THE DESIGN OF THE  ALFUBET

 Now you can start to write alphabetically in Unifon!

EK letcr iz csOsEAtcd wiT c siNgl sqnd - each letter is associated with a single

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 ]

JohnMalone, the Chicago engineer who invented Unifon, added 17 special characters to the traditional alphabet to create the Unifon alphabet. A common way to mark a long vowel is with a macron or bar over the letter. Malone integrated the bar into the design of the new letters. The long A [Ale] is created by dropping the cross bar to the baseline.  The long  E [Eel] is created by adding a cross bar to the letter I.  The I has the [ee] sound in many foreign words [ski, amino, machine].  The long I [Eye] is basically a inverted Y with a bar.  It also looks a little like an eye.  The long O has a similar bar at the base of the O shape. There are two long U's [Use]  and [Ooze].  One has a bar at the top, the other at the bottom.  [more on sign design] 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]

Note the addition of 17 phonograms to the alphabet:  11 new vowels and 6 consonants
The new consonant symbols replace the digraphic representations: ng, ch dh, th, sh, zh.
dh is represented with th in the traditonal writing system and zh is represented with an s.
These code overlaps create real  problems for learners.  See the page on polyvalence.

Dc YnifOn alfcbetTM THE UNIFON ALPHABET 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 a following.

COLOR CODED CHART If an alphabet is a picture of speech, it would 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].  M-W does not require perfect spelling: Invented spellings 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:  To provide enough information for "newbies" to enable them to [1] download the Unifon font and [2] to start soundspelling in Unifon

How to download and install the UNIFON font.  [download now]

• When you click on the active link, a pop up SAVE window will appear 
• Find the FONTS folder in the WINDOWS subdirectory on your C: drive 
• Click on the FONTS folder to open it, then click on and SAVE to install

Except for syllables ending in R, o is used for the aa sound.  what = wot,  want = wont,  or = Or not xr,  far = fxr not for.  cost = cxst, bought = bxt, moss= mxs

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. 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 Y xr qr gId, wer xr wE gOiN and wot SCd wE wer?
if Y xr qr gId, wer xr wE gOiN and wot SCd wE wer?Use the back arrow on your browser to return to the table of contents 

• Unifon transcriptions 2  dual reader  Sound-spelling
• Quiz - the spelling test   - Links
• The case for UniCase - doing away with captial letters

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

unifon lower case - U2

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

English Simplified -book reference at Amazon