Phonogic alphabet Phonogic

The Phonogic alphabet is the creation of Charles Smith, a recent graduate of the the University of Minnesota. Charles has been interested in inventing alphabets since his senior year at high school and has invented a variety of alphabets since then. He started working on Phonogic in 2002 with a view to producing an alternative alphabet for English. The name is a combination of the words phonetic and logical and is pronounced [fəˈnɑʤɪk].

Phonogic started as an alphabet meant to replace the Latin alphabet as a way to write English, as its current alphabet is highly unsuited to the task. Then, after an occurrence in a Finnish language class at the University, Charles saw a conflict between the orthographies of Finnish and Spanish, where the sequence represents [l:] in Finnish but [j] in Spanish. This inspired further research into how each letter and letter sequence of the Latin alphabet is used in the languages that use the Latin alphabet. Phonogic then became an alphabet meant to replace the Latin alphabet for any language whose orthography uses it, as well as for transcription of non-Latin scripts and perhaps even for use in phonetics in the same way the International Phonetic Alphabet is used.

Some letters were inspired by various scripts from across the world, while others simply resemble characters from others scripts by coincidence. Not only are consonants and vowels represented in Phonogic, but features like nasality, palatalization, aspiration, and ejective are represented by individual letters on analogy with various scripts of the world (e.g. Lakota, Urdu and Russian). In the future other features will be added, including tones to represent the world's tonal languages, including Asian, African and Native American languages.

Phonogic alphabet

The Phonogic alphabet - vowels and consonants

The Phonogic alphabet - other letters, punctuation and numerals

Alphabetical order of the Phongic alphabet for English

Notes

Sample text (American English)

Sample text in the Phonogic alphabet

'Translation'

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Download a font for Phonogic (TrueType 128K)

If you have any questions about the Phonogic Script, you can contact Charles at: Roasted_Beanie@msn.com

Also by Charles Smith

Chartograph

Constructed scripts for: Ainu | Arabic | Chinese languages | Dutch | English | Hawaiian | Hungarian | Japanese | Korean | Lingala | Malay & Indonesian | Persian | Tagalog / Filipino | Russian | Sanskrit | Spanish | Taino | Turkish | Vietnamese | Welsh | Other natural languages | Colour-based scripts | Tactile scripts | Phonetic/universal scripts | Constructed scripts for constructed languages | Adaptations of existing alphabets | Fictional alphabets | Magical alphabets | A-Z index | How to submit a constructed script

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