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UnigrafNotation...Go to chart Definition  |  Unigraf  |  Unifon  |  Text Sample  |  vowel chart  |   Unigraf means "one mark" and implies one graphic shape [grapheme] per phoneme.The name is related to digraph - the practice of using two letters in combination to indicate a particular speech sound or phoneme. Unigraf avoids using digraphs by assigning new values to the upper case letters. Unifon means one phoneme per grapheme.  It is also a name used for a particular augmented alphabet with 17 new phonograms.  Both terms imply using one graphic shape for all phonemes including diphthongs.  This practice is controversial because it involves using hard to remember keyboard equivalents [e.g., Q for oi].  Even when the letter reference is clear such as E for [ee], text written with these conventions is surprisingly difficult to read quickly. The benefit of such notations is space efficiency although the keyboard equivalent with its extensive use of capital letters is not necessarily any more compact than a digraphic notation that sticks to lower case letters.  When a special font is substituted, reducing the width of the capital letters, text written in Unifon can take up 14% less space. Below Unigraf is compared to digraphic TO and digraphic New Spelling.   As=ace=aes Est=east=eest Is/Ys=ice=ies Ot=oat=oet Us=use=ues    Old Cape Cod in the east is green and nice in the summer but covered with ice in the winter.   .Old ^cAp ^cod in thu Est iz grEn and nIs in thu sumR but cuvRd with Is in thu wintR. The practice of using two letters to represent a single sound in this notational scheme for English was forced by the paucity of vowel graphemes in the Roman alphabet. Latin based languages can get by with only five pure vowels, germanic languages generally require 12 pure vowels. (see discussion) When two letter vowel digraphs are used in TO (traditional orthography), the second letter is usually a silent marker, e.g., toe. Marking is required because English never augmented their inventory of vowel graphemes: There are 12 pure vowels but only 5 vowel letters.    Unifon YnifOn   one letter per phoneme - 17 new letter shapes click on the chart to enlarge English orthography (TO) compounds the problem by using 3 of the same 5 letters to indicate diphthongs:  a=ei, o=ou, i=ai.  English (TO) does not always use single letters to indicate diphthongs but, according to Hanna (1966),  single letters are usually the most popular or most frequent way to represent these blends or glides. In IPA, the word 'toe' is transcribed [tou] /taw-uu/  IPA is not a good substitute for TO because the letter combination [ou] already has several interpretations. Thus a TO reader might not recognize [tout] as the correct spelling of [tote]. [out] would not immediately be associated with [oat].   Unigraf avoids the conflict by letting o=aw, q=ah, W=au, and O=owe:  toe=tO, tote=tOt, taught= tot, tot=tqt, tout=tWt. Toe  Tote  Flow Taught Thought - Flaw Frost Tot Tout That Cat TO to toat flo taut  thaut tall  flaw fraust tot tout that cat RES toe toet floe taut thaut taul flau fraust taat tout that cat Truespel tO tOt flO tot Tot tol flo frost tqt tWt xat kat Unigraf to' to't flo' tot thot tol flo frost to.t taut xa.t ca.t Chkt Spl tow towt flow tot thot tol/taol flao frost taat/tott taut thaet caet Spanglish tou fout flou tt ðt tl fl  frst tt taut ðaet kaet IPA tO tOt flO  tYt TYt tYl flY frYst tot tQt HAt kAt Shaw tO  tOt  flO txt  Txt  txl flx  frxt tot  tQt Dat kat Unifon tO  tOt  flO txt  Txt  txl flx  frxt tot  tQt Dat kat UF-keybd The first four notations for English can be read without a key.  SAMPLE TEXT in 4 notations .pol so x tol basketbol plAR N tOld hiz fqxR ubVt x mEtiG. [Unigraf] .pxl sx Dc txl basketbxl plAc and tOld hiz foDc ubqt Dc mEtiN.  [UF-KEYBOARD] .pxl sx Dc txl basketbxl plAc and tOld hiz foDc ubqt Dc mEtiN.  [UNIFON] Paol sao tha tol baesketbol pleyr and towld hizz faathr about tha miting. [Spanglish] She thought she taught the tot how to crawl and fall. Shi thot shi tot the tott/taat hau tu crol and fol. shE thot SE tot Du tqt hV tC crol and fol.  After the decline of the Roman empire, a lower case (or minuscule) script was developed.  Later it was combined with the upper case script to form the familiar dual redundant character set we use today. [g] and [G] both represent one sound /g/. The grapheme for the G sound includes several variant shapes [g, G, g....] [see Pitman] Unifon and Unigraf eliminate this redundancy, there is no case distinction in these notations. Instead having two graphic shapes refer to the same sound as in TO, Unigraf assigns the upper case shapes to free vowels (long vowels and diphthongs).  A=ei, E=i:  I=ai  O=ou  U=u:.  The Unigraf notation extends the TO practice of sometimes using single letters to represent diphthongs.  Example:  I sA nU bQ gO Wt.  In CKS notation this would be 'I sei nu boi go' aut. Unigraf can be downsize or upsize. [ I sA U Scd gO Wt mor. ] or [ I  Sa  U  sCD  Go  wT MOR. ] I say you should go out more.  Since every character on the keyboard is used in Unigraf, there is no advantage of one convention over the other.  Upsize capitalizes most consonants and therefore would have more shifted characters. Unigraf perhaps goes too far by assigning unigrafic replacements for diphthongs. [oi] is easier to remember than [Q] and [au] is a little easier to recall than [V]. tower=tVr Eliminating all digraphs, however, does make the script more compact and permits it to serve as the keyboard positions for phonemic fonts such as Shavian, Unifon, and IPA.

      Unigraf
A       B       C        D 
a  q  I qr Ir
e  R  A  er
i  E  Q  ir
q  o  O  or
c  C  U Cr Ur
u  @  V  Vr

dh-x, th=T
ch-C, ng=G
sh-S, zh=Z
@n-N, @l=L
dreded-dredD

.	The first two columns in the chart list the 12 pure vowels.  The next column lists 6 essential diphthongs.  Unigraf  converts these into single graphs or shapes.  R combinations, have unigrafs but they would not be used that much. Unigraf merges a and o and assigns [q] to this phoneme.

There has been one recent change to this chart:  The @ and a have been swapped.

This chart has the lazy U variation instead of V and J for /u:/ and /u/.  C and c are then available for Ch and aa.
 

Finding the best keyboard locations for the sound signs is not an easy task.  It is complicated by the fact that the traditional English writing system contains some significant code over laps.  For example, a generally means [ae] but is also used for [aa] in [are].  [oo] is also used for [aa] but its R combination is another sound [awe or ore]. Unifon does not have a phonogram for [aa] which means that [aar] is represented as [aer].  Unifon thus merges [air] and [are] or it merges [awr/or] and [aar].

Alphabetical Order Chart for the  Unigraf  nOtASN  alfubetikL ordR.

a  æ	A	o	b	C  ch	d	e	E   i:	R  'r	f
at  ash	ace  As	awe  o:	boot bVt	cek	dog	elbow	eel   i:l	urn  Rn	flag
g	h	i	I   ai	j dzh	k	l  L	m  M	n  N	G  ng
goat go't	horse	in   it	ice  Ys	jaw	kick  kik	leg  levL	mVntN	nose  nOz	inGg@t
q  a:	O  ou	c  u	V	Q oi	p	r   R	s	S  sh	t
odd  qd	oat  o't	hook  hJk	dVn   Vt	oil  boi	pipe pYp	roar  ror	snake	shake	tip
x  dh	T	u  '	U  u:	Y ju	v	w  W	y	Z  zh	z
the  x thy  xY	thug Tug thigh  TY	up up abut @but	ooze Uz shoot SUt	use  Yz fuse  fYz	valve valv	wave WIL hweil	year yir yard  yHd	azure aZUr	buzz buz zigzag

 Background Colors: yellow: 16 vowels and diphthongs.  brown background: 24 consonants
 Unigraf has more than 40 phonograms.  It could be less, a & u could be merged.  aa & o are already merged.
 white background: key words which serve as acrophonic letter names as in ABLE, BAKER, CHARLIE…

Text colors: blue: Unigraf spelling  red: silent letters green: an unused alternative spelling.
The sound in odd is imperceptibly shorter than the sound in art and alm. Since they are usually allophones
they are merged in Unigraf. The continental sound value for a is /ah/  the same as the English one for o, also /ah/.

Wat du yU thiGk iz thu ansR tu Du kwesCN
There would also be a IPA version of Unigraf.
hV dU Y spel "are"  or?

Unigraf works but it may go too far in eliminating all digraphs mauntin is easier to decipher than mVntN
Hi twk tha cwk bwk bai tha pul.
hE tck Du kck bck bI Du pCL.
hE tCk Dc  fI vs flY

The Objection to Digraphs (Henry Sweet)
Digraphs violate the principle of denoting every simple sound by a simple sign

If then we exclude new letters as impracticable, we are obliged to fall back on digraphs, which are already largely employed in English and most other languages. The obvious objection to them is that they violate the natural principle of denoting every simple sound by a simple sign.

In a rational alphabet such as [Bell's] Visible Speech, this principle is carried out consistently, the consonants of she and the, for instance, being denoted by single letters just as that of see is. But with the Roman alphabet, which does not claim to be rational and consistent, this principle cannot be carried out: our business is to make the best use of the materials we have, and if we can make a convenient and unambiguous symbol for a simple sound by joining two letters together, we are clearly right in doing so. In fact we may consider the h in sh and th simply as a diacritic written for convenience on a line with the letter it modifies. It would be possible to write and print the h above the s and t, or to make some kind of tag, but the expense of casting new types and trouble of writing the new letters would not be repaid by any gain of ease or certainty in reading.
 

An alternate alphabetical order for the English vowels
There are 16 vowel sounds that are associated with the 5 Latin vowel letters
 

A - 3	E - 2	I - 2	O - 4	U - 5	Notation
a   au   ai  a:	e   ei	i    i:	o   o:  o'  oi	u  u:  iu   u'/a'  u'r	Nu Folik
@   W   Y   V	e   A	i   E	q   o   O   Q	c   C   U   u/a   R	Unigr@f
@   W   Y  H	e   A	i   E	q   o   O   Q	j   V   U   u/@   R	Unigraf
a.  au  ai  a	e.  e	i.  i	o.  o  o'  oi	u.  u   iu   u'/a'  'r	Chkt Spl
æ  au  ai  a:	e  ei	i  i:	. :  ou :i	u   u:   ju  ^/   3:	IPA
A Q  F  y	e  E	i I	o  Y  O  q	U  V  M  ua  D	Shaw

The two leading sounds that English speakers associate with the letter A are not found in Latin or in any
other southern European alphabet.   In TO, the Anglo Saxon ash [æ] is one association, /ei/ is the other.
 
 

RATIONALE for grapheme selection When developing a new code, it is usually important to make it be easy to learn and remember. The particular graphemes for Unigraf were selected because they would be relatatively easy to read and remember for TO readers.  The unigrafic notation for the Shaw alphabet uses E for /ei/ and I for /i:/.  These options were rejected in favor of A and E which provide a closer match to familiar TO spelling.  Unigr@f does use i for schwi, the unstressed version of /i:/ as in veri. æ the original Anglo Saxon ash, also adopted by IPA for a sound between a: and e. While the æ    ligature is available in Latin -1, the @ "at" sign would have to be used in ASCII. q for ah, because it looks like a script [a] and yet is different enough to also substitute for o.    palm=pqm,  car=kqr,  pot=pqt,  smart=smqrt. A E Y O U because these are commonly used in TO  (Apex, mE, mY, OK, Obey, Uz) It is still more difficult than one might suspect to read "SE selz sE Selz dWn bY x sA SYd." Q looks like a ligature of O and I [oil = Ql or QL] a  for schwa as in ago and sofa. M N R L refer to the syllabic mnrl:  u'm, u'n, er, le:  m@ximM, motion/mOSN, little/ litL, her/hR, bird/bRd c and C are lazyU's (U rotated 90 degrees)  c=[put wood]/ pct wcd, C=[ooze move]/ Cz mCv [Could we take a pure tour on a cruise ship] = kcd wE tAk a pUr tCr on a krCz Sip j and V could also be used                           kJd wE tAk @ pUr tUr on @ krVz Sip                                                                     Cuid we taik a piur toor aun a' crooz ship.  Wr pRk wuz (w@z) a luv bOt krUz. Our perk was a' luv boat kruiz (RES) X is a lazy T (T rotated 45 degrees) x=ð, an eth without the loop  the/x, then/xen, that/xat. W for au perhaps because when rotated it looks like the beak and ears of an owl (aul).    "Get out he shouted." [get Wt hE SWtad.]  Mnemonics: Q looks like the merger of O and I.  W is a rotated M, the original pictogram for an owl (beak and ears). V, used for a: when it is necessary to distinguish it from q (short ah), is a rotated A form. Also looks like a bird on wing, Spanish alas (wings) avian (bird). other sample sentences

American Heritage Dictionary Pronunciation Guide at, áte, cär; ten, éve, is, íce; gó, look, tool; oil, out; up, fur;  for unstressed vowels, as à in àgo,  u in focu's; ' as in Latin (lat'n);  chin;  she;  as in ring (ñ)

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