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Guide to a good alphabet

Linguistic Phonetic Alphabet and Phonetic Alphabet for everyday use

The purpose of a Linguistic Phonetic Alphabet is to describe the full set of possible human phonemes, as precisely as possible in an organized and systematic way. That’s all that really matters. A Linguistic Phonetic Alphabet is used by highly skilled professionals in the scope of their professional work.

The purpose of a Phonetic Alphabet for everyday use is to describe with close enough proximity, set of phonemes used for a language or group of languages. A Phonetic Alphabet for everyday use must be highly readable, highly writable and easy to learn. An alphabet for everyday use is used by every human that speaks any of languages alphabet is made for. It must be attainable for toddlers that are drawing their first lines and for common workers as well as for university students and professors.

Readability of Alphabet

Can you read this: Ill I1l 1l1?

It is written ILL I1L 1L1. If the alphabet is designed so that letters are alike as much as possible, it can take few seconds to read the short line of text because context analysis is included in the brain background. For a few lines of text it might not matter, but if you are preparing exam with few hundreds of pages it can make a big difference. If the basic shapes of letters are versatile, text will be read more quickly and easily.

Can you read this:  ?

It is written GOTHIC. When reading text with ornament lines and serifs the brain attempts to exclude all unnecessary lines and shapes and to find the basic shape of letter. Speed of reading is decreased dramatically.

Advertising companies know that very well, and that is the reason why on billboards for drivers text is usually in Verdana, Arial or similar fonts without serifs and ornamental lines.

Write ability of Alphabet

When you are hand writing a letter, the speed depends of overall length of curves and number of curves that form the letter. Switching from one curve to another is like changing the direction of a car. You have to stop from full speed, to change direction and then to continue. The brain does this in the background very quickly and hand follows, but the number of curves decreases the speed of writing more than overall length of letter lines. This is the reason why I was trying to assign writing intensive letters to less frequent phonemes.

The letter must be designed so that in hand writing it can be continued from preceding letter, and that it can be continued with next letter. This is the reason why for letter "Ð ð" I selected modified version “Đ đ”. It is difficult to continue letter "ð" with next letter.

The basic and quickest visual recognition is contour recognition. If this one fails or is not sufficient, brain takes further analysis. For that reason letters with versatile shapes like: ж, ђ, ä and č will be recognized way before letters with uniform shapes like: I, l, f and t. Designing lowers case l like one straight line is crime against readability. Readability and write ability are in conflict and readability must have the priority, but common sense must be included in judgment. Balance is the essence of everything.

What means "close enough proximity?"

Some of the phonemes like [ä], [æ] or [ω] might sound slightly different in British and American English, but for common use they are close enough to be recognized as the same phonemes and to have the same letters. Difference is important only from linguistic point of view. In the engineering production this is called tolerance field. This approach minimizes the differences between British and American spelling. There will be some differences between British and American spelling though, e.g. Americans often use [ë], [e], and [e] where British use [æ], [ë] and [ä] respectively.

Second issue is that in some cases transition from one phoneme to another is analog. Range from "a" to "æ" one can divide like: a-ä-æ, or like: a-ä-ä2-æ-æ2. I was trying to set the steps in range chains of phonemes in such a way to minimize spelling differences between British and American pronunciation. Also, it must be taken into account that people with less developed sense of hearing will not be able to hear the difference if there are too many steps in a range chain. Musicians will always be able to distinguish more steps than people that can’t play music or sing. I set the steps so that majority of population (more than 90%) can hear and distinct the difference between steps.

Sometimes two phonemes are very close, but if some words will swap or change the meaning if the phonemes are not distinct, separate letters must be assigned. E. g. "Čč” and “Ћћ”.

From the learning point of view it is better if number of letters is smaller, but it is also responsibility of the one that is doing the alphabet to maximize, not to minimize vocal ability of the nation. It is much better to have 42 letters for English Phonetic Spelling, or 65 for whole major European group, than to have over 200 variations of classic spelling with thousands of "belong in", "belong out" specimens.

Second issue about is that of printing. If letters are in upper case, or printed lower case, hand written upper case and hand written lower each are different, one has to learn and recognize in reading four different letters for one phoneme. In Cyrillic Alphabets to shorten the learning curve, and to speed up reading, for a big number of letters upper cases, lower cases, printed and hand written letters are the same.

What happens next?

After introducing Phonetic Alphabet, a language enters the last phase of articulation. Phonemes which are members of "range chains" e. g. a-ä-æ, ч-č-ћ and whose pronunciation differs from region to region start to group around center values marked by letters. Differences in pronunciation between regions decrease. If stressing symbols are used, stressing also becomes standardized. It happens that after some periods of use of stressing symbols they are abandoned, because stressing become fully standardized and there is no need for them any more.

If the number of steps in a "range chain" is too big and majority of population can’t achieve it, pronunciation will group around one value of chain range or around top and bottom values of chain range. The language will be partially muted.

If the number of steps in a "range chain" is too small mid values will be lost and that language will be partially muted. Balance is the essence of everything.