Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
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Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet was Benjamin Franklin's proposal for a spelling reform of the English language. It used many of the same letters, but changed some of them and what sounds they represented. It was one of the earliest proposed spelling reforms to the English language.
Long vowels were represented by double letters e.g. aa = [aː] and ii = [iː]. Only one accented letter appears in the alphabet: ê, which represents the a in mane and lane. Consonant combinations are used to represent such sounds as the ch in chew and the j in jaw.
Franklin also created an [oa] ligature, to represent the sound of [ɔ] in IPA, also known as an open-mid back rounded vowel.
The most influential of Franklin's six new characters appears to have been the letter for "ng". This shape was incorporated into IPA as ŋ.
[edit] External links
- Page on Omniglot
- A history of Franklin's alphabet
- Franklin writing about his alphabet
- Six New Letters for a Renovated Alphabet, Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh, a talk given at the Friends of St Bride conference, Temporary Type, London, 10–12 October 2005
