No Child Left Bewildered: Using Phonetic English as a Lingua Franca
Kern W. Craig

Abstract
This article first explores the evolution of the English language particularly the influence of Celtic, Latin, German, and French. Second, it considers the resultant irregularities with respect to orthography: graphotactic and morphological but most importantly phonological. Third, the use of English as a lingua franca is discussed alongside English as a foreign language, cognate languages, artificial languages, other vehicular languages besides English, pidgin English, and English creole. Fourth, the issue of man-machine communication is examined in terms of speech recognition, phonetic transcription, conversion from documents to speech, dictionaries with audio pronunciation, and programs for oral translation. Last, support is provided for the adoption of phonetic English as the official language of the United States.

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