Hwayih Woen (华裔文)

Hwayih Woen is a hybrid writing system created by Z.R. "Sequoyah" Zhāng (张子睿) that uses Chinese characters available in Unicode to write the English language, guaranteeing universal availability not only via pen and paper, but also on all digital consumer technology without needing to go beyond what is natively available on any given device.

Hwayih Woen's orthographic architecture, although completely based on Chinese characters, takes enormous inspiration from the Japanese writing system, particularly with regards to the procedure of retrofitting a non-Sinitic language into characters. Although the genesis of Hwayih Woen's creation arose from a need to create functional language pedagogy tools (both from Chinese to English and English to Chinese), in a greater sense, the purpose of Hwayih Woen is to provide the world-wide Chinese diaspora—particularly those overseas Chinese born and raised in the Anglosphere—a language community that is uniquely their own, while still preserving a tangible link back to their ancestral languages, similar to what Yiddish did for the Ashkenazi Jews or Ladino for the Sephardic Jews during the centuries of exile prior to the establishment of the State of Israel after World War II.

Structurally speaking, Hwayih Woen subdivides into two forms: the Junior Script and the Senior Script.

Like the Latin alphabet, the Junior Script also subdivides into majuscule and minuscule forms. In the context of the former, the Junior Script uses 48 archaic characters to represent all sounds of the English language on a 1:1 sound-to-symbol ratio (using the General American accent as a basis). In the context of the latter, the Junior Script instead barrows largely from the Bopomofo (注音符号) system, using Japanese kana diacritics to modify symbols when there exists no direct overlap between English and Mandarin phonology, with some minor repurposing of Japanese Katakana.

By contrast, the Senior Script uses standard Chinese logograms on the basis of their meaning, which is then in turn rendered into their corresponding English word, in tandem with the Junior Script phonetic characters—roughly similar to how Japanese handles Kanji.

It is important to note that the minuscule forms of the Junior Script's phonetic character set, unlike their majuscule counterparts, are only ever used for providing ruby annotations for logographic Chinese characters to disambiguate pronunciation—similar to how Furigana in Japanese disambiguates Kanji in didactic texts.

The name Hwayih Woen, when written in characters, renders as: 华裔文. When using the Latin alphabet, the writing system uses the Gwoyeu Romatzyh transliteration standard.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabetic and logographic
Direction of writing: horizontally from left to write when using simplified characters, or in vertical columns from right to left and top to bottom when using traditional.
Used to write: English
In the context of Junior Script, Hwayih Woen uses interpuncts (・) to indicate word divisions. When word divisions are already clear due to other punctuation symbols or case markers, the interpuct is omitted.
Hwayih Woen permits—but does not obligate—the use of punctuation to disambiguate parts of speech. These optional punctuation marks are:
- Nouns ～
- Adjectives ＾
- Verbs ＊
- Adverbs 、
- Auxiliary Verbs −
Although modern English has long since lost case inflection, Hwayih Woen permits — but does not obligate — the use of characters to indicate case function. The optional case indicating characters are:
- Nominative 劜
- Genitive 丿
- Dative 亗
- Accusative 才
- Instrumental 亍
Pedagogy: Complete reference and authoritative learning materials for Hwayih Woen can be found at www.hwayihwoen.com

Hwayih Woen (Junior Script)

Download an alphabet chart for Hwayih Woen (Excel)

Sample text (Junior Script)

仴旯・奤襾汙閁佀笝丿茇籴襾仒拶劜児−茇或笝＊佱邚籴＾嵓笝迚・籴偘屲泐＾佀笝・迚佀玍笝佀涾籴～亗嵓笝迚・邚溰涾卅～亗。芔盃劜児・佀笝迚岙迚＊屲佀濇・邚籴拶佀笝亍嵓笝迚・偘仴笝唼佀笝卅亍嵓笝迚・唼歮迚-嵓偘涾＊涾或迚拶・屲嚜笝・嚜笝嚜芔荋亗佀笝・嚜・卅苩佀邚佀夳～亍嚜甶・茇邚嚜芔荋奤歮迚～。

Sample text (Senior Script)

都人类丿乃着拶劜喺生䇱自由与平等内尊严性亗与权利亗。他们劜喺赋予坔根理性亍与良心亍与应该行涾向拶一其他的亗内个精神亍之兄弟会。

Sample text (Senior Script - with Ruby characters)

都ㄛﾟㄌ人ㄏㄧﾟㄨ类ㄇイㄋ丿乃ㄅㄧ着ㄧﾟミ拶劜喺ㄦ生ㄅヰ笝自由ㄈㄖㄧ与ㄚﾟㄋㄉ平ㄧ等ㄎㄨﾟㄌﾟ内イㄋ尊ㄉイㄍ严ㄋイ性ㄊㄧ亗与ㄚﾟㄋㄉ权利ㄖㄞㄊ卅亗。他们ㄓﾞㄟ劜喺ㄦ赋イㄋ予ㄉㄠﾟ坔ㄉ跟ㄨﾟイㄙﾟ理ㄖㄧ性ㄗﾟイㄋ亍与ㄚﾟㄋㄉ良ㄎㄛﾟㄋ心ㄕイㄋㄙ亍与ㄚﾟㄋㄉ应该ㄕㄩﾟㄉ行ㄚﾟㄎ涾向ㄊヰㄉ拶一ㄨﾟㄜﾟㄋﾟ其ㄜﾟ他ㄋㄜﾟ的ㄓﾞㄦﾟ亗内イㄋ个ㄜﾟ精ㄙㄆイ神ㄖイㄊﾟ亍之ㄜﾟㄈﾞ兄ㄅㄖㄜﾟ弟ㄓﾞㄦﾟ会ㄏㄩﾟㄉ。

Transliteration

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)

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