Shavian alphabet

U 10450 .. U 1047 F

The Shavian ( en.: Shavian alphabet ) is a phonological alphabet for the English language, which was named after the Irish playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw was very dissatisfied with the English literary language and often called for a complete revision of existing English spelling. 1958, eight years after Shaw's death, a competition for a new alphabet was in his name written out, which make a direct reference to the debate, it should be possible to write different from the Latin alphabet and simple as possible. The Englishman Ronald Kingsley Read won the competition against 467 competitors.

Despite some efforts to make known the alphabet, an official introduction to the English language was never seriously considered. The only book that has ever been published in Shaw's alphabet, his comedy " Androcles and the Lion " (engl.: " Androcles and the Lion ").

Construction

The Shaw alphabet consists of 40 letters. In addition there are eight frequently occurring ligatures. The letters each composed of a minimum number of components. They represent themselves exactly one phoneme in the English language, including affricates and diphthongs are counted.

In Shavian is not case - sensitive. In name but a dot ( · ) is placed before the word. Punctuation marks are used the same way as in the English spelling.

The spelling in Androkolus and the lion was based on the so-called " Received Pronunciation ", a kind of standard pronunciation of British English. However, a large amount of different spellings would arise if one considers that in different English regions very different realizations of the English phonemes exist. This is also one of the main criticisms of the alphabet. Another is that the alphabet has no possibility to stress. However, this is often done via the detour that unstressed vowels are centralized.

Unicode

Meanwhile, the Shavian has been included in the standard Unicode font. The range of U 10450 to U 1047 F is reserved for it.

Developments

Quikscript

Kingsley Read, of the Shaw alphabet developed itself, it processed 1966 Quikscript, an alphabet, which is designed for easy manual override.

Sava alfabeto

Gan Ŭesli Starling ( John Wesley Starling ) developed from 1996 to 1997, an adaptation of the planned language Esperanto.

Revised Shavian alphabet

Paul Vanden Brink hit 2000 a simplified version of the alphabet, so that, among other less vowels must be used. This version is also the one that is presented under www.shawalphabet.com.