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Ingglish – What if English spelling made sense?

Ingglish – What if English spelling made sense?

by ptarjan·Feb 15, 2026·6 points·3 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidBig BrainCozyNiche Gem

Clever phonetic respelling of English, but it's a novelty with no practical staying power.

Strengths
  • •Genuinely clever constraint: forces consistent 1-to-1 letter-sound mapping, exposing English's actual chaos.
  • •Full-featured execution: text translator, website overlay, Chrome extension, and reversible conversion.
  • •Open source + 134k word dictionary backbone shows real engineering depth for the concept.
Weaknesses
  • •No real use case beyond curiosity; reading Ingglish doesn't transfer to standard English literacy.
  • •Homophones (to/too/two) remain unsolved and break the 'one sound, one spelling' premise.
Category
Education
Target Audience

Language learners, parents teaching reading, ESL students, anyone frustrated with English spelling irregularities

Similar To

Simplified Spelling Board (historical) · Cut Spelling · Spelling reform proposals

Post Description

My 5-year-old is learning to read and I keep having to say "yeah sorry, that letter is silent" and "no, those letters make a different sound in this word."

So I built Ingglish — English where every letter always makes the same sound. "ough" alone makes 6 different sounds (though, through, rough, cough, thought, bough). In Ingglish, every letter has one sound, no silent letters, no exceptions.

- Paste text to see it translated instantly - Translate any webpage while preserving its layout - Chrome extension to browse the web in Ingglish - Fully reversible — Ingglish text can be converted back to standard English (minus homophones)

The core translator, DOM integration, and website are all open source: https://github.com/ptarjan/ingglish

I'd love your feedback! Thanks.

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