Shaw alphabet
| Shaw alphabet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Font | alphabet | |
| languages | English | |
| inventor | Ronald Kingsley Read | |
| Usage time | since 1960 | |
| ancestry |
Shaw alphabet |
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| Derived | Quikscript | |
| Unicode block | U + 10450..U + 1047F | |
| ISO 15924 | Shaw | |
The Shaw alphabet (English Shavian alphabet ) is a phonetic alphabet for the English language , which was named after the Irish playwright and Nobel Prize winner for literature George Bernard Shaw .
Shaw was very dissatisfied with the written English language and often called for a complete revision of the existing English spelling. In 1958, eight years after Shaw's death, a competition was announced in his name for a new alphabet that should be directly related to pronunciation, as different as possible from the Latin alphabet and as easy to write as possible. The Englishman Ronald Kingsley Read won the competition against 467 other competitors.
Despite some efforts to popularize the alphabet, an official introduction to the English language has never been seriously considered.
construction
The Shaw alphabet consists of 40 letters . In addition, there are eight more common ligatures . These letters are made up of as few components as possible. They in turn represent exactly one phoneme in the English language, which also includes affricates and diphthongs .
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| Letter: |
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| Unicode: | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
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Pronunciation : |
/ p / | / b / | / t / | / d / | / k / | / ɡ / | / f / | / v / | / θ / | / ð / |
| Name / Example: | p eep | b ib | t ot | d ead | k ick | g ag | f ee | v ow | th igh | th ey |
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| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
| / s / | / z / | / ʃ / | / ʒ / | / tʃ / | / dʒ / | / j / | / w / | / ŋ / | / h / | |
| s o | z oo | s ure | mea s ure | ch urch | j udge | y ea | w oe | hu ng | h a-ha | |
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Small letters: |
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| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
| / l / | / ɹ / | / m / | / n / | / ɪ / | / iː / | / ɛ / | / eɪ / | / æ / | / aɪ / | |
| l oll | r oar | m ime | n un | i f | ea t | e gg | a ge | a sh | i ce | |
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| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
| / ə / | / ʌ / | / ɒ / | / əʊ / | / ʊ / | / uː / | / aʊ / | / ɔɪ / | / ɑː / | / ɔː / | |
| a do | u p | o n | oa k | w oo l | oo ze | ou t | oi l | Ah | awe | |
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Ligatures: |
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| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |||
| / ɑ˞ / | / ɔ˞ / | / eɚ / | / ɝ / | / əɹ / | / ɪɚ / | / ɪə / | / juː / | |||
| ar e | or | air | err | arr ay | ear | Yes n | yew | |||
Shaw alphabet does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase distinction. However, a period ( · ) is placed in front of the word for names . Punctuation marks are used in the same way as in English spelling.
The spelling in Androcolus and the Lion was based on Received Pronunciation , a kind of standard pronunciation of British English . However, a large number of different spellings would result if one takes into account that very different realizations of the English phonemes exist in different English-speaking regions. This is also one of the main criticisms of the alphabet. Another is that the alphabet has no way of indicating emphasis . However, this often happens via the detour that unstressed vowels are centralized .
Unicode
In 2003 the Shaw alphabet was included in version 4.0 of the Unicode font standard . The range from U + 10450 to U + 1047F is used for this.
Further processing
Quikscript
Kingsley Read probably published a revision of his own Shaw alphabet called Quikscript (often spelled Quickscript ) in 1966 . About half of the letterforms in the Shaw alphabet have been completely redesigned.
Ŝava alfabeto
Ĝan Ŭesli Starling ( John Wesley Starling ) developed an adaptation for the planned language Esperanto from 1996–1997 .
Revised Shavian Alphabet
In 2000 Paul Vandenbrink proposed a simplified version of the alphabet so that, among other things, fewer vowels have to be used.
See also
- Quikscript
- Deseret alphabet
- Unifon alphabet
- Ewell's alphabet
- The chaos
- Ghoti - an example of English spelling
- International Phonetic Alphabet
Literature publications in the Shaw alphabet
- George Bernard Shaw: Androcles and the Lion, London 1962
- Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol, o. O. 2000
- Lewis Carroll : Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Cathair na Mart ( Westport / Ireland) 2013 - entire text in Shaw alphabet
- The Shaw Alphabet Edition of the Dhammapada , o.O. 2013 - Anthology of Buddha Sayings
- Classics of Men's Rights, o. O. 2013 - a collection of texts on human rights
- Edgar Allan Poe : Poe Meets Shaw. The Condensed Shaw Alphabet Edition, 2013
- Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, o.O. 2019
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : A Study in Scarlet, o.O. 2019
- The New Testament - Translation of the English New Testament into the Shaw alphabet
Web links
- Read and write keys; Supplement from Androcles and the Lion , 1962
- Androcles and the Lion , insight into the book (01:24 minutes)
- Shavian Web - Web site on the Shaw alphabet, with reading exercises
- How Kingsley Read built a writing system to match George Bernard Shaw's alphabetic Utopia - detailed illustrated description of the development of the Shaw alphabet
- The Shaw alphabet on Omniglot.com ( April 12, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive )
- Adaptation of the Shaw alphabet to Esperanto
- Publications in the Shaw alphabet from 2013-2019
- Numerous files for download on the Shaw alphabet
- Typewriters with Shaw alphabet keyboard and Quikscript keyboard