As a member of outside English language family I have always been fed up with the way the English language is written. Even Stephen Pollington says in his book Wordcraft (ISBN 9781898281535) on the page 16: “Unlike modern English, where a number of spelling traditions have been unhappily brought together and produced chaos, Old English spelling is generally very straightforward”. Some pronunciation symbols come from his book and some other from the dictionaries.
Add when it sounds: ə, æ, ʌ, but not when [a] is pronounced [ei], as it should be pronounced. Symbols must be use also when other letters sound as described at the beginning of this chapter. What about sound “ph”? It must be “f”. Ou is ə. “Th” is ð.
We mʌst əkʌstem people to ðə précis fysicəl exæminaʃən so ðæt ðey nəu how precəs it is now.
=> We must accustom people to the precise physical examination so that they know how precious it is now.
I don’t understand where have the English people got their pronunciation because a is pronounced mainly in French as [a] and in Latin also. Perhaps it comes from the Old English somehow.
Of course those symbols could be different but the main idea is to minimize the confusion. This is only a quickly made pattern, and the final works should be done at English universities by their linguists with the help of computers. That’s why I left the word people untouched because I don’t know if eo is always ii.
