So I'm working on yet another reform of english, because I hate english as much as I love it.

The tricky part appears to be vowels... from what I've read, it seems that there are essentially 20 English vowel sounds, but traditionally only 5 vowel symbols (and some of those overlap).

The consonant reform is easier. Here, I'll show you:

First you eliminate the duplication. This means
c will be pronounced CH
s will always be the soft sound, as in kiss.
k will be used in place of all K sounds, including c
PH will be eliminated in favor of F
TH will become either Q or q, depending on whether it is voiced or unvoiced.
QU will be representd by k or ku
SH will be represented by x
the X sound will be represented by ks or z
w will be eliminated (it's a vowel, people)
g will always be pronounced as in Good
j will always be pronounced as in Joy.
f will never be pronounced V, use v instead.

The other consonants remain essentially the same, with some minor changes (like that last f->v one) which are obvious and simple.

Some examples:

I like to take fotografs ov animalz at Qe zoo.

This is pretty good, but the major problems of English still remain: silent Es, vowels which are pronounced a half dozen different ways each, etc. That is the really confusing part. Why are the o's in 'to' and 'ov' not pronounced the same way? It's stupid.

For vowels I have no concrete plans. Certainly the silent letters must be eliminated (this goes for consonants too). After that, duplicate letters must be eliminated. This leads to a problem like telling the difference between "god" and "good", since they are both now spelt the same. Clearly a new character is needed to represent the difference.

Sime people like accent characters, as with the IPA. I don't loike this " solution" for two reasons: First, it's hard for me to remember which accents mean which sounds for which letters. I prefer to have radically different characters, just so that I can keep them straight. Secondly, they're hard to write on my U.S. pc104 keyboard.

Instead I propose the elimination of upper case characters. This frees up an extra 26 symbols for new sounds, which is more than sufficient for English. It also allows the following convenient consonants to be added:

Z = the S sound in vision
K = the Ch from loch.
R = a rolled r
N = NG, as in Wing. Because it really makes no sense for n-g to be pronounced that way.
WH can become simply W

Now we can do more interesting things:

to be or not tu be Qat iz Qe kuescun, WeQer it iz nobler to sufer Qe sliNz and aro?z ov outrajious forcun or to tak armz against a se ov troubl and by opoziN end Qem.

(You'll note I've also changed 'tion' into 'cun'. This is called an unrelated fixand is one of those little logical things any spelling cleanup must do. Remember that we're not doing a letter combination substitution, but a sound substitution. Also, the w in arrows is omitted. As I said, I've eliminated w.)

The above s clearly quite bad, because it's hard to tell how anything is pronounced.

Vowels, as I said, are harder. According to Hery Higgens there are well over a hundred vowel sounds. I conclude that any attempt to accurately represent them all will ultimately be a failure for one reason (too hard to document) or another (too hard to remember). Instead I can only hope to represent certain blocks of sounds via a relatively small set of characters. English has five, it needs closer to twenty. I like computers, so I'll propose 16. They might go something like this:

(Format is Letter = Sample regularly spelled english word with the relevant bit capitalized).

a = fAther
A = bAt, bAth, cAt, mAd, At
e = whEn, wOrd, wEt,
E = grEEn
y = E at the beginning of a word, since it does sound difference
aE = wIne,
eE = stAte, lAke, wAIt, plAY (actually it's arguable, some of these could be aE).
i = bIt, flIt
I = EIther, strychnIne, futIle. Can be pronounced E or aE, readers choice.
O = clOck, rOtten
o = gO, mOw, hOax, nOse
w = lOOk, bOOk, pUt. Short U.
u = clUe, rUde, fOOd. In cases where a y sound can appear (mUsic) use uh (muhzik). Long U
U = dUH, bUt. Perhaps not strictly necessary, but in American English it seems appropriate
au = tOWn, clOWn, mOUse, OUt,
W = u at the beginning of a word. With, Wound.

This is a tentative list, and you could do it a lot of ways. With these changes in mind, let me quite xeEkspEr again:

tu bE or nat tu bE QAt iz QE kuescUn, WeQer it iz noblr tu sUfer QE sliNz And aroz Uv AutreEjUs forcun or to teEk armz UgeEnst eE sE Uv trUbl And baE opoziN end Qem.

(Notice the missing silent E's, as in noblr.)

That's a little better and, once you get over HoW wEiRd It LoOkS, it's actually not too hard to read.

Obviously that's not the best possible solution... I'm still easily four vowels short of complete, for one thing. But it's a start, and it manages to not be too complex.

And enEueE, aE laEk it.