Shavian alphabet
| Shavian alphabet 𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑨𐑤𐑓𐑩𐑚𐑧𐑑 | |
|---|---|
| Script type | Alphabet
|
| Creator | Ronald Kingsley Read |
Period | 1960—present |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| Languages | English, Esperanto |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | (Constructed writing system)
|
Child systems | Quikscript, Shaw Alphabet, Ŝava |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Shaw (281), Shavian (Shaw) |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Shavian |
| U+10450–U+1047F | |
The Shavian alphabet (/ˈʃeɪviən/ SHAY-vee-ən; also known as the Shaw alphabet) is a constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language to replace the inefficiencies and difficulties of conventional spelling using the Latin alphabet. It was posthumously funded by and named after the playwright George Bernard Shaw and designed by Ronald Kingsley Read, a professional signwriter and letterer.
Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet:
- at least 40 letters (it ended up with 48, including ligatures);
- as phonetic as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to phonemes);
- distinct from the Latin alphabet (to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply misspellings).