This is the Shavian community: a community to practice reading and writing with the Shavian alphabet.
The Shavian alphabet is a phonetic alphabet for the English language: in Shavian, you write a word the way you pronounce it. For more information you can check out the alphabet chart on the wiki page here.
The Shavian alphabet was proposed by the 20th century playwright George Bernard Shaw, and created after his death. Shaw was passionate about phonetic writing, and wrote some of his literary works in shorthand.
So how about you, why might you want to learn the Shavian alphabet? Maybe you’re…
- a writer too, and want to experiment with writing phonetically
- a non-native English speaker and you want to read English as it’s pronounced
- generally interested in linguistics, and want to play with a new toy
- interested in learning a language, but don’t have the time or inclination. Settle for learning an alphabet instead!
Just want to practice reading? Subscribe and get a few morsels of Shavian script in your feed every day.
If you want to write, come and give it a go! For text input, you have a few options. If you’re a Linux user and like to keep it simple, here’s a Shavian XKB layout you can edit as you wish. Otherwise, shavian.info has some keyboard resources.
𐑔𐑨𐑯𐑒𐑕 𐑓 𐑒𐑳𐑥𐑦𐑙 𐑑 𐑥𐑲 TED 𐑑𐑷𐑒!
Even if English didn’t completely switch over, there are some fascinating possible uses for something like Shavian as a second alphabet. For example, it could be used as a pronunciation aid like furigana in Japanese, or in a novel it could be used to represent speech, and capture the accent of the speaker.
Well it’s fun to play around with anyway!
Ok now I’ve sunk an hour or so into learning about it, and I’m just about sold on trying it out lol
Cool!
It’s up to you how you do it but I just threw myself into writing with it. You can write something simple to post to the community if you like!