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Posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the Shavian alphabet (also known as Shaw alphabet) was conceived as a way to provide a simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. Shaw set two main criteria for the new alphabet: that it should be phonetic, with as great as possible a 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds; and that it should be distinct from the Latin alphabet so as to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings". The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ...
Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS...
Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...
This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ...
G. Bernard Shaw (he hated the George, which was his fathers first name, and never used it, either personally or professionally) (July 26, 1856 – November 2, 1950) was an Irish playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
English spelling (or orthography), although largely phonemic, has more complicated rules than many other spelling systems used by languages written in alphabetic scripts. ...
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...
A contest for the design of the new alphabet was held, which was won by a Mr. Ronald Kingsley Read. Read later modified the Shavian alphabet to create Quickscript, with more ligatures intended for handwriting, and another Latin-based script. Ronald Kingsley Read was the winner of a contest for the design of the Shavian alphabet, a type of shorthand. ...
Quickscript is an alternate alphabet for the English language, designed to be phonetically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly writable. ...
Due to contestation of Shaw's will, the trust charged with developing the new alphabet was only able to afford to publish one book: a version of Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion, in bi-alphabetic edition with both conventional and Shavian spellings. (1962 Penguin Books, London) Androcles and the Lion is a play written by George Bernard Shaw. ...
The letters The Shavian alphabet consists of three types of letters: tall, deep and short. Short letters are vowels, liquids (r, l) and nasals; tall letters (except Yea
 and Hung
 ) are unvoiced consonants. A tall letter rotated 180°, with the tall part now extending below the baseline, becomes a deep letter, representing equivalent voiced consonant (except Woe
 and Haha
 ). Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...
A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
| Tall and deep letters: | | Shavian letter |
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 | Pronunciation
(may vary, see below) | /p/ | /b/ | /t/ | /d/ | /k/ | /g/ | /f/ | /v/ | /θ/ | /ð/ | | Name/example | peep | bib | tot | dead | kick | gag | fee | vow | thigh | they | | | | |
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| | /s/ | /z/ | /ʃ/ | /ʒ/ | /ʧ/ | /ʤ/ | /j/ | /w/ | /ŋ/ | /h/ | | so | zoo | sure | measure | church | judge | yea | woe | hung | ha-ha |
Short letters: |
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 | | /l/ | /ɹ/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ɪ/ | /iː/ | /ɛ/ | /eɪ/ | /æ/ | /aɪ/ | | loll | roar | mime | nun | if | eat | egg | age | ash | ice | | |
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 | | /ə/ | /ʌ/ | /ɒ/ | /əʊ/ | /ʊ/ | /uː/ | /aʊ/ | /ɔɪ/ | /ɑː/ | /ɔː/ | | ado | up | on | oak | wool | ooze | out | oil | ah | awe |
Ligatures: |
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 | | /ɑ˞/ | /ɔ˞/ | /eɚ/ | /ɝ/ | /əɹ/ | /ɪɚ/ | /ɪə/ | /juː/ | | are | or | air | err | array | ear | Ian | yew | There are no separate capital or lowercase letters as in the Roman alphabet; instead of using capitalization to mark proper names, a "naming dot" (·) is placed before a name. There is no other difference in punctuation or word spacing between English written in conventional orthography and in Shavian. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Spelling in Androcles follows the phonetic distinctions of British Received Pronunciation except for explicitly indicating rhotic "r" with the above ligatures. Most dialectical variations of English pronunciation can be regularly produced from this spelling, but those who do not make certain distinctions, particularly in the vowels, find it difficult to spontaneously produce the canonical spellings. For instance, most North American dialects merge
/ɑː/ and
/ɒ/. Canadian English, as well as many American dialects (particularly in the west and near the Canadian border), also merge these phonemes with
/ɔː/, which is known as the cot-caught merger. In addition, many American dialects merge
/ɛ/ and
/ɪ/ before nasal consonants. Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, usually defined as the educated spoken English of southeastern England. This is a prescriptivist point-of-view — it is quite possible for an intelligent, educated individual to use a non-standard dialect. ...
Rhotic consonants, or R-like sounds, are non-lateral liquids. ...
// Father-bother merger The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels and that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in Eastern New England (such as the Boston accent) and New York-New Jersey English. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Canadian English (CaE) is the national variety of English used in Canada. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
// Father-bother merger The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels and that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in Eastern New England (such as the Boston accent) and New York-New Jersey English. ...
// Weak vowel merger The weak vowel merger (or Lennon-Lenin merger) is a phonemic merger of (schwa) with unstressed (sometimes written as ) in certain dialects of English. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ...
There is no ability to indicate word stress, however in most cases the reduction of unstressed vowels is sufficient to distinguish word pairs that are distinguished only by stress in the traditional orthography: In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence). ...
Spelling of words differentiated by stress | Traditional spelling | convict | | 1st syllable stressed |
/ˈkɒnˌvɪkt/ | | 2nd syllable stressed |
/ˌkənˈvɪkt/ | Additionally, certain common words are abbreviated as single letters: Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Disagreement Some disagreement has arisen among the Shavian community in regard to sound-symbol assignments, which have been the topic of frequent arguments. Primarily, this has concerned the alleged reversal of several pairs of letters.
Haha-Hung Reversal The most frequent disagreement of the letter reversals has been over the Haha-Hung pair. The most convincing evidence suggesting this reversal is in the names of the letters: The letter Haha is deep, while Hung, which suggests a lower position, is tall. This is often assumed to be a clerical error introduced in the rushed printing of the Shavian edition of Androcles and the Lion. It should also be noted that this reversal obscures the system of tall letters as voiceless consonants and short letters as voiced consonants.
Proponents of traditional Shavian, however, have suggested that Kingsley Read may not have intended for this system to be all-encompassing, though it seems that vertical placement alone served this purpose in an earlier version of Shavian, before the rotations were introduced. It may also be the case that Read intentionally reversed these letters, perhaps to emphasize that these letters represent unrelated sounds, which happen to occur in complementary distribution. Other reasons have been suggested by both sides, including associations with various styles of Roman letters and the effect of letter-height on the coastlines of words, but whether Read considered any of these is uncertain. Since the letter representing the same sound in Read's Quikscript appears idential to "Hung", it's at least doubtful that Read reversed the letter twice by mistake. ...
Quickscript is an alternate alphabet for the English language, designed to be phonetically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly writable. ...
Other Reversals Two other letters that are often alleged to have been reversed—intentionally or not—are Air and Err. Both are ligatures, and their relation to other letters is usually taken as evidence for this reversal. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ...
Variants
Quickscript Some years after the initial publication of the Shaw alphabet, Read expanded it to create Quickscript, also known as the Read Alphabet. Quickscript is intended to be more useful for handwriting, and to that end is more cursive and uses more ligatures. Many letter forms are roughly the same in both alphabets; see the separate article for more details. Quickscript is an alternate alphabet for the English language, designed to be phonetically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly writable. ...
Revised Shaw alphabet Paul Vandenbrink has created a modified Shavian alphabet which takes the controversial step of replacing most of the specific vowel letters with markers indicating which of several sets of vowel types a vowel belongs to, thus reducing the number of vowel distinctions and lessening the written differences between dialectical variations of English. This variant, and not the original Shaw alphabet, is presented at http://www.shawalphabet.com/.
Ŝava alfabeto An adaptation of Shavian to another language, Esperanto, was developed by John Wesley Starling though not widely used, at least one booklet has been published with transliterated sample texts. As that language is already spelled phonemically, direct conversion from Latin to Shavian letters can be performed, though several ligatures are added for the common combinations of vowels with n and s and some common short words. Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Pronunciations that differ from their English values are marked in bold red.
| Ŝava letter |
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| | Pronunciation | [a] | [b] | [ts] | [tʃ] | [d] | [e] | [f] | [g] | [dʒ] | [h] | [rh] | [i] | [j] | [ʒ] | | Conventional orthography | a | b | c | ĉ | d | e | f | g | ĝ | h | ĥ | i | j | ĵ | | | |
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| | [k] | [l] | [m] | [n] | [o] | [p] | [r] | [s] | [ʃ] | [t] | [u] | [w] | [v] | [z] | | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | ŝ | t | u | ŭ | v | z |
Ligatures |
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 | | la | kaj | aŭ | aj | ajn | Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
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Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
The digital age Shavian is encoded in plane 1 of Unicode, from U+10450 to U+1047F, but appropriate fonts for Unicode Shavian are rare, the most notable being Code2001, which as of version 0.917 (April 2005) contains rough-drawn Shavian characters. Before it was standardised, fonts were made that include Shavian letters in the places of Roman letters, and/or in an agreed upon location in the Unicode private use area, allocated from the ConScript Unicode Registry. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...
In digital typography, James Kasss Code2000 OpenType font is designed to support as much of the Unicode standard, version 4. ...
The ConScript Unicode Registry is a volunteer project to coordinate the assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for the encoding of artificial scripts. ...
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