kI	Keyboard Shavian

Read George Bernard Shaw's 1941 specification for a new alphabet for English. In response to this publication, Kingsley Read sent Shaw his proposed british alphabet.  After Shaw's death in 1950, the executors of his will staged a contest for the best non-Roman character set that matched up with the 42 basic sounds of the English language.  Kingsley Read's entry was selected as one of four finalists.  After some minor revisions it was selected as the winner of the contest which included a prize, a font, and a book written in this new alphabet.                   For best results download the Shavian font LIONSPAW [instructions]

The chart on the right associates the Shavian characters to the symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA] and to the keyboard characters.  The keyboard characters are the small letters on the green background. The first character /i:/ [as in eel] is associated with the upper case [I] on the keyboard. The short i is associated with the lowercase i [i]. The first problem letter is [y] which is used to represent /a:/. Thus car is spelled kyr in Keyboard Shavian.  [call cost] would be spelled kYl kYst in KS. The line of text at the bottom of the chart would be typed as Da kwik brQn foks jumps OvD Da lEzI dog. 

In Spanglish this would be written Da kwik braun foxx jvmps owvr Da leyzy dogg. Spanglish uses the double consonant to distinguish o as [aah] from o as [awe].  In informal, correspondence the sounds would not be that precise:  Th would be used in place of D and fox would be used in place of foxx.  

The readability of Keyboard Shavian, the ASCII text that appears on the screen when the font is not available, can be improved.  But,  the slight improvement in readability may not be significant enough to remap the existing Shavian fonts.  You be the judge.

It might be worth it if there was an ascii phonetic dictionary based on the revised keyboard positions.  With such a dictionary, it would be possible to use the automated phonemic spelling converter.

90% of the present keyboard Shavian is intelligible. This is why no attempt is made to list consonants - the coding is intuitive and the same as Unigraf. The other 10% of KS appears to be rather arbitrary phoneme-grapheme correspondences. (see chart and text samples below).

Even in an improved Keyboard Shavian, some of the R-combinations would remain arbitrary. The only improvement would be to link these letter assignments to specific mnemonics such as P = paddle = oar = or  /o:r/  [o:=awe]

Proposed extension of Shavian ligatures:  Shavian has ligatures for R, air, ear, and or.  I would like see ligatures added for L, M,  and N:  as in "hR litL colM cAm fRst."  These syllabics would be associated with the RLMN keys

The Unigraf system:  25 vowels [vocalic phonemes] (12 pure vowels) aa and o are usually merged

Keyboard shavian is shown below in gray inside brackets.
Unigraf - the proposed revision - shown in black letters.   compare
The gray positions were selected mostly on the basis of easy typing -  not easy reading.  The black Unigraf positions are less arbitrary and easier to read.  Most Shavian fonts use the gray code as the underlying phonascii. No legacy standard is easy to revise.  In this case, it requires that the existing Shavian fonts be remapped. Does easier reading by those familiar with TO justify the effort required to remap the fonts?
duz IziD rIdiN justifF H efDt?  daz EzER rEdiG justifY x efort?

The first two columns in this phoneme-grapheme chart list 12 pure vowels.

The next two columns list combinations of pure vowels with [i:], [u:], and [r].
The AGE symbol is a blend of the shapes for e and i.  The ICE symbols should be a combination of AH and i but the AH shape is too complex to combine.  The ARRAY symbol probably shouldn't be a combination because the vowel in  /rei/ and /h3:/ are not the same. The trigraph /ir/ is named [AIR] in Shavian.  It should probably be renamed [IRE].

12 Pure Vowels		Combinations diphthongs
6 Chekt	6Free	6 withiand u	8with R (schwa)	memory hook
@  /æ/ [A]	q/ V [y]	Y /ai/  [F]	q/ Vr H [R]	Yr[Fr]  F[X]*
AX, AT, AS, AND, ASH	ALMS, CALM, AH, a:	AISLE, EYE, MY, ICE	ARE, CAR, FAR	IRE, FIRE, LIAR, lyre
e	R ar  [D]	A /ei/  [E]	er  B  [xX]	er
EDGE, LET, EGG	HER, 1st, ARRAY, 3:	ACHE ak, ACE, AGE	AIR, BEAR, BERRY	Rotated B shape
i	E  [I]	Q /oi/  [q]	ir  D  [C]	ir   ia I W
IT, IN, MIT, IF	EEL, EAT, AMINO, i:	OIL, BOY, VOICE	EAR, IRRIGATE, beer	Ear & D shape   W= IA
q  [o]	o [Y]	O /ou/	or  P Paddle shaped oar	or, floor
OX, FOX, POT, ON ah	AWE, OFF, COST, :	OAT, OAK, TOTE	OR, OAR, ORE, aural	Letter P shape
c  [U]	C  [M]	U /ju/ [V]	Cr  [Mr]	Ur  [Vr]
HOOK, COULD, WOOL	OOZE, HOOP, GURU	USE, JUICE, YEW	TOUR [tu:r], POOR	YOUR, PURE [pju:r]
u	a	W /au/ [Q]	Wr  [Qr]	up - 7,  c =lazy u
UP, CUP, NUT ^	AGO, SOFA, ADO,	OUT, NOW, COW	OUR, POWER, FLOUR	ADO=r shape

*air [where a is a schwa] is the way that some people pronounce IRE.  The shavian shape is clearly ir

The Unigraf system is optimized for TO readers thus A, which can be visualized as an EI ligature, is used for /ei/ and E is used for /i:/.  E can be visualized as an I with a mid bar as in Pitman's Phonotypy.  In the simplified Unigraf orthography an attempt is made to merge as many phonemes as possible.  Thus triphthongs such as air and error use the same symbol [pere, pair, and pear are all per or pB.]. On the other hand, paragraph and parachute are spelled p@rag@f, p@raSUt - as in "I mAd @n erR [BR] wen I bilt xis @rO SApd erplAn [BplAn]."  This practice follows pronunciation dictionaries.

Unigraf can access the rotated 5 shapes with P [or] and K [ahr]. The rotated 5 is a candidate for replacement.  For the rotated 3 or rounded E shapes, Unigraf uses F [ir/ire] and B [er].  I am not a big advocate of using ligatures which have to be accessed by hard to remember letters in typing. They are fine for commerical printing and hand lettering.  I would spell [fire] fYr rather than fF.  Although P is the same as keyboard Shavian, I would probably write "or" as or rather than P.  "YRn iz an or" rather than "FDn iz n P"  If you can remember Y = eye /ai/, then YRn makes sense. for iron.

Possible changes in Shavian shapes.  Read simplified [ah] and [awe] in QuickScript because users had difficulty making these forms.  I would recommend merging the [ah] sounds in balm and bomb, a common practice in some pronunciation dictionaries. The half [awe] shape would therefore be used for both /o/ and /a:/ except when combined with R.  The other rotated 5 shape for [awe] could be replaced with something closer to the standard IPA rotated c shape []:  Perhaps by a form resembling the number [2].  [or] and [are] would be distinguised as they are in Shavian by the way the [r] is connected. In other words, little change in the digraphs. Shavian took its present form because Read chose to use the rotated c shape for r. 

Can you read the green line of text easier than the gray line?
Can you read the text in the green cell easier than the text in the gray cell?  Please participate in the poll
 
 

The Shavian alphabet has 40 phonograms supplemented by eight "compound" letters (see col. D) which are usually ligatures of the combined shapes.     The 12 pure vowels appear in the 1st two columns.  [her] should be a pure vowel but it is actually a ligature of schwa [ado] and R.    (Col. C) diphthongs should be blends of the pure vowels, e.g., /ei/ includes an e shape.  /ai/ [ice] includes part of ae instead of aa or schwa.  The combi- nations in (col. D) are all with R - not schwa. PMF chart  Pictographic Monofon is a romanesque version of Shavian

According to the pronunciation dictionaries, there is a difference between the sound in HER /h3:/ and the sound in ARRAY  /rei/

The difference is primarily in the stress pattern.
Shavian represents both sounds the same way.
This sound can be written as two characters [ar] or as a ligature [D]

/h3:/  if there is any hint of a R sound, then h3: [IPA notation] has little resemblance to the sound in array /rei/ .

Phonetic Distinctions in 4-sounds

TO	Unigraf	IPA	Keyboard Shavian	Shavian
run  her  array  moah more more mower other	run hR arA moa    mor mP     moR axa     axR	run he3: rei    3:ei m:   m:3: m:   m:3: ð	run har    hD arE    DE mya   myr mP    myD aH     aHD	run har     hD arE    DE mya  myr mP     myD aHa    aHD

The vowel sound in HER /h3:/  is the pure vowel
Sweet represented the sound with a double schwa which is OK for RP.
This paralleled Sweet's use of aa, ii, and uu.  The point is this:
The vowel in ARRAY  /rei/ is not quite the same as the vowel in HER /h3:/.
The vowel in array [arA-arE] is the same as the vowel in ado [adV - adM]

Shavian does not use RP as the base pronunciation.  Therefore, car is terminated with a strong R instead of a schwa.  The connection of the pure vowel /3:/ with a ligature (schwa + r) is unfortunate since it permits no clear distinction between the sound in array,  her ray,  hurray, hurry and hover.  arA, hR rA, harA, hRi, and huvR. In Shavian, ar = D which can wipe out the stressed unstressed distinction. DE, hD rE, hDE, hDF, and huvD

An easy way around this inconsistency in SA would be to renameD as "her" or "urban" Dban
and cease to use [DE] to transcribe array. In other words, simply follow the pronunciation guide in the dictionary. I also recommend changing the name of X /ir/ from air to ire. er [X] for eir and er is good enough for air [er] and error [eR].

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Download the Lionspaw font to read the Green type in Shavian. Three transcriptions:
The name of the game. x nAm ov x gAm.   H nEm v H gEm. H nEm v H gEm

Keyboard Shavian is easy enough to write for those familiar with IPA but a little difficult to read.  Unigraf is much more intuitive for TO readers and has built in mnemonic hooks.

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There are two important inconsistent transitions found in the traditional orthography [TO]: aur becomes or, or/aar becomes ar     
Unigraf: o=awe so or is correct.  q=ah so qr is correct

Shavian and Broad Romic (IPA) can handle these easily whereas TO based orthographies have problems.  This basic inconsistency in TO led to a number of irregularities in the writing system.  ol-all, college/call  kqlij/kol, cost/caustic costik, auf/off of,  awlful/offal, qn/on  only,  Call Paul's pa now /  col polz po nW,

A more compact (non-digraphic) and consistent notation can handle difficult words with ease.  Demons such as purer [pUrR], mower [morR], pourer become confusing in TO and RES but are handled easily with Unigraf.

There is no rule to get from [moat, noat] to note.  It is mostly a case of etymology.  Note came from a spelling originally pronounced naw-tuh.

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Comments (send your questions to Steve)

Q: Where does keyboard Shavian come from?  It seems to be  used with all of the Shavian fonts.
A:  It was devised by the person who created the first digital Shaw alphabet font.  (deMeyere)

Q:
A:

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The New Shavian Proposal

Links:  On the need for a new (non-roman) alphabet for English:  Shaw  Twain
 

• More on  Shavian  and the  Shaw Alphabet    Kingsley Read     Pitman
• The sounds of English - Comparison of the Shaw Alphabet to other reform orthographies
• Fonts-Display Shavian
• Lionspaw Font for the Shaw Alphabet
• Demeyere's Key for the Shavian font
• Shavian Unicode
• Background information on Shaw and the Shaw Alphabet by Bob Richmond
• Bernard Shaw biography
• Lithography

 

last revised:  May, 1999

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