The Shavian alphabet (also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as "phonetic" as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to phonemes); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings".
hat tip to
Quotes in #Shavian writing. This one, from Christopher Hitchens:
"One test of 'un homme sérioux' is that it is possible to learn from him even when one radically disagrees with him."#hitchens pic.twitter.com/r0svJipeLx
— William Borix (@boricensis) September 30, 2018
@c Thanks for mentioning this!
In high school I came across the Shavian alphabet while studying Pygmalion and loved the idea. Years later I went back to find the source in the library and, to my disappointment, it was no longer catalogued. There was no Wikipedia then!
@the I just came across it via an information theorist, but I’ve been interested in these areas at the intersection where memory techniques overlap with shorthand. Shavian has a lot of similarities to these, though I’m always more interested in the direct history prior to 1800 when several shorthands became more popular.