aAqbCdEcfg· hiIjklLmMn· NoOvprRsSt· TDxXuUvVwW· yYzZ
  THE DESIGN OF THE  ALPHABET
Dc dizIn cv Dc UnifOn 2 alfcbet
 Now you can start to write alphabetically in Unifon!

EC letcr iz csOsEAtcd wiT c siNgl saund - Each letter is associated 
with a single sound in UnifOn.  Vowels above have a yellow tint.  Traditional 
digraphs ch, sh, th, ng, ..are tinted blue and given a unigraphic representation. 		 Unifon means "one sound" and implies one sound per symbol. To have one symbol for each sound in the English language, there needs to be at least 40 sound-signs or phonograms.

There are 23 letters in the traditional alphabet plus c, q, and x which duplicate other letters. [ k, kw, ks/gs ]  If these letters are reassigned and unique sounds assigned to the upper case letters, there are enough symbols to represent all of the phonemes in English speech.
Unifon II is inspired by the extended alphabet invented in the 1950's by Chicago engineer, JohnMalone.  Malone added 17 special characters to the traditional alphabet to create the "one sound per symbol" Unifon alphabet. Unifon is actually two systems:  [1] An ASCII keyboard writing and transcription system and [2] an alphabet as displayed in unifont.  Printed Unifon is quite different than the ascii charaacters.  In Unifon II, the difference is minimized and the letters are downsized.  U2 is mostly lower case letters, Unifon is all upper case.

UnifOn provIdz c betcr gId tu prcnxnsiAScn and iz Ezy tu mastcr

Many languages have transparent orthographies and do not have to add a pronunciation guide to their dictionaries because the orthography is the pronunciation guide.  Pronunciation guide spelling is predictable because words are spelled the way they are generally pronunced. Unifon is based on the GA or General American dialect and is almost identical to the notation used in the on-line Merriam Webster pronunciation guide. Unifon has all the phonograms necessary to represent the southern british dialect.  The spelling of some words would be slightly changed. 

TO: Don't bother father. - GA: dOnt bqDcr fqDcr - SBS: dOnt boDc fqDc
Letter names: O=omega, q=script A or italian A, o=awe, c=lazy U
The italian or spanish a sound is often represented in English by the o

*meny langwijcz hav transparcnt orthografyz and du not hav tu ad c prcnxnsiAScn gId tu ther dikScneryz. 

Unifon greatly simplifies spelling.  Once yu memorize the sound-symbol correspondences shown in the Unifon alfcbet, you know how to spell any word you can correctly pronounce..  The ony rules and conventions are with respect to words that have multiple pronunciations. 

EDcr IDcr |  tcmAtO tcmatO  | baTh baTh

Unifon was an attempt to simplify English spelling and provide a better guide to pronunciation.
It is possible to write English as it is pronounced.  With 26 letters, however, the results often look a little odd because no phonemic spelling system can duplicate more than 40% of the traditional spellings.  [more]
 
aAqbCdeEcfghiIjklmnNoOQprRsStDTxXuUvVwWyYzZ
Unifon II drops two unigraphic phonograms [oi and au] and adds a phonograms for schwi [y]. Note the addition of 19 phonograms to the alphabet:  7 new consonant symbols NCDTSZW replace the digraphic representations: ng, ch dh, th, sh, zh, wh. X is available for ks
In the traditonal writing system dh is represented with th  and zh is represented with an s.
These code overlaps create real problems for learners.  See the page on polyvalence.
The 11 new vowel phonograms are AqEcIORxUv with Q available for the short british o.


An alphabet is a table of corre- spondences between the important sounds in a language and a set of visible marks [or letters on a page]. 

The letters in the Unifon alphabet correspond to one and only one sound. A word spelled in Unifon provides a guide to its pronunciation. Conversely, Unifon enables you to correctly spell any word you can pronounce.

All languages are 100% phonemic.  A perfect alphabet captures the same features that distinguish one spoken word from another. In other words, it visualizes speech. 

If it did so perfectly it would be said to be 100% phonemic. The traditional writing system used for English is only about 40% phonemic.*  English spelling matches pronunciation guide spelling less than 40% of the time.

This mismatch between spelling and pronunciation has motivated thousands of indivviduals to suggest alternative writing systems or codes for English. All of them are more consistent than the traditional system but few have attracted more than 20 users.

The exceptions are IPA and ITA.

 If an alphabet is a picture of speech, it too could be called be phonemic or sound based.  Each letter would correspond to an important distinction in speech. Each letter would be a sound-sign.  Thus alphabetic and phonemic mean practically the same thing.

With a perfect alphabet, there would be no need for a dictionary pronunciation guide. When you write a word in Unifon, you are basically copying the dictionary pronunciation guide entry for that word.

The Merriam-Webster pronunciation guide is almost identical to keyboard Unifon.  When you are not sure about the pronunciation of a word, simply look it up in the on-line dictionary and copy the pronunciation guide entry. 

One change you have to make is to replace the schwa marker [&] with [c]-the lazy u.  The lazy-u shape is for alleged lazy or lax speech habits. It is the most frequent sound in English speech largely due to its association with the article [the - Dc].

M-W is not consistently unigraphic so the consonants ch, sh, zh, th have to be converted to CSZT respectively.

M-W uses a couple of special characters, [ä] and [ü], which have to be changed to q and u. The M-W [u] has to be changed to [v] hook

M-W does not require perfect spelling: Invented spellings or freespelings can be used to look up words.

The traditional writing system spells each sound an average of 14 different ways. Phonemic writing systems such as unifon spell each sound 1 way. [more]
OBJECTIVE: 

Unifon II updates the 50 year old notation by downsizing the font and changing the sound-symbol associations that were problematic.  The diphthongs were removed from the list of sounds requiring a unigraphic expression.  Only the 36 pure phonemes plus those that have common traditional representations [I, J, Ch] were provided a single unique symbol. 

 REFORM PROPOSAL

Children should be taught pronunciation guide spelling to 
1. enable them to write any word they can pronounce and 
2. pronounce any word they see spelled in UniFon. 
This would extend explicit phonics instruction to the sounds that are not clearly represented in the tradtiional writing system.

Edward Carney, who wrote the most recent comprehensive survey of the regularities in English spelling, commented, " Perhaps the greatest practical problem in dealing with spelling is that people do not have a familiar and generally accepted way of tackling the phonetic side of correspondences." [1994, p. 33]

Unifon II is a solution to this problem.  It provides a way of identifying sounds using familiar letters rather than special fonts and symbols.  Unifon II is isomorphic with IPA, but uses ASCII characters for sound signs.  When keyboard Unifon II is displayed  in Unifont 2, it is very close to the IPA used by Henry Sweet [ca. 1900].  (note the use of the namer dot [·])

·pcrhaps Dc grAtcst praktikcl prqblcm in dEliN with speliN iz that pEpL du nqt hav c fcmilycr and  jenRcly akseptcd wA cv takLiN Dc fOnetik sId cv korespqndenscs.  Carney [KqrnE], 1994, p. 33  [keyboard unifon2, not unifont converted]

·pørhaps ðø grAtøst praktikøl prqbløm in déliN with speliN iz that pépL du nqt hav ø fcmilyør and jenRøly akseptød wA øv takLiN ðø fónetik sId øv korespqndensøs.  Close to what Unifon II will look like with Unifont installed.

Phonemes map onto traditional letters only 40% of time rather than 85% or more as in most other alphabetical writing systems. In other words, in the traditional English writing system, spelling corresponds to pronunciation only about 40% of the time.  This is also an indication of how predictable traditional spelling is.  You can only get 40% correct by spelling a word as it sounds.

English has about 42 important sound categories or phonemes, the writing system has over 560 ways to spell these sounds. [see Dewey] As Hanna remarked, the writing system simply has "too many orthographic options" - too many ways to spell the same sound -- too many heterographic homophones.

The IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet was developed just before 1900 to address Carney's problem.  The IPA approach was to extend the alphabet and to substitute special characters for ambiguous letters.  This worked but other than in dictionary pronunciation guides, it was rarely used and generally never taught outside of linguistics departments.  Two other factors inhibited the usefulness  wider adoption of IPA symbols [1] the special characters were not supported by most keyboards and most fonts, [2] the transcriptions were  difficult for some to read, and [3] IPA did not use traditional devices for distinguishing English speech sounds.

In contrast, UnifOn is supported by all keyboards and all fonts. Both the keyboard version and font converted symbols can be read without a key. Many traditional shapes are used, e.g., A for ei, I for ai so it looks more like English than IPA. 

12 pure vowels plus schwa - with combinations 26 vowel phonograms

7 short checked.  a      e      i      q       x      v       Q  at   el  it   pot/par up  hook  awe
7 long  free . . . .  A     c     E   o       R      u      O  ate    ago   eel   auto   her   ooze   oat 
4 diphthongs . . .  I      au    U     oi       ic     [xr/cr]  eye    out / owl    you    oil    via / vEa
7 r-combinations qr  ar   Ir   Ar/er Er/ir   or   ur   aur   are/or   ire   air   ear   oar  tour  our 
R= ipa 3 in the British version of Unifon murder mxrdcr mRdc
The British short o = Q  It is usually merged with the vowel in allandawe
U2merges the British shorto and the vowel inalms andare
 

Unifon 2 consonant phonograms

2 New  4 Digraphs changed to Unigraphs  17 retained - no change
Dh    Zh   Ch     Ng     Sh       Th < only 6 changes, cxq dropped
D      Z   C       N       S         T  b d f g h j k l m n p r s t v w y
Not much has to be changed with the consonants, add 2, drop 3, change 4 
English speech uses 23 consonants [22 pure], Unifon has 23 sound signs. 
The problem in the TO is in the inconsistent applicaition of the alphabet 
The vowels are a bit more complicated. c x &q are used to represent vowels 
 

Unifon 2 vowels   YnifOn vqlz

6 Checked  diphthongs Free Vowels  3  retained - no change
all/awe  ah  up  hook  out  oil   eye you  ray  eel   oat ooze  her   no change in short vowels
 o    q    x      v  au    oi     I    U  A     E     O    u     x/c  a   e   i 
The three redundant letters are reassigned to sounds without phonograms 
Reassignment is always potentially problematic. It takes a while to see the C as a lazy U instead of a k/s phonogram. 
Many unifon constructions do not resemble TES, allow = clq 
V for very, v for up.  R for 3.  hRdxr  x for schwa, X for ch.  W for hook, u for oo, U for you.  I wxnt tu go tu XRX.  o=aw O=owe, I w  c=aa  cr U hOm 
pct wcsh kcr, hE tot Dx tct hiz nvmbR sistM. 

Unifon II compared to Unifon I
aare=qr, or=or, calm=kqm, cost=kost/kQst
aur korvet iz mI favørit kqr
There is no great difference between UnifOn 2 and Unifqnt 2
are=xr, or=Or, calm=kxm, all=xl, cost=cost/kxst 

qr kOrvet iz mI fAvcrit kxr
qr  kOrvet  iz  mI  fAvcrit  kxr

qr kOrvet iz mI fAvcrit kxr
aur korvet iz mI fAvcrit kqr
Our corvett iz mi feiverit caar 
Spanglish is digraphic and more complicated than U2
but it shows primary stress and looks more traditional

 
U2

The main change between Unifon I and II is the reassignment
of [o] from [aa] to [awe].  [ah] is associated with [q] and the
script a.  what = wqt wat,  want = wqnt,  or = or, far = fqr 
cost = cost, tot=tqt, taut=tot, bought = bot, moss= mos, ...
The Q is available for a British accent.  bQDcr fqDcr.
c [lazy U] is used in one syllable words insstead of x or u.
dU dc rYt TiN, mqn

Is this UnifOn?  Almost.

The Unifon alphabet has a symbol for every significant sound in the English language.  It merges the initial sounds in wear and where.  However, the cap W is available for those who want to make this distinction. wer/Wer

Check out the sample sentence below and see if this presents any problem. If you can pronounce it, you can spell it in Unifon.  This simple symbol-sound table is all you need to learn.
If you are our guide, where are we going and what should we wear?
  ·if U qr aur gId, Wer qr wE gOiN and Wat Svd wE wer? 
Use the back arrow on your browser to return to the table of contents 


  • Almost the same as keyboard unifon except for a few phonograms
    • o for awe rather than alms
    • o for awe rather than [x]
    • q for alms rather than [o]
    • q for alms rather than owl
    • au for owl rather than [q]
    • oi for oil rather than [Q]
    • Q for the British short o [if needed]  -bQDc

      • normally merged with o for awe.      -boDc
    • Use of c [lazy U] expanded.  Used in all one syllable words, hcr, cp
    • x for u in herder  [hxrdcr rather than hurdcr]
    • U for you/ ewe rather than Y
      • C for ch rather than K  [CcrC] rather than [KurK]
    Unifon II compared to the Merriam-Webster Pronunciation Guide
    Uni M-W  Guide SS Uni  M-W  Guide SS Uni M-W  Guide SS
    a
    A
    e
    Ezy
    i
    I
    q
    O    		 \a\ as a in ash [aS]
    \A\ as a in ace [As]
    \e\ as e in bet
    \E\ as ea & y in easy
    \i\ as i in hit
    \I\ as i in ice [Is]
    \ä\ as o in mop 
    \O\ as o in go [gO]
    ae
    ey
    e
    i-y
    i.
    ai
    o.
    oa
    		 x
    u
    U*
    cr
    v
    o
    q    		 \u\ as in upper [xpc]
    \ü\ as oo in loot
    \yu\ as in use [Yz]
    \&\ as a in abut
    \&r\ as er in herder
    \u\ as oo in foot
    \o\ as aw in law
    \ä\ as a in are    		 a
    u
    yu
    a
    er
    w
    ao
    aa    		 au
    oi
    T
    D
    C
    y
    Z
    W    		 \au\ as ou in out 
    \oi\ as oy in boy
    \th\ as th in thin
    \th]\ as th in the 
    \ch\ as ch in chin [Cin]
    \y\ as y in yet
    \zh\ as si in vision
    \hw\ as wh in when
    ao
    oy
    th.
    th
    ch
    y
    zh
    w
     Key words from the list above:  ash, As, bet, Ezy, hit, Is, mqp, gO, upcr, lut, Uz, cbxt, hRrdcr, fvt, lo, qr, aut, boi, Tin, Dc, Cin, Yet, viZcn, Wen.

    A BETTER CODE Unifon builds phonic awareness and can be mastered in as little as two hours. In a first grade class it may take 2 to 8 weeks. With the current crop of basal readers, children learn about 1200 words in their first three years of school.  After 2 months with unifon, children could use their entire 3500+ word vocabulary:  They could write any word they could pronounce and pronounce any word they saw written in this code. 

    The strategy is no different than the one used with the initial teaching alphabet.  The issue is - do children have time to learn two codes?  The argument here is that students need two codes for English because the traditional code is [1] not easily written and [2] not a reliable guide to pronunciation. 

    It takes a while to go from a consistent code to a complex inconsistent one. 
     



    Do you have a question about how to transcribe a particular word? Just type it in the window above and check the pronunciation guide spelling.  This will be almost identical to Unifon after changing the digraphs [sh] to unigraphs [S] and the schwas [&] to a lazy U's.

    Q U I C K   L I N K S
    		   Table of Contents
    Download unifont
    Unifon Alphabet
    Rationale | keyboard
    Pronunciation Guide
    Sound spell | sample
    Link page  | spell test
    Links to other related pages
  • - uni-fonemic-transkripshcn
  • uni-keyboard.html - unifon-keyboard.htm 
  • uni-rationale.html - unifon-malone.html 
  • reasons to reform the English writing system
  • - a digraphic phonemic transcription system 

    • based on the Saxon augmented Latin alphabet - shows stress
  • - an anglophonic digraphic system that shows stress
  • polyvalence  -  multiple values - a major problem with the traditional system
  • another automated online spelling test
  • http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html -  list of ipa symbols
  • more ipa chaarts  21 vowels
  • shavian-ipa-keybd16.gif
  • English Simplified -book reference at Amazon

    •  


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