People have proposed many spelling reforms over the centuries: Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet (1768), the Shavian alphabet (48 new characters) and Cut Spelling (which drops silent letters). Noah Webster did simplify American spelling (color, center, dialog), but most reforms fail because they are either too radical to read or too timid to help.
Ingglish takes a practical middle path. It keeps the familiar Latin alphabet and gives each sound exactly one spelling, so a letter or letter group always stands for the same sound. You can read any word aloud correctly without memorizing it, start reading right away without learning new letters, and type on any standard keyboard with no accents or special characters.
Key Principles
- No silent letters: every letter is pronounced.
- Consistent spelling: the same sound is always spelled the same way.
- Readable aloud: anyone can pronounce an unfamiliar word correctly.
- Standardized: pronunciations come 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
Ingglish drops three English letters, because other letters already cover their sounds:
| Letter | Replaced By | Example |
|---|---|---|
| c | k or s | cat → kat, city → sitee |
| q | k or kw | queen → kween |
| x | ks or z | box → boks, xylophone → zailafohn |
Special Cases
Beyond turning sounds into letters, Ingglish handles several special cases:
Contractions
Contractions like "don't", "I'm" and "we'll" are translated as whole words, using their dictionary pronunciations. The apostrophe is dropped because the Ingglish spelling is unambiguous without it: don't → dohnt, I'm → aim, we'll → weel. This way contractions translate back to English correctly.
Case Preservation
Translation keeps capitalization: Title Case stays title case and lowercase stays lowercase. A word with capitals inside it is translated in parts, and each part keeps its case: GitHub → GitHuhb, iPhone → aiFohn. The pronoun "I" becomes lowercase: I → ai, because its capital letter is an English writing convention, not part of the sound.
Initialisms
A word written entirely in capitals is left unchanged, because it is usually an initialism or acronym: UI → UI, HTML → HTML, NASA → NASA. Plurals like IDs and all-caps parts of longer words, like the GPT in ChatGPT, stay unchanged too. Contractions are the exception and are still translated: DON'T → DOHNT.
Unknown Words
Words missing from the dictionary, such as tech terms, brand names and newly coined words, go through several fallbacks: splitting words into parts (GitHub → GitHuhb), recognizing known prefixes and suffixes (un-, re-, -tion, -ing), and rules that work out the sounds from the letters. Even made-up words get a sensible phonetic spelling.
Reverse Translation
Ingglish can be translated back to English by looking up each spelling in the dictionary. When several words sound the same, like "too", "to" and "two" (all spelled "too" in Ingglish), the most common one is chosen, based on word-frequency data. Capitalization is kept in this direction too.
R-Colored Vowels
Some vowels blend with a following R into a single sound, called an r-colored vowel. The R-Colored Vowels table in the Vowels section above lists every one and its spelling.
Hyphen Separator
When two neighboring sounds would put three or more of the same letter in a row, Ingglish inserts a hyphen to keep the word readable. In "acquiesce", an "ee" sound is followed by a short "e" sound. Written together that would be "akweees", so Ingglish writes it with a hyphen: acquiesce → akwee-es. The same happens in translations from other languages.