Interspel seeks to maximize the advantages of present spelling for users and learners by applying psychological research on their needs and abilities, facilitating both visual and auditory reading processes, and taking into account the special features of the English language.
However, psychological and linguistic research, as well as technological advances, make such a systematic reforum more feasible, including innovations that go against the usual proposals for spelling reform.
Interspel-style reform,[1][2] still in process of development and testing, has the following four levels for learning and use: In this way, readers accustomed to present spelling are not inconvenienced.
The first principle for present spellers can be to omit surplus letters[4] in words that serve no purpose to represent meaning or pronunciation, and can often mislead.
Apply the alphabetic principle of systematic sound-symbol correspondence, including regularizing current spelling patterns for final vowels, as in pity, may, be, hi-fi, go, emu, spa, her, hair, for, saw, cow, boy, too.
This alphabetic base that relates letters to English speech sounds is modified with morphemic principles that represent grammar and meaning visually, as in plural and tense endings –s/es and –d/ed.
By way of comparison, other proposals for English spelling reform[8] are of four types: Interspel, however, is a systematic reform of present spelling with three levels, to match established needs and abilities of users and learners, in which the basic alphabetic principle is modified by morphemic principles, long and short vowels are visibly related, and the 31 most common irregular words are retained.
Until there is a breakthrough to an international script that can cross languages, like Chinese, Interspel proposes an improved spelling for English, the world's present lingua franca that could be essential for wider literacy and global communication.