One Approach to a Universal Alphabet, Revised

Human speech is limited by our anatomy to the sounds capable of utterance. Languages illustrate this.

Recorded documents consist of words written in character sets, or alphabets, reflecting traditions of thousands of years of practiced scribing in the context of each culture’s then-current consensus. Alphabets of existing cultures today bear only slight resemblance to the original scripts; and only if those forms are known.

Attempts have been made to identify an oral and written proto-language from which all others descended. But that backward search is not what this article is about.

Another recent pursuit recognizes the similarities in human thought in most of the northern Eurasian languages. Esperanto, for example, attempts to make documents and speech easily understandable among most current cultures. But this attempt at taming today’s Babel is not what this article is about either.

The new wave of international science coupled with the brute force of the internet, both predominantly in American English, have made that language probably the most accessible in the world today. But English is still at best regional, and at most a second language to the majority of the world. So, this article isn’t about making that language a world language either.

Although these recent attempts have merit, they do not recognize the reality of human beings’ resistance to change. So any proposed change has to be minimal and has to make sense to everyone hearing about it.

Any change must also be fundamental in order to improve communication on a global level.

So the real concern here is to provide a fundamental change in how we all think about language that will at the same time be minimal in impacting the structures and organizations that currently exist. No small task.

Chas. T. Luthy’s book, “The Universal Alphabet”, was self-described as:

“. . . This alphabet is based upon the correct analysis of the human speech sounds, the correct analysis of the Roman script letters . . . It contains an appropriate letter for each of the forty-three different speech sounds in the human voice so that the alphabet is adapted for the use of all nations . . .”

Mr. Luthy’s book was unknown to me when I first wrote on this topic, in June 2008. Although he went in a different direction than me with his “universal alphabet”, in this revision I will be referring to the 43 human speech sounds he has written about.

I have proposed a new alphabet that can be used by all cultures. This new alphabet will consist of pictographs as characters. The new characters will illustrate the outward positions of the lips and teeth, as the speech sounds are produced. Just like current languages, this alphabet will be limited to sounds, and therefore meanings, in context. But it will reflect each current language’s sounds, because it uses the sounds humans speak.

I will demonstrate this new alphabet with existing European characters, like those you’re reading now. But the alphabet could also be shown using a new font suited to it.

I’ll begin with the 43 sounds Mr. Luthy has referred to. But citing the redundancies of the sounds themselves and the mouth parts and face positions used to produce those sounds, I’ll reduce the number of characters to eight. In other words, this new universal alphabet will only use eight characters. Differing regional and national colloquialisms and current context will effect word pronunciations, as they always have.

Let me show you how I do this.

In each language, characters signify sounds. In Chinese, pictograms represent sounds and words. In English we have the letters:

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

There is no way of knowing which letter signifies what sound unless you’re taught, with much repetition.

Along with the difference between character shape and sound, comes some redundancy. For example, both “B” and “P” make similar sounds. And since “X” is a combination of the “K” and “S” sounds, it will be left off our new list.

Chas. T. Luthy lists 43 sounds of human speech. They are seventeen vowel sounds and 26 consonants, as follows:

* Four “a” sounds, as in made, fad, ask, far
* Three “o” sounds, as in not, mode, ton
* Three “e” sounds, as in need, pet, pert
* An “i” sound, as in pit
* Five “u” sounds, as in rude, put, burn, grun, view

1. A “b” sound as in lobe
2. A “ch” sound as in fetch
3. A “kh” sound as in back
4. A “d” sound as in feed
5. An “f” sound as in fat
6. A “g” sound as in gut
7. A “gh” sound as in tog
8. An “h” sound as in hot
9. A “j” sound as in age
10. A “k” sound as in kin
11. An “l” sound as in veil
12. An “m” sound as in boom
13. An “n” sound as in bean
14. Two “ng” sounds as in long, and monkey
15. A “p” sound as in pat
16. An “r” sound as in bar
17. An “s” sound as in sit
18. An “sh” sound as in shun
19. A “t” sound as in ten
20. A “th” sound as in thanks
21. A “dh” sound as in lathe
22. A “v” sound as in eve
23. A “w” sound as in wet
24. A “y” sound as in yet
25. A “zh” sound as in rouge
26. A “z” sound as in haze

Considering the similarity of sounds, we can reduce the number of sounds above.

* Of the four “a” sounds, the “a” sound in made is really a diphthong of two “e” sounds, as in pet, and need. Fad and ask use “a” sounds that are too similar to list as two. The “a” sound in far is similar to the “o” sound in not. These give us one distinct “a” sound, the short “a” sound, as in fad and ask.
* The three “e” sounds are those in need, pet, pert. The long e in need and the short e in pet are unique. The e sound in pert is a u sound. The “y” sound, as in yet, is similar to the vowel combination, or diphthong, formed from “e” and “a” sounds.
* The “i” sound in pit is distinct.
* The three “o” sounds are those in not, mode, and ton. The short and long o sounds, in not and mode, are distinct. The o sound in ton is a u sound.
* Of the five “u” sounds, as in rude, put, burn, grun, and view, the long “u” sound in rude is unique. The short u sound in burn is like the e in pert and the o in ton. The u sounds in put, grun and view are diphthongs of the long u and the short i, the long e and long u sounds, respectively. The “w” sound, as in wet, is similar to the diphthong formed from the long u sound and the sound of whichever vowel follows the “w”. This leaves unique “u” sounds, the long and the short.

These ideas give us a total of eight (8) vowel sounds: the short “a”, the long and short “e” sounds, the short “i” sound, the long and short o sounds, and the long and short u sounds.

1. The “p” sound, as in pat, is similar to the “b” sound.
2. The “j” sound, as in jam, is similar to the g in age, which is also similar to the “ch” sound.
3. The “k” sound, as in kin, is similar to the “kh” sound in lock.
4. The “d” sound is unique.
5. The “v” sound, as in eve, is similar to the “f” sound.
6. The “gh” sound, as in tog, is similar to the hard “g” sound.
7. The “h” sound is unique.
8. The “l” sound is distinct.
9. The “m” sound
10. The “n” sound
11. The “ng” sound
12. The “r” sound
13. The “s” sound
14. The “zh” sound, as in rouge, is similar to the “sh” sound.
15. The “t” sound
16. The “dh” sound, as in lathe, is similar to the “th” sound.
17. The “z” sound

So we 17 distinct consonant sounds to the eight (8) vowels.

The parts of the human mouth used, lips, teeth and tongue, and the way the face looks, to make several of these sounds, are the same for several sounds and alphabets or characters representing those sounds. Since they are the same, we can further reduce the number of letters or characters we would need in our universal alphabet. Any differences in sounds can be continued by context and colloquialisms.

* This process gives us the same mouth positions for the similar soft vowel sounds in words like “pat”, “pet”, “pit”, “pot”, and “putt”, and the soft consonant sounds “r” and “h”. One character can represent all these sounds, like the upper case letter “O”, signifying a wide open mouth.
* The long “e” sound, like in the word “need”, requires another character, for a partly closed mouth.
* The long “o” and long “u” sounds are made with the lips nearly closed. This requires another character.

Now we can use three characters for all the vowel sounds, plus “r” and “h”. All other vowel sounds are diphthongs using the sounds listed above.

Continuing this method with the rest of the consonants gives us the following:

* The “b”, “m”, and “p” sounds use the same mouth parts and positions. But the “b” and “p” sounds are aspirated, and the “m” sound isn’t. So we’ll need one character for those three, and use an accent mark for the aspirated “b” and “p”.
* The “ch” sound is similar to the “j” sound in jam and the g sound in age, are similar to the “ch” sound. The “d”, “t”, “dh” and “th” use the same mouth parts and positions. These sounds are aspirated. The “l” and “n” sounds are also made with the same parts and the face looks the same. But they aren’t aspirated. So we’ll use one more character for all these. But we’ll add an accent mark for the aspirated sounds.
* The “kh” sound uses the same mouth parts as the “k” sound, and the “g”, “gh” and “ng” sounds are similar to the “kh” sound. One more character.
* The “f” sound is similar to the “v” sound. One more character.
* The “s” sound and the “z” sound are similar. The “sh” and “zh” sounds are made with the same parts and the face looks the same. One last character.

So we now have three (3) vowel sounds and five (5) plain and two (2) aspirated consonant sounds to represent with ten distinct new characters.

These sounds can be represented with characters forming a ten letter alphabet. We can use the current European alphabet type-fonts for these characters. Or we can make a new font which has new characters assigned to each alphabetic key on a standard keyboard.

Using existing European fonts, and keeping letter use to a minimum to avoid confusion with existing letters, we’d list our alphabet emoticon-style, sideways on each line of text, like the trite and tired little smiley face:

;-)

* I’ve already suggested one of these new characters, the upper case “O” for the soft vowel sounds and “h” and “r”.
* The long “e” sound, like in the word “need”, could be represented by parentheses, (), signifying a partially open mouth.
* The long “o” and “u” sounds could be represented by the lower case “o” signifying puckered lips.

Remembering these are sideways, or emoticon-style characters, we continue through the consonants:

* The “b”, “m”, and “p” sounds use the same mouth parts and positions. But we’ll use two similar characters for them: the vertical line character alone, |, for the “m” sound, and with the accent mark, thus `|, for the aspirated “b” and “p” sounds.
* The “ch”, “j”, “d”, “t”, “dh”, “th”, “l” and “n” sounds all get one character that signifies the upper teeth that show when they are pronounced. We’ll use the “3” character for “l” and “n” and the “accented 3” for aspirated the rest, thus: 3 and `3.

* The “kh”, “k”, “g”, “gh” and “ng” sounds are similar and use a partially open mouth. But these sounds are also aspired. So we’ll use the parentheses with an accent to signify the aspiration and to differentiate it from our character for the hard “e” sound, thus: `()
* For the “f” and “v” sounds we’ll use the “3” character to signify the teeth and the left parenthesis for the lower lip, thus: 3(
* We’ll use the brackets back to back, “][”, for the “s”, “z”, “sh” and “zh” sounds, to signify upper and lower teeth which work with the tongue to make these sounds.

So our new alphabet is:

O for the soft vowels and “r” and “h”
() for the long “e” sound
o for the long “o” and “u” sounds
| for “m”
`| for “b” and “p”
`3 for “ch”, “j”, “d”, “t”, “dh”, and “th” sounds
3 for “l” and “n” sounds
`() for “kh”, “k”, “g”, “gh” and “ng” sounds
3( for the “f” and “v” sounds
][ for the “s”, “z”, “sh” and “zh” sounds

Using our new ten character alphabet to spell my own last name, instead of the seven letters in “NIELSEN” we use five:

3()3][3

Obviously at first glance, this is not as easy to read as the system we’re used to, and reading right now. But with an understanding of this new system and a little practice, it could become easier to learn and use than our current alphabet/character systems.

What do you think?