Thomas E. Zurinskas
This book is an in-dept analysis of the letter/sound correspondence of USA English. It combines two databases, one from the Times of London which counts the frequency of words in the newspaper, and the other from the truespel database of phonetic spelling of USA English. Together they combine to count letter and sound correspondence for frequency analysis. Each of the 26 letters of the alphabet is examined and lists are made of a letter’s most frequent position in words, top ten words containing the letter, and sounds spelled by the letter. Each of the 40 sounds are analyzed similarly. The analysis represents once and for all how the sounds of USA English are spelled as spoken (spoken word dialog being the same as newspaper text) and how often and in what way the letters of the alphabet portray those sounds.
Thomas E. Zurinskas is the creator of truespel, the world’s first pronunciation guide spelling for USA English. His experience is as a technical editor, human factors specialist, database specialist, and quality assurance specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration. His HF design background led him to create a user-friendly phonetic system for USA English. Using voicings from popular talking dictionaries, he respelled the English language in USA accent. This created a database enabling this unique capability for investigating how the sounds of USA English are spelled in traditional spelling (he calls tradspel). He has written two a truespel pronunciation guide of USA English (truespel book two) and a beginner’s dictionary using VOA definitions (truespel book three), both at Authorhouse.com. He has applied truespel to other languages and compared them to USA English in terms of sound frequencies. Current efforts are detailed at truespel.com, where it can be seen that the whole internet can be converted to truespel. He lives with wife, Bonnie, in Greenacres, Florida.
Abstract
This book examines the frequency of use of the letters of the alphabet as they appear in the 5,000 most popular newspaper words in USA English. These words total 15.4 million instances, with the most popular word, "the," having over 1 million instances. It is estimated that these top 5,000 words represent over 90% of the words in most text; therefore, they are a good basis for investigating primary phonetic patterns that will not substantially change over various texts. This book examines English text from the point of view of usage frequency of each letter of the alphabet in terms of popularity for the sounds they spell. This is of interest to English teachers as it shows which spellings are primary for which sounds. The tables in this book give: 1.) a frequency ranking of the 26 letters of the alphabet, 2.) the top 10 words containing those letters, 3.) the most popular locations in a word where the letter appears (beginning, middle, or end), and 4.)a ranking in popularity of sounds represented by each letter. This is repeated for the 40 sounds (phonemes) of USA English. By virtue of these capabilities, truespel sets a new usefulness standard for phonetic spelling. It is designed to replace the current pronunciation guide spelling in our dictionaries. A free web-based converter from traditional text to truespel is available at truespel.com. A web page converter is also there, showing that global phonetic spelling of USA English is just a few clicks away.
Introduction
This book presents data answering many questions about the relationship of sounds and letters, in USA English, such as: How often are the letters of the alphabet used in written text, and what sounds are associated to them in various combinations? Also, how frequently are the sounds of English repeated given that some words are used more than others? To do this analysis two things are needed: 1. a count of the frequency of use of words in typical text, and 2. a phonetic conversion for associating that frequency to sounds (phonemes) in words so sounds can be counted. Both these criteria are recently met, so that a thorough analysis of the relationship of the alphabet to USA English can be made.For more information on the truespel phonetic system see the Appendix A or truespel.com.
The database of the most popular words of English is contributed by the Times of London representing a count of the top 5,000 words printed in their newspaper. Each word has beside it the number of instances it appears in a set number of pages, enabling a ranking. The total number of instances for the 5,000 words is 15.4 million instances, or an average of 3,000 instances or appearance in the newspaper per word. But that is misleading. The data are very skewed. The data show that the most popular 100 words make up over 50% of the total instances. That is why a phonetic representation of the frequency of sounds in normal USA English text (or speech) needs to take into consideration word frequency of use.
