The Truespel Poem

       For the 40 Sounds of US English and Rules

     by Tom Zurinskas, creator of truespel phonetics

 

“Truespel phonetics” what's it mean, really?

It’s a way to spell phonetically.

A tilde (~) is used in truespel to show

How to say a word you may not know.

 

I speak to you now with compliments

To show the vowels and consonants,

Spelled in a way that’s English trendy,

Making phonetics finally user friendly.

 

First take the vowels: each syllable has one.

The trick is how to “truespel” them.

Five vowels are short, and five are long.

Of the 17 vowels, these make 10.

 

The reason five vowels are called short

Is that one letter to spell them is usually ample,

Except for “short o” which needs two,

Such as ~good and ~book for example.

 

For the four short vowels still at bay,

“Short a” as in “bat” is truespeld ~a.

“Short e” as in “men” is truespeld ~e.

As typical English as can be.

 

“Short i” as in “win” is truespeld ~i.

Above the short o” as in “good” is shown.

“Short u” as in “fun” is truespeld ~u.

Thus, for all short vowels that’s all you do.

 

The five long vowels are simplicity,

To truespel them just add letter “e”.

The long vowels are ~ae, ~ee, ~ie, ~oe, and ~ue

Add an “e” to the vowel is all you do.

 

Of the 7 vowels left, two can be in doubt.

The sounds “ah” and “awe” get swapped about.

Sound “ah” is two a’s (~aa) and “awe’ is “a” “u” (~au),

Accents for some words do interchange the two

 

Of the 5 vowels left, 2 diphthongs are around.

Phonemes ~oi and ~ou each have two sounds.

Where ~oi is “o” “i” and ~ou is “o” “u”

The words, “point” and “out,” point them out for you.

 

The final three vowels are different by far

Because they employ the consonant ~r.

~er as in “her” is truespeld e-r.

~or as in “for” is truespeld o-r.

 

And to keep things fair there is phoneme ~air

Which is truespeld a-i-r.

As an example of these you can say

“For her hair” as a memory phrase.

 

That wraps up the vowels, which are keen,

Every syllable has one of these 17,

Which is an interesting fact to know

Because it doesn’t apply to the consonants below.

 

Of 40 US English sounds 23 are left

The “consonants,” make up the rest.

To truespel them usually one letter will do

But some of them must be truespeld by two.

 

Of the two-letter consonants there are five,

And they are easy to recognize.

Using “s” “h” for ~sh is easy to take,

And “c” “h” for ~ch is a piece of cake.

 

But the spelling “th” can give us a frown,

Because “th” spells more than one sound.

“Voiced” “th” as in “the” is truespeld the same

But unvoiced “th” as in “thin” must change.

 

So the unvoiced “th” has an extra h,

Showing not to use voice in that sound we make.

Between them sometimes it’s hard to tell

The truespel dictionary shows them well.

 

One more consonant has two letters too

Letters z and h spell ~zh which is new.

Those five consonants use more than one letter.

Adding an “h” for each is the special helper.

 

The 18 consonants left have only one letter

They look familiar, and that’s all the better

These letters phonetically mean only one sound

So you never have to guess around.

 

Letters b, d, f, h, j, and k, are self-evident.

Letter g only stands for “hard g” don’t forget

Letters l, m, n, p, r, s, and t hit the spot

Sometimes r helps spell vowels, believe it or not.

 

Letters v, w, y, and z fill the list

Did you notice that q and x are missed?

They duplicate sounds that are already spelled

So they’re used for sounds we don’t know well

 

Two other popular other language sounds

Need to have x and q just for them.

~x for “trilled k” and ~q for “trilled r”

Are the most prevalent other sounds by far.

 

And lastly, a true phonetic guide

Needs one more thing addressed,

Because the nature of pronouncing words

Means that some syllables must be stressed.

 

For truespel stress is first-syllable based

But stress in words can move about.

So a double consonant before a later syllable

Is another way for pointed stress out.

 

And when two vowels in row look confusing

An apostrophe between is best.

So a two apostrophes between two vowels

Or a quote sign is put to show stress.

 

The apostrophe has one more job

Which is to show a glottal stop.

Like a “swallowed” t in ~baa’ool (bottle)

Or when “t” at the end of a word is dropped.

 

That sums up the pronunciation key

To make phonetics for English as neat as can be.

It makes it easy to do phonetic writing.

It’s truespel, all the more exciting.