to learn the list of some twelve exceptions such as 'foreign' etc. The new form should provide characters that are not dependent on any others.

We are faced with the problem of how to effect a change to a new system. It, must of course, start in the schools and an immediate change-over for all those under 11 years of age is recommended. After that it will be a question of priorities and the desire to accept the new form but essentially the British and European parliaments should have a working knowledge of the system as soon as is possible. Competitions in the press and on TV would encourage the general public to make an effort to learn it. Eventually, newspapers and magazines will have to convert, even if it means a dual system for a while; word games such as 'Scrabble' will need to be revised - all pointing to a positive side to all this - it will create many new jobs! I understand that such a new system could present limitless problems in the legal profession where the existin system will have to remain for a long time.

The way we pronounce our alphabet is nothing short of absurdity. In reality, the word 'alphabet' is incorrect because the Greek letter we call 'beta' is in fact a 'v' sound and 'delta' is not a 'd' but the hard 'th' sound which you will later see as a new English character 'dh'. I was recently asked to help an illiterate 15-year-old to read. He religiously learnt his alphabet but found it quite impossible when trying to apply it. The simple word 'bad' he pronounced as 'beeaydee' - quite understandable. ('Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' etc. - this very youth sincerely believed that Bill Clinton was the president of the world!) With the introduction of this new alphabet, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that it will considerably reduce the amount of illiteracy. No longer would one hear at one's place of work, 'Heh, Jane, how do you spell…………?'.

In constructing the new alphabet, we must take into consideration the sound at the end of 'mother' and 'father' - a common sound which, although found in the phonetic alphabet which would not be at all practical to use as an alternative system because of its complexity and computer-unfriendly symbols and too difficult for the majority of young children to comprehend. In Slavic languages, no vowel is shown between two adjoining consonants but the 'uh'/'er' sound is inserted when speaking. Let's take, for example, the Slovenian airport 'Brnik' which is pronounced 'Berneek' with a strongly rolled 'r'. We can see under 'a' that the new spelling of 'apple' does not include a second vowel but the pronunciation remains the same without inserting a vowel between the 'p' and 'l'.