What is the Shaw or Shavian alphabet?

The Shaw alphabet is a modern, phonetically accurate replacement for the old Roman alphabet to write English. The Shaw alphabet has been designed to write modern English more quickly and effectively. The Roman alphabet was designed specifically for Latin, over 2,600 years ago, and has become the alphabet of choice for hundreds of languages. It became the customary alphabet for written English, as Latin was the language of education, at the time, that the writing of English.

Who created the Shaw alphabet?

A contest was announced specifying the linguistic requirements, in 1958. Four contestants submitted alphabet schemes that met or surpassed the requirements. The Shaw Alphabet was created from an amalgam of these 4 proposals. Kingsley Read, an architect and designer, provided the majority of the design. He also created a script or cursive version of the Shaw alphabet called Quickscript. Further revisions to remove some confusing spiral letters and to streamline an overly complex vowel design were successful and incorporated in this book by the author.

Why was the Shaw alphabet created?

The Shaw alphabet was developed in the 1958 and 1959, at the specific bequest of George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright. As a writer of spoken English, he believed the Roman alphabet was inadequate to represent common spoken English. He believed that a phonetic alphabet tailored to English would both improve and standardize English communication around the world, and reduce class distinction based on accent. See Chapter 6, for details on the History of the Shaw alphabet.

What makes the Shaw alphabet different from the regular alphabet?

Roman alphabet has 26 letters, many with more than one pronunciation. Shaw Alphabet has 53 letters, each with only one pronunciation. It also has 8 vowel markers. Roman alphabet has a number of silent letters, some of which are used to indicate an alternate pronunciations of a preceding letter. Shaw alphabet pronounces all letters and vowel markers and is completely phonetic. Roman alphabet has capital letters for each of the 26 letters. So the reader must recognize 52 characters, in any case. Some lowercase characters are not easily distinguishable. For example the lower case "L" resembles the upper case "I" and the number "1". Capital letters are used to indicate the beginning of the sentence, names and many other things. Shaw alphabet has no Capital letters. The 19 vowel letters are organized into 9 sound pairs which sound alike, except for the addition of a Glottal Stop. The Shaw Alphabet differentiates between vowels that begin a word and have a glottal stop, (Primary) and vowels that begin a syllable and don't have a glottal stop, (Secondary). Whoops, the 19th vowel represents another plain vowel sound that is always pronounced without a preceding Glottal Stop. So it doesn't match up with another vowel.

Why it easier to spell words with the Shaw Alphabet?

English has a wide number of variations in its spelling using the Roman alphabet. Multiple spellings for the same word are considered acceptable. (ie. Colour, color, gaol, jail, key, quay) Different English words can even have the same pronunciation, (i.e. One, won) with little regard to the phonetic value of the Roman letters. Shaw alphabet spells each English word phonetically with very little redundancy. There are only two additional redundant letters, that can be used for direct transliteration of Roman and Hebrew letters, but they are not used for normal transliteration or transcription. Written English using the Roman cursive alphabet is falling into disuse, except to provide signatures for legal documents, due to the easy availability of computer word processing. The form of each of the Shaw letters has been simplified to ensure only 1 or 2 pen strokes are required to write each letter. It is faster to print in the Shaw Alphabet, than to write in the Roman cursive alphabet.

What is the difference between a Shaw vowel letter and a Shaw vowel marker ?

Both vowel letters and vowel markers are part of the Shaw alphabet, but they have different functions. The Shaw Letters indicate the exact vowel sounds for the key vowels of a written word. The Shaw Vowel Marker indicates just the kind of vowel used in the written word and how the internal vowels hold the syllables together. The main or Primary Shaw vowel letters each represents a specific vowel sound preceded by a Glottal Stop in order to make it emphatic. A Shaw vowel marker indicates the presence of a vowel, without an associated Glottal Stop. A vowel marker does not indicate the specific vowel. It indicates the type of vowel. For example, whether it is a long, short, double, half sized vowel or Schwa. A vowel marker does not necessarily give an exact pronunciation. There may be as many as 6 different vowel sounds, represented by any one particular vowel marker. Or as few a one vowel sound in the case of a Schwa. The Roman alphabet uses over 30 of vowel letters and vowel letter combinations made up from "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", "w" and "y" and also adds the silent "e" to the end of the word to indicate many of the various vowel sounds used by English. Unfortunately, all of those various vowel letters and vowel letter combinations are not logical and do not consistently represent the same sound. The Shaw alphabet uses a system, that can handle a wider variety of vowel sounds and their combinations and represent them accurately and consistently.