| Ranked Ways That English Sounds Are Spelled in American Media Print Media Using Truespel Phonetics | ||||||||||||||||
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Because truespel phonetics uses regular letters, it is spreadsheet-friendly for this phonemic analysis |
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The table below ranks the top 6 ways sounds are spelled as graphemes in US accent. |
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The numbers (times 1,000) show how often a sound is spelled by a particular letter or letter string. |
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Results are approximate, but the sample is large (15.4 million words), and should be a good representation. |
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(The data are taken from a word frequency count by Collins Cobuild of the top 5,000 words in |
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various newspapers, books, and mags converted to American English spelling. |
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| Notes | ||||||||||||||||
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1 A tilde (~) indicates a truespel word or phonogram (written phoneme, eg. ~n) |
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2 The term "trad" or "tradspel" means as in "traditional" spelling |
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3 The instance count for one cell is comparable to any other as a part of the whole |
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| 4 Instances need be multiplied by 1,000 | ||||||||||||||||
| 5 Most vowels have many more graphemes than 6 | ||||||||||||||||
| 6 The word "none" means spoken, but no grapheme, like ~y in "mute" ~myuet | ||||||||||||||||
| 7 The "-e" means the vowel is influenced by "silent e." | ||||||||||||||||
| 8 The word "the" is ~thu, but new data show it should be ~thee 11% of the time. | ||||||||||||||||
| 9 These phonograms are listed from most popular (~n) to least (~zh) | ||||||||||||||||
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10 The letter frequency in print for these same data are here (Click) 11 Results found avg. phonemes per word = 3.35 |
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The Great Truespel US English Phoneme -Grapheme Correspondance Table Hear my audio description HERE (data = 15,420,944 repeated words in print for top 5,000 word of US English which contain 51,681,706 phoneems) |
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| pho- | As In | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | Total | ||||||||
| cnt | neme | tradspel | trad | x 1k | trad | trad | trad | trad | trad | % | ||||||
| 1 | ~n | "net" | "n" | 3,963 | "kn" | 40 | - | - | - | - | 4,003,428 | 7.75% | ||||
| 2 | ~u | "up" | "e" | 1,094 | "a" | 981 | "o" | 943 | "u" | 453 | "o-e | "189 | "ou" | 38 | 3,773,977 | 7.30% |
| 3 | ~t | "tip" | "t" | 3,387 | - | - | - | - | - | 3,387,362 | 6.55% | |||||
| 4 | ~r | "run" | "r" | 3,231 | - | - | - | - | - | 3,231,352 | 6.25% | |||||
| 5 | ~i | "in" | "i" | 2,006 | "e" | 669 | "io" | 127 | "a" | 64 | "o" | 64 | "ee" | 64 | 3,184,808 | 6.16% |
| 6 | ~d | "dash" | "d" | 2,318 | - | - | - | - | - | 2,317,673 | 4.48% | |||||
| 7 | ~ee | "seed" | "e" | 664 | "y" | 536 | "i" | 407 | "ee" | 214 | "ea" | 214 | "ie" | 43 | 2,143,530 | 4.15% |
| 8 | ~s | "set" | "s" | 1,737 | " c" | 293 | "x" | 63 | - | - | - | 2,092,787 | 4.05% | |||
| 9 | ~l | "lap" | "l" | 1,885 | - | - | - | - | - | 1,884,647 | 3.65% | |||||
| 10 | ~th | "that" | "th" | 1,885 | - | - | - | - | - | 1,884,518 | 3.65% | |||||
| 11 | ~a | "ash" | "a" | 1,838 | - | - | - | - | - | 1,837,615 | 3.56% | |||||
| 12 | ~m | "men" | "m" | 1,425 | - | - | - | - | - | 1,425,121 | 2.76% | |||||
| 13 | ~z | "zip" | "s" | 1,395 | " x" | 14 | "z" | 14 | - | - | - | 1,423,473 | 2.75% | |||
| 14 | ~k | "kin" | "c" | 796 | "k" | 357 | "x" | 82 | "ck" | 82 | "q" | 41 | "ch" | 14 | 1,373,133 | 2.66% |
| 15 | ~w | "win" | "w" | 950 | "wh" | 231 | none | 136 | "qu" | 41 | - | - | 1,357,339 | 2.63% | ||
| 16 | ~er | "her" | "er" | 800 | "or" | 253 | "ur" | 93 | "ir" | 53 | "ure" | 40 | "our" | 40 | 1,333,566 | 2.58% |
| 17 | ~e | "elf" | "e" | 970 | "a" | 113 | "ea" | 76 | "ai" | 76 | "ie" | 13 | "i" | 13 | 1,260,240 | 2.44% |
| 18 | ~ue | "blue" | "o" | 633 | "ou" | 173 | "u" | 104 | "u-e" | 69 | "oo" | 69 | "ew" | 58 | 1,150,320 | 2.23% |
| 19 | ~v | "vat" | "v" | 605 | "f" | 536 | - | - | - | - | 1,140,631 | 2.21% | ||||
| 20 | ~h | "hat" | "h" | 909 | "wh" | 58 | - | - | - | - | 967,211 | 1.87% | ||||
| 21 | ~b | "bat' | "b" | 949 | - | - | - | - | - | 948,699 | 1.84% | |||||
| 22 | ~f | "fat" | "f" | 897 | "ph" | 19 | "gh" | 19 | - | - | - | 934,177 | 1.81% | |||
| 23 | ~ie | "tie" | "i" | 344 | "i-e" | 307 | "y" | 167 | "igh" | 74 | "ie" | 19 | "eye" | 9 | 929,064 | 1.80% |
| 24 | ~p | 'pie" | "p" | 883 | - | - | - | - | - | 883,154 | 1.71% | |||||
| 25 | ~g | "get" | "g" | 786 | "x" | 16 | - | - | - | - | 801,841 | 1.55% | ||||
| 26 | ~aa | "Saab" | "o" | 520 | "a" | 268 | - | - | - | - | 787,179 | 1.52% | ||||
| 27 | ~ae | "Mae" | "a-e" | 264 | "ay" | 155 | "a" | 132 | "ey" | 93 | "ai" | 78 | "a--e" | 31 | 776,943 | 1.50% |
| 28 | ~oe | "toe" | "o" | 417 | "ow" | 106 | "o-e" | 99 | "ou" | 20 | "oa" | 13 | "oe" | 7 | 661,642 | 1.28% |
| 29 | ~y | "yet" | none | 307 | "y" | 240 | "i" | 11 | - | - | - | 558,733 | 1.08% | |||
| 30 | ~oo |
"wool" |
"al" | 155 | "le" | 133 | "oul" | 111 | "oo" | 78 | "u" | 50 | "e" | 11 | 553,830 | 1.07% |
| 31 | ~sh | "shed" | "sh" | 194 | "ti" | 114 | "ci" | 30 | "ssi" | 11 | "s" | 8 | "ss" | 4 | 380,137 | 0.74% |
| 32 | ~or |
"for" |
"or" | 212 | "ore" | 76 | "our" | 29 | "oor" | 14 | "ar" | 11 | "owar" | 4 | 359,572 | 0.70% |
| 33 | ~thh | "thin" | "th" | 349 | - | - | - | - | - | 348,758 | 0.67% | |||||
| 34 | ~au | "auger" | "al" | 173 | "o" | 100 | "ough" | 24 | "au" | 21 | "aw" | 17 | "a" | 7 | 346,173 | 0.67% |
| 35 | ~ou | "out" | "ou" | 223 | "ow" | 100 | - | - | - | - | 323,502 | 0.63% | ||||
| 36 | ~ch | "chat" | "ch" | 219 | "t" | 67 | "tch" | 15 | "sc" | 3 | - | - | 304,508 | 0.59% | ||
| 37 | ~air | "fair" | "ere" | 90 | "ar" | 60 | "eir" | 51 | "er" | 42 | "are" | 27 | "air" | 21 | 299,160 | 0.58% |
| 38 | ~j | "jet" | "g" | 140 | "j" | 79 | "d" | 12 | "dg" | 7 | - | - | 237,941 | 0.46% | ||
| 39 | ~oi | "point" | "oi" | 29 | "oy" | 18 | - | - | - | - | 47,094 | 0.09% | ||||
| 40 | ~zh | ZhaZha | "s" | 26 | "x" | 0 | "g" | 0 | - | - | - | 26,868 | 0.05% | |||
| 51,681,706 | 100% | |||||||||||||||