Paul Stought

I suggest the reader skip the category–Uncategorized–because the way I am using this blog causes this category to be like a junk pile with everything out of order.

This blog features my efforts at attempting to provide a spelling system that will one day become a replacement for our present embarrassment.

English has one of the hardest to learn spelling systems in the world. Over 20% of English speaking adults have significant trouble with reading. Many people in countries where English is not the primary language, wish to learn to speak, read and write, in English. A major discouragement is the spelling system.

While we will need to be able to read and spell in the present spelling system for a very long time, we have the ability to make a much easier to learn spelling system.

My name is Paul Stought. I am a retired machinist. I became interested in spelling reform in 1981 when I read an article about Unifon. I became actively involved about 1999 when I got my first computer. I looked up Unifon, and from there I was introduced to many other links to information about spelling reform. I was looking to find a spelling system I liked. It became clear that Unifon didn’t have a chance for general acceptance. There are many proposals for new spelling systems. I didn’t think much of any of them. While I didn’t set out to design spelling systems, I began thinking about the features I thought should be in a new spelling system. I spent thousands of hours tinkering. Much of it was repetitious as I scrapped many hours work just to make small “improvements”.

I came up with two spelling systems that I thought worked very well; Mentur and Zefur. I have been promoting Zefur for a couple of years now though Mentur is a bit more alphabetic, and I was promoting it before Zefur. I felt that even though Zefur is less alphabetic, it might be better accepted by the reading public—and now—I investigated a possibility that Zefur could be improved. I tried it out and it works.

Zefur has been using vowel-v as a stressed u. I have found a way to spell u for many of these v’s. Positional rules are used. I felt that rather than keeping the Zefur name, I should have a new name—Jenusus (Genesis). So I will be focusing on Jenusus now. I suppose my readers will suspect another  ‘improvement’ will be comming along soon. I don’t think so.

Check the Categories on the right side of this page, where you will find Mentur and Zefur and Jenusus. I had to mark Zefur az ‘B Zefur’ because of some kind of glitch. I wanted it near the top of the categories. Jenusus is marked A Jenusus – to put it at the top.