The Shavian Alphabet

I’ve been spending some time the last few days learning the Shavian alphabet. There’s a great learning application at shavian.app.

What’s the point of this? I mean, fun mainly. One point of this alphabet is to have an actually phonetic (or phonemic to be precise) representation. English has a lot of phonemes, but not a lot of agreement on what they are or how they’re realized; Wikipedia doesn’t give an exact number but lets you add 24 consonants to as few as 14-16 vowels for the General American dialect or as many as 20-25 vowels in the Received Pronunciation, yielding as few as 38 or as many as 49 distinct phonemes, meaning we are missing symbols for between 12 and 23 phonemes, depending on how you count. Are there benefits to writing what we actually say?

Before seeing this particular attempt, I sort of assumed it couldn’t possibly work because the sounds of Indian English differ substantially from American or British English. I am singling out these three because you can make a strong argument that any of these should form the basis of a new English spelling standard: Indian, because it has the most speakers; British, because it is the original recipe; American, because of cultural imperialism. None of these would be very satisfying.

Shavian addresses the problem by being overtly phonemic and basing pronunciation on words. This idea is not that far from the idea of lexical sets. The original definition from 1982 yields 27 phonemes, and this table shows the agreement between these and Shavian:

Keyword	RP Phone	GA Phone	Shavian character	Character name	Examples
KIT	ɪ	ɪ	𐑦	if	ship, sick, bridge, milk, myth, busy
DRESS	e	ɛ	𐑧	egg	step, neck, edge, shelf, friend, ready
TRAP	æ	æ	𐑨	ash	tap, back, badge, scalp, hand, cancel
LOT	ɒ	ɑ	𐑪	on	stop, sock, dodge, romp, possible, quality
STRUT	ʌ	ʌ	𐑳	up	cup, suck, budge, pulse, trunk, blood
FOOT	ʊ	ʊ	𐑫	wool	put, bush, full, good, look, wolf
BATH	ɑː	æ	𐑨	ash	staff, brass, ask, dance, sample, calf
CLOTH	ɒ	ɔ	𐑪	on	cough, broth, cross, long, Boston
NURSE	ɜː	ɜr	𐑻	err	hurt, lurk, urge, burst, jerk, term
FLEECE	iː	i	𐑰	eat	creep, speak, leave, feel, key, people
FACE	eɪ	eɪ	𐑱	age	tape, cake, raid, veil, steak, day
PALM	ɑː	ɑ	𐑭	ah	psalm, father, bra, spa, lager
THOUGHT	ɔː	ɔ	𐑷	awe	taught, sauce, hawk, jaw, broad
GOAT	əʊ	oʊ	𐑴	oak	soap, joke, home, know, so, roll
GOOSE	uː	u	𐑵, 𐑿	ooze, yew	loop, shoot, tomb, mute, huge, view
PRICE	aɪ	aɪ	𐑲	ice	ripe, write, arrive, high, try, buy
CHOICE	ɔɪ	ɔɪ	𐑶	oil	adroit, noise, join, toy, royal
MOUTH	aʊ	aʊ	𐑬	out	out, house, loud, count, crowd, cow
NEAR	ɪə	ɪr	𐑽	ear	beer, sincere, fear, beard, serum
SQUARE	ɛə	ɛr	𐑺	air	care, fair, pear, where, scarce, vary
START	ɑː	ɑr	𐑸	are	far, sharp, bark, carve, farm, heart
NORTH	ɔː	ɔr	𐑹	or	for, war, short, scorch, born, warm
FORCE	ɔː	or	𐑹	or	four, wore, sport, porch, borne, story
CURE	ʊə	ʊr	𐑫𐑼	wool, array	poor, tourist, pure, plural, jury
happY	ɪ	ɪ	𐑦	if	copy, scampi, taxi, sortie, committee, hockey, Chelsea
lettER	ə	ər	𐑼	array	paper, metre, calendar, stupor, succo(u)r, martyr
commA	ə	ə	𐑩	ado	about, gallop, oblige, quota, vodka

You can see from the chart there are only a few examples that are not distinguished by Shavian, but having separate characters for rhotacized vowels seems clever to me, since they should occur in relatively predictable ways but can be pronounced with or without the R sound. I think it’s worth appreciating the cleverness of this approach, which prefigured lexical sets by a few decades, and yields an alphabet uniquely suited to English despite the plethora of local realizations of its large and fairly unique phonetic set.

Using Shavian, I am made pretty aware my accent and how it differs from the Received Pronunciation. For instance, when I say the word “been” it rhymes with “bin” and not “bean.” The words “caught” and “cot,” I pronounce the same, but if I imagine a British accent I can sort of imagine how the sounds differ. There are some standardized “spellings” for words that requires one to think in RP, or at least an accent with more vowels than my American accent affords, although using or not using standard spellings seems not to be a contentious issue within the tiny Shavian user community.

I think the majority of L1 English speakers are probably unaware of some of the phonemes. The obvious ones that come to mind are θ/ð. It’s not easy for me to guess which one I am using in a given word, and as far as distinct phonemes, there are not that many minimal pairs for this set (ether/either seems to be one of the few). I think most L1 English speakers think of this as “the TH sound” and wouldn’t do much better than me at guessing without a finger to their throat which they are using in a given word. Another example might be the word “think,” which phonetically contains what we English speakers would call “the -ing sound,” in Shavian you have to encode that but if you were thinking in terms of the normal Latin spelling you wouldn’t realize it.

I have frequently said that English suffers from an overabundance of shwa sounds. I think now that isn’t technically correct. Shavian helps show that what Engish does have is an abundance of vowels, and consequently many are not that different, and/or located near the middle. It’s fun to click around the vowel chart on Wikipedia and try and find one that doesn’t have an entry for some form of English; I didn’t find one but didn’t do an exhaustive search.

Aesthetically speaking, it’s pretty good looking, especially at first blush. It’s distinctive, it’s cool that there are 48 characters we can distinguish without picking up the pen. It doesn’t really look like anything else. Another plus is that the name would make one think it was designed by an Armenian, which it certainly wasn’t. It’s quite wise, in my opinion, to use certain letters as single-glyph words (for “the,”-𐑞 “to,”-𐑑 “are,”-𐑸 “for,”-𐑓 “and,”-𐑯 and “of”-𐑝). The sound-shape correspondences are interesting but not necessarily super helpful for remembering sounds. Most alphabets (Inuktitut is an exception) don’t have every possible permutation of each shape. In my five-day-old opinion, some of the shapes are not easy to write. I have noticed, as others have, the funny fact that the glyphs for “h” and “ng” are in the voiced and unvoiced categories respectively, which seems wrong, although the decision was apparently intentional. I don’t think it’s worth litigating these things, although they are curious. For instance, you’re better off learning Esperanto than Ido even though Ido is probably “better” in various ways, because it’s better to just pick something and get the community going around it rather than constantly nit-picking, creating minor refinements, and fracturing the community along the way.

An interesting benefit is that overall, text typically takes about 1/3rd less space to write in Shavian. Here’s an example:

𐑴 𐑕𐑳𐑯 𐑝 𐑕𐑐𐑦𐑮𐑦𐑑!	O Son of Spirit!
𐑞 𐑚𐑧𐑕𐑑 𐑚𐑦𐑤𐑳𐑝𐑩𐑛 𐑝 𐑷𐑤 𐑔𐑦𐑙𐑟 𐑦𐑯 𐑥𐑲 𐑕𐑲𐑑 𐑦𐑟 𐑡𐑳𐑕𐑑𐑦𐑕;	The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice;
𐑑𐑻𐑯 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑩𐑢𐑱 𐑞𐑺𐑓𐑮𐑪𐑥 𐑦𐑓 𐑞𐑬 𐑛𐑦𐑟𐑲𐑼𐑧𐑕𐑑 𐑥𐑰,	turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me,
𐑯 𐑯𐑦𐑜𐑤𐑧𐑒𐑑 𐑦𐑑 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑞𐑨𐑑 𐑲 𐑥𐑱 𐑒𐑩𐑯𐑓𐑲𐑛 𐑦𐑯 𐑞𐑰.	and neglect it not that I may confide in thee.
𐑚𐑲 𐑦𐑑𐑕 𐑱𐑛 𐑞𐑬 𐑖𐑨𐑤𐑑 𐑕𐑰 𐑢𐑦𐑞 𐑞𐑲𐑯 𐑴𐑯 𐑲𐑟	By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes
𐑯 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑔𐑮𐑵 𐑞 𐑲𐑟 𐑝 𐑳𐑞𐑼𐑟,	and not through the eyes of others,
𐑯 𐑖𐑨𐑤𐑑 𐑯𐑴 𐑝 𐑞𐑲𐑯 𐑴𐑯 𐑯𐑪𐑤𐑦𐑡	and shalt know of thine own knowledge
𐑯 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑔𐑮𐑵 𐑞 𐑯𐑪𐑤𐑦𐑡 𐑝 𐑞𐑲 𐑯𐑱𐑚𐑼.	and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor.
𐑐𐑪𐑯𐑛𐑼 𐑞𐑦𐑕 𐑦𐑯 𐑞𐑲 𐑣𐑸𐑑; 𐑣𐑬 𐑦𐑑 𐑚𐑦𐑣𐑵𐑝𐑧𐑔 𐑞𐑰 𐑑 𐑚𐑰.	Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be.
𐑝𐑧𐑮𐑦𐑤𐑦 𐑡𐑳𐑕𐑑𐑦𐑕 𐑦𐑟 𐑥𐑲 𐑜𐑦𐑓𐑑 𐑑 𐑞𐑰	Verily justice is My gift to thee
𐑯 𐑞 𐑕𐑲𐑯 𐑝 𐑥𐑲 𐑤𐑳𐑝𐑦𐑙-𐑒𐑲𐑯𐑛𐑯𐑩𐑕.	and the sign of My loving-kindness.
𐑕𐑧𐑑 𐑦𐑑 𐑞𐑧𐑯 𐑚𐑦𐑓𐑹 𐑞𐑲𐑯 𐑲𐑟.	Set it then before thine eyes.
— ·𐑚𐑭𐑣𐑭𐑵𐑤𐑭	— Baha’u’llah

via The Hidden Words.

Where does this reduction come from? I’m not a statistics person but I’ll guess. Small words becoming one character or two is certainly a big help. Another significant help is that many small words have a lot of silent letters, “through” being the best example (it becomes 𐑔𐑮𐑵, beating the slang “thru” by a character). On the other hand, there is no “x” character, so words like “exist” can actually become longer (“𐑦𐑜𐑟𐑦𐑕𐑑”). Probably in many cases, it’s simply digraphs like “sh” and “ch” or dipthongs like “ou” and “er” creating a small benefit across many words.

Thinking about Shavian reminded me of when my daughter was very young and very desperate to write. She would spell things “phonetically” wich yuzuly rezultid n smthin hahrd tu red. Would this have been easier? It’s twice as big, so maybe the alphabet would take twice as long to learn. But it is uniform—apart from the distinctions mentioned earlier—so after learning the alphabet, reading would be entirely a matter of practice, getting faster, and learning vocabulary. That’s got to be worth a year or two of education.

A downside which only a great speller like myself would point out is that there is tremendous historical information in the way we spell things. The first part of the words “function,” “funny” and “phonetic” sound the same, but you can tell by looking that one comes from Greek and the others do not, and that the latter shares some meaning with words like “phonograph” and “telephone.” This information is purely written. But it also tortures students and led us here, where fixing spelling is a significant benefit of using a computer.

Shavian is unlikely to unseat English’s Latin-based orthography, but it is fun, fairly easy to learn, unique looking, and has various advantages. Wide usage is not one of those advantages but perhaps it will increase! It’s probably a better spelling reform than just reintroducing ð and þ.

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