English writing is hard to learn because the letters often do not match the sounds. One starts with a w sound, but we do not write w. Colonel sounds like kernel. The letters ough are not one sound: they change from word to word, as in though, tough, cough, plough, and through.

A better way is to start from the sounds, and write those. This is called phonetic transcription.

The International Phonetic Alphabet already does this, but it uses many new symbols. Most people want to keep the normal Latin letters: a, e, i, o, u, and the usual consonants. We can keep them, and add small marks on the vowels.

Hungarian already does this. It has five vowel letters, and a few kinds of marks:

• no mark: a e i o u
• one dot: ȧ ė ị ȯ ụ
• two dots: ä ë ï ö ü
• one accent: á é í ó ú
• two accents: a̋ e̋ i̋ ő ű

Five letters times five kinds of marks is 25 vowel signs. That is enough, and we need that many.

People sometimes say English has about 13 vowel sounds. Then you might think three kinds of marks are enough, because 5 times 3 is 15. The extra marks (one dot, and two accents) would be unused.

But 13 is too small. On this page about English sounds there are 20–25 vowel sounds in British Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American, and 19–21 in Australian English. The extra sounds are often two vowels said as one, like the sound in night, or a vowel plus r, like the sound in here.

So 15 signs are only enough for some American English. They are not enough for Australian English. They are not enough for British Received Pronunciation. Four kinds of marks would give 20 signs, which is the low British number, not the high one. If we want one sign for each vowel sound, and we want to cover British English too, we need all five kinds of marks. 25 signs match the high British number.

You could write some sounds with two letters, like ai in night. That is fine, but then one sound is not one letter. The point here is: one vowel sound, one letter.

Here is one way to use the signs. We do not need every sign in every accent. Empty signs can be used later, for example for the two different a sounds that some Australian speakers have in bad and lad.

these words	we write
but, blood	a
father, yacht	á
cat	ä
night, I	ȧ
now, plough	a̋
bed, said	e
day, eight	é
the, about	ė
bird, colonel	ë
hair, bear	e̋
bit, women	i
see, eat	í
here, beer	ï
cot, knowledge	o
go, though	ó
thought, four	ö
boy, noise	ő
book, woman	u
too, two, queue	ú
sure, tour	ü

If you hear an r, write an r. Do not hide it inside the vowel. Sure is shür, not shü. Here is hïr. Hair is he̋r. Car is kár. Some British speakers do not say that r. They can leave it out. That is their accent. It is also one reason American English is listed with fewer vowel sounds: it still writes and says the r.

Consonants are easier. Do not write silent letters. If the sound is k, write k. We can keep th, sh, ch, and ng.

Then hard words become easy to read.

Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through

becomes

thó thė taf köf ėnd hikap pla̋ him thrú

Those words look alike in normal English. Here they have seven different vowels, because they have seven different sounds.

More examples:

• colonel → kërnel
• queue → kjú
• women / woman → wimin / wumėn
• one, two, eight, four → wan, tú, ét, för
• knight → nȧt (same as night)
• choir → kwȧėr
• yacht → yát
• Leicester → lestër
• beautiful → bjútifėl
• knowledge → nolij
• I owe you → ȧ ó yú
• here / hair / sure → hïr / he̋r / shür
• cot / caught / cart → kot / köt / kárt

This sentence is used to show that rain, Spain, stays, mainly, and plain all have the same vowel:

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain → thė rén in spén stéz ménli in thė plén

You can see the same mark on each of those words.

People joke that ghoti could spell fish, if gh is like enough, o is like women, and ti is like nation. In this writing, fish is just fish. That joke only works when letters do not mean one sound.

This would take time to type. Different accents would not pick the same marks for every word. People who like old spellings would not like it. Children already spend years on the old spellings. We have 25 signs, and British English has 20 to 25 vowel sounds. We do not lack signs. We lack a writing system that starts from the sounds.

What do you think? Would you read English like this? Some signs are still free, like ị ȯ ụ i̋ ű. That gap is for the difference between 20 and 25 vowel sounds. Please comment below.