Shavian alphabet

Posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the Shavian alphabet (also known as Shaw alphabet) was conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. Shaw set two main criteria for the new alphabet: that it should be phonetic, with as great as possible a 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds; and that it should be distinct from the Latin alphabet so as to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings".

Related Topics:
George Bernard Shaw - English language - Conventional spelling - Latin alphabet

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A contest for the design of the new alphabet was held, which was won by a Mr. Ronald Kingsley Read. Read later modified the Shavian alphabet to create Quickscript, with more ligatures intended for handwriting, and another Latin-based script.

Related Topics:
Ronald Kingsley Read - Quickscript

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Due to contestation of Shaw's will, the trust charged with developing the new alphabet was only able to afford to publish one book: a version of Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion, in bi-alphabetic edition with both conventional and Shavian spellings. (1962 Penguin Books, London)

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