Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU These are sometimes termed true alphabets, but non-alphabetic writing systems like syllabaries can be phonemic as well. An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate Syllables which make up Words A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional

Languages with a good grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence include Bulgarian, Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Mongolian in Cyrillic, Korean, Romanian, Sanskrit, Turkish, Croatian, Serbian and Spanish. Bulgarian (български език IPA: ɛzˈik is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group Basque ( native name: euskara) is the Language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain Estonian (; ˈeːsti ˈkeːl is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1 Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside The Georgian alphabet (ქართული დამწერლობა is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. Macedonian () is the official Language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. The Mongolian language (mn [[ImageMonggol kelesvg 17px]] Mongɣol kele, Cyrillic: Монгол хэл Mongol khel) is the best-known member of The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Turkish ( tr Türkçe IPA) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Serbian (sr-Cyrl српски језик sr-Latn ''srpski jezik'' is a South Slavic language, Most constructed languages such as Esperanto and Lojban have phonemic orthographies. A constructed or artificial language known colloquially or informally as a conlang is a Language whose Phonology, Grammar is by far the most widely spoken constructed International auxiliary language in the world Lojban (ˈloʒban is a constructed, syntactically unambiguous human language based on Predicate logic.

As dialects of the English language vary significantly, it would be difficult to create a phonemic orthography that encompassed all of them. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States However, it is fairly easy to create one based on a standard accent such as Received Pronunciation. A standard language (also standard dialect, standardized dialect, or standardised dialect) is a particular variety of a Language that Received Pronunciation ( RP) is a form of Pronunciation of the English language (specifically British English) which has long been perceived as This would, however, exclude certain sound differences found in other accents, such as the bad-lad split in Australian English. Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a Language maximizing the acoustic distance between its Phonemes presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation Australian English ( AuE, AusE, en-AU) is the form of the English language used in Australia. With time, pronunciations change and spellings become out of date, as has happened to English and French. In Historical linguistics, phonological change is any Sound change which alters the number or distribution of Phonemes in a language French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people In order to maintain a phonemic orthography such a system would need periodic updating, as has been attempted by various language regulators and proposed by other spelling reformers. This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate often officially sanctioned or mandated change to spelling takes place

Phonemic orthography in a language is affected by the borrowing of loanwords from another written in the same alphabet but having different sound-to-spelling conventions. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation If the original spelling and pronunciation are both kept, then the spelling is "irregular": for example, fajita is pronounced as [fəˈhiɾə] to reflect the Spanish pronunciation of [faˈxita] rather than as [fəˈdʒaɪɾə] as the spelling would suggest under normal English spelling rules. Phonemicity may be preserved by nativizing the loanword's pronunciation as with the Russian word шофёр (from French chauffeur) which is pronounced [ʂɐˈfʲor] in accordance with the normal rules of Russian vowel reduction. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages See also Russian phonology Vowel reduction in Russian differs in the Standard language and in Dialects Several ways of reduction Spelling pronunciation is another common phenomenon, such as the word Iraq which many English speakers pronounce with a /k/ rather than a voiceless uvular plosive. A spelling pronunciation is a Pronunciation that instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers is a rendering in sound of the word's The voiceless uvular plosive is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages It is pronounced like, except that the tongue makes contact not Nativizing the spelling of loanwords is also common; for example, uísque is the Portuguese spelling of whisky, itself a respelling of Scots Gaelic uisge). A pronunciation spelling of a word is a spelling intentionally different from the standard spelling used to emphasize a particular pronunciation of the word Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Scottish Gaelic ( Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages.

Difference from phonetic transcription

Methods for phonetic transcription such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) aim to describe pronunciation in a standard form. Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human Language. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic They are often used to solve ambiguities in the spelling of written language. They may also be used to write languages with no previous written form. Systems like IPA can be used for phonemic representation or for showing more detailed phonetic information (see Narrow vs. broad transcription). Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human Language.

Phonemic orthographies are different from phonetic transcription; whereas in a phonemic orthography, allophones will usually be represented by the same grapheme, a purely phonetic script would demand that phonetically distinct allophones be distinguished. In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. To take an example from American English: the /t/ sound in the words "table" and "cat" would, in a phonemic orthography, be written with the same character; however, a strictly phonetic script would make a distinction between the aspirated "t" in "table", the flap in "butter", the unaspirated "t" in "stop" and the glottalized "t" in "cat" (not all these allophones exist in all English dialects). Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed The alveolar tap or flap is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the Glottis during the articulation of another sound A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of In other words, the sound that most English speakers think of as /t/ is really a group of sounds, all pronounced slightly differently depending on where they occur in a word. A perfect phonemic orthography has one letter per group of sounds (phoneme), with different letters only where the sounds distinguish words (so "bed" is spelled differently from "bet").

A narrow phonetic transcription represents phones, the atomic sounds humans are capable of producing, many of which will often be grouped together as a single phoneme in any given natural language, though the groupings vary across languages. Within Phonetics, a phone is a speech sound or gesture considered a physical event without regard to its place in the Phonology of a Language English, for example, does not distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, but other languages, like Bengali and Hindi, do. Hindi ( Devanāgarī: hi [[wiktहिन्दी हिन्दी]] or hi [[wiktहिंदी हिंदी]] IAST:, IPA:) is