Accents and the Shavian alphabet

When people discover the Shavian alphabet for the first time, it often brings a sense of discovery of their own accent. Pronunciations taken for granted turn out to be one of many possible “correct” pronunciations used by native English-speakers around the globe.

For the most part, this diversity is most evident in the vowels of English. In British Received Pronunciation (RP) and many similar accents such as the Australian accent there are basically 12 vowels distinguishable by most speakers (excluding diphthongs) while in General American (GA) there are 11 vowels; General American lacks the short-O sound, /ɒ/, of other accents.

It’s also notable that North American Englishes vary widely from General American. Some accents in the north-east of the US retain the short-O sound. In the western US, all of the vowels in LOT-CLOTH-THOUGHT are all pronounced the same. Different parts of North America have different, and inconsistent, vowel mergers. Outside North America, the number of vowels is a little more consistent, even if the pronunciation of each individual vowel can vary. An Australian and and English person may differ in their pronunication of the vowel in STRUT (UK /ʌ/, Aus /ɐ/), but its placement in words is reasonably consistent and both phonemes are represented by Shavian 𐑳 in 𐑕𐑑𐑮𐑳𐑑.

The standard Shavian spelling adopted in Androcles and the Lion, and developed further by Kingsley Read, is necessarily a compromise. It retains the same number of vowels as British RP (and many other Commonwealth Englishes) and, in return, retains the rhoticity (R-pronouncing) of most North American, Irish and Scottish Englishes. The word ARE is 𐑸, not 𐑭, in Shavian, regardless of whether you pronounce the final R or not.

The concept of Lexical Sets, developed by John C Wells, offers an elegant way to understand the vowels common across the accents of English, and I have added a column to show the Shavian vowel that corresponds to each lexical set in the Androcles standard.