To all thoes out thaer hoo ar having trubl rieting and/or reeding Quikscript qikly, I am hapy to anounss that thaer is an interim sistem avaelabl that just caem out in a nue releess about a munth ago. An organizaeshon that cauls itself th ALC ("American Literacy Council") is promoeting a vurzhon of simplified speling noen as SS ("SoundSpel"), which is a modified vurzhon of th clasik Nue Speling developt bi Walter Ripman and William Archer bak in 1948, but which maeks a fue conseshons in th direkshon of simplified orthografy and is corespondingly eezyer to reed th furst tiem U encounter it.

Sinss SoundSpel is moderatly fonetik, as U can no dout see heer, it shuud in prinsipl be posibl for sumwun to riet a compueter proegram that wil convurt texts riten in SoundSpel to QuikScript (and viess vursa), and it shuud be a lot eezyer to do that than to creaet a huej dikshonaery fiel to translaet direktly from "orthodox" orthografy to QuikScript. That is, bi creaeting parralel texts in SoundSpel and QuikScript it shuud be posibl to uez a litl AI and sum "deep lurning" teknolojys so that a compueter can figuer out how to do thees convurzhons itself. Eeven without AI, however, th maen needs for such a proegram can be redily deliniaeted.

It wil taek a faer amount of reeserch to compaer th 2 sistems to see how thae clasifi diferent fonetik categorys. For exampl, SoundSpel is no longger explisitly marking th diferenss between th voist /dh/ found in such wurds as "dhis, dhat, and dh udher", and th voisles /th/ as found in th wurds "thin, think, path" (at leest not in "runing text", tho posibly in pronounsing dikshonaerys), but surten Setings in th SoundSpel proegram shuud enaebl that to be chaenjd in a straetforward maner.

Liekwiez, SS is no longger uezing an explisitly fonetik reprezentaeshon of voist /z/ when it ocurs in pluurals, so that in plaess of "dogz, carz, milz" U hav "dogs, cars, mils", but a chaenj of Setings can aulso bring bak th former spelings.

Th reezon I am bringing all of this up is that a nue updaeted vurzhon of th SoundSpel dikshonaery is now avaelabl at th ALC websiet https://www.americanliteracy.com/ and thaer ar 2 diferent speling convurzhon proegrams U can uez thaer. Wun alows short text pasejes to be creaeted in a windo or paested in, and this proegram uezes differently culord text to sho which wurds ar not chaenjd in SS, which wuns ar chaenjd, and which if eny ar not found in th daetabaess and cannot be convurted.

Th uther proegram is a websiet translaetor, and it enabls eny websiet in Inglish to be convurted into SS, no mater how larj it is. Sinss this proegram enabls html fiels to be convurted, I hav bin going to "Project Gutenberg" and convurting all sorts of texts that ar in th publik doemaen into SoundSpel! For exampl, I just found wun of th urlyest edishons of Tom Sawyer and convurted it. I hav aulso dun th saem thing with "Little Women", all 600 paejes of it and then sum! Now, if we can oenly fiend a conveenyent wae to convurt texts from SS to QuikScript it wil no longger be nesesaery to limit ourselvs to wurks bi H.P. Lovecraft 🙂!

I apreeshiaet how hard it is to lurn nue scripts; when I wuz in colej I wonted to lurn to reed Yidish, and so I found a buuk in th uenivursity liebraery entietld "College Yiddish". Unforchunatly, eeven tho I wuz aulredy faerly flooent in Jurman at th tiem, and Yidish is esenshaly a Loe Jurman diealekt with a fuel Heebroo wurds mixt in, mi inability to reed eeven th simplest wurds in Yidish on acount of th unfamiliar Heebroo alfabet ultimatly cauzd me to giv up on th endevor.

In th caess of QuikScript I noe it is going to be hard to lurn to reed it at furst, but it wil cum in handy if I wont to riet a "seecret" dieary, or at leest to hav hands on expeeri'enss wurking direktly with a puerly fonetik sistem for reeding and rieting Inglish.

I hoep this mesej wil be helpful to uther members of th groop (⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)

R. J. McGehee 

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