Many spelling reforms have been proposed over the centuries, from Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet (1768) to the Shavian alphabet (48 new characters) to Cut Spelling (removing silent letters). Noah Webster succeeded in simplifying American spelling (color, center, dialog), but most reforms fail because they're either too radical to read or too conservative to help.
Ingglish takes a practical middle path: it uses the familiar Latin alphabet with a one-to-one mapping between sounds and spellings. Each letter or letter combination always makes the same sound. You can read any word aloud correctly without memorization, start reading immediately without learning a new alphabet, and type on any standard keyboard without diacritics or special characters.
Key Principles
- No silent letters - every letter contributes to the pronunciation
- Consistent spelling - same sound = same spelling, always
- Readable aloud - anyone can pronounce unfamiliar words correctly
- Standardized - pronunciations from linguistic research
Vowels
Short Vowels
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| æ | a | bad (bad), laugh (laf), salmon (saman), plaid (plad) |
| ɛ | e | get (get), said (sed), any (enee), friend (frend), head (hed) |
| ɪ | i | pretty (pritee), bit (bit), busy (bizee), system (sistam), build (bild) |
| ɑ | o | watch (woch), hot (hot) |
| ʊ | u | could (kud), put (put), book (buk), wolf (wulf) |
| ɔ | aw | because (bikawz), thought (thawt), walk (wawk), dog (dawg), daughter (dawter), law (law) |
| ʌ | uh | but (buht), love (luhv), young (yuhng), blood (bluhd) |
| ə | a | about (about), family (famalee), open (ohpan), until (antil), second (sekand), certain (sertan), nervous (nervas) |
Long Vowels & Diphthongs
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| i | ee | me (mee), see (see), mean (meen), people (peepal), believe (bileev), happy (hapee), key (kee), ceiling (seeling), ski (skee) |
| u | oo | you (yoo), do (doo), too (too), new (noo), through (throo), truth (trooth), blue (bloo), shoe (shoo), fruit (froot), neutral (nootral) |
| eɪ | ay | they (dhay), take (tayk), wait (wayt), great (grayt), day (day), straight (strayt), eight (ayt) |
| aɪ | ai | my (mai), life (laif), die (dai), high (hai), buy (bai), bye (bai), guide (gaid), bonsai (bonsai) |
| ɔɪ | oi | boy (boi), point (point) |
| oʊ | oh | go (goh), oh (oh), show (shoh), goes (gohz), boat (boht), nose (nohz), dough (doh), sew (soh), plateau (platoh) |
| aʊ | ou | out (out), now (nou), plough (plou) |
R-Colored Vowels
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| æɹ | arr | arrow (arroh) |
| ɛɹ | air | there (dhair), their (dhair), care (kair), air (air), wear (wair), terrible (tairabal) |
| ɪɹ | eer | here (heer), year (yeer), weird (weerd), beer (beer), beard (beerd), pier (peer) |
| ɑɹ | ar | car (kar), heart (hart), guard (gard) |
| ɔɹ | or | for (for), more (mor), course (kors), door (dor), war (wor), board (bord) |
| ɝ | er | her (her), sir (ser), heard (herd), turn (tern), doctor (dokter), bird (berd), popular (popyaler) |
Consonants
Stops
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| p | p | happy (hapee), pat (pat) |
| b | b | rabbit (rabat), bat (bat) |
| t | t | better (beter), top (top), doubt (dout), walked (wawkt) |
| d | d | bed (bed), daddy (dadee), played (playd) |
| k | k | back (bak), school (skool), king (king), cat (kat), unique (yooneek), occur (aker) |
| ɡ | g | big (big), guess (ges), bigger (biger), ghost (gohst) |
Fricatives
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| f | f | off (awf), phone (fohn), fat (fat), laugh (laf) |
| v | v | van (van) |
| θ | th | think (thingk) |
| ð | dh | the (dha) |
| s | s | miss (mis), same (saym), city (sitee), scene (seen) |
| z | z | is (iz), buzz (buhz), zoo (zoo) |
| ʃ | sh | she (shee), special (speshal), attention (atenshan), mission (mishan), sugar (shuger), ocean (ohshan) |
| ʒ | zh | vision (vizhan), measure (mezher), beige (bayzh) |
| h | h | have (hav), who (hoo) |
Affricates
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| tʃ | ch | much (muhch), watch (woch), question (kweschan), nature (naycher) |
| dʒ | j | just (juhst), agent (ayjant), edge (ej), adjust (ajuhst) |
Nasals
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| m | m | man (man), damn (dam), summer (suhmer), bomb (bom) |
| n | n | dinner (diner), knife (naif), pen (pen), gnat (nat) |
| ŋ | ng | think (thingk), thing (thing) |
Liquids & Glides
| IPA | Ingglish | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| l | l | well (wel), let (let), walk (wawk) |
| ɹ | r | right (rait), wrong (rawng), carry (karree), rhyme (raim) |
| w | w | what (wuht), one (wuhn), wet (wet), language (langgwaj) |
| j | y | yes (yes), million (milyan), cute (kyoot) |
Unused Letters
These English letters are not used in Ingglish because they are redundant - their sounds are already covered by other letters:
| Letter | Replaced By | Example |
|---|---|---|
| c | k or s | cat → kat, city → siti |
| q | k or kw | queen → kween |
| x | ks or z | box → boks, xylophone → zailufohn |
Special Cases
Beyond basic phonemic translation, Ingglish handles several edge cases:
Contractions
Contractions like "don't", "I'm", and "we'll" are translated as complete units using their dictionary pronunciations. The apostrophe is dropped since Ingglish spelling is unambiguous: don't → dohnt, I'm → iem, we'll → weel. This ensures contractions round-trip correctly between English and Ingglish.
Case Preservation
Capitalization patterns are preserved during translation. ALL CAPS stays all caps, Title Case stays title case, and lowercase stays lowercase. For mixed case like "GitHub", the exact pattern is preserved position-by-position. The pronoun "I" becomes lowercase "ai" since the capitalization is just an English convention, not phonemic.
Initialisms
Initialisms like UI, API, and URL are translated by taking the first letter of each translated expansion word. For example, UI (User Interface) becomes YI because "user" translates to "yoozer" (Y) and "interface" translates to "interfays" (I). This preserves the initialism format while using Ingglish spellings. Common initialisms stay all caps: UI → YI, API → API, URL → YRL.
Unknown Words
Words not in the dictionary (like tech terms, brand names, or neologisms) are handled through multiple fallback strategies: compound word splitting (GitHub → Git + Hub), known suffixes and prefixes (-tion, -ing, un-, re-), and rule-based grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. This ensures even invented words get reasonable phonemic spellings.
Reverse Translation
Ingglish can be translated back to English. The system matches phonemic spellings against the dictionary to find the original words. For homophones like "too", "to", and "two" (all spelled "too" in Ingglish), the most common word is chosen based on frequency data. Case patterns are preserved during reverse translation.
R-Colored Vowels
When certain vowels are followed by R, they combine into special r-colored sounds. See the R-Colored Vowels table in the Vowels section above for the complete list of mappings.
Hyphen Separator
When two adjacent sounds would produce three or more of the same letter in a row, a hyphen is inserted to keep the spelling readable. For example, "acquiesce" has an "ee" sound followed by a short "e" sound — without a separator that would be "akweees", so Ingglish writes "akwee-es" instead. This also occurs in foreign language translations and spelled-out initialisms (e.g. HTML → aychtee-emel).