Khmer script for English (ខ្មែរ ស្ក្រិប្ត ផួរ ឥងគ្លិឆ)

Southeast Asia is home to many different writing systems, all of which are pretty much descended from the Pallava script originating from southern Asia. After having a go at adopting Thai and Burmese to write English phonetically a while back, I shall now turn my attention to another elegant Southeast Asian script: Khmer.

Khmer script allows consonants to be placed under or around each other, a useful property for writing a language like English with potentially complex syllables like /stɹɛŋθs/, which can be easily rendered as ស្ត្រេង្ឋ្ស in this Khmer script adaptation. (It looks complicated at first, so I’ll get around to explaining it soon)

Tongyang Script for English (OLD) – a combination of the alphabetic principle of Korean hangul, the simple forms of Japanese katakana and the aesthetic look of Chinese hanzi

NOTE: this is an obsolete version of Tongyang Script. Click here to check out the latest version.

What is Tongyang Script?

Tongyang Script is an alternate writing system for English which is inspired by the major writing systems of East Asia.

Telugu script for English తేలుగు స్కరిప్త ఫొర ఇఙగ్లిశ

Shortly after adapting the Kannada script, I took a look at the closely related Telugu script. Both Kannada and Telugu scripts have a common ancestral origin, and have even been said to be typographical variants of the same script. Hence, this adaptation of Telugu is basically my adaptation for Kannada with each letter replaced with their Telugu equivalents.

Having said that, I now prefer using the Telugu adaptation as its vowel diacritics are more compact than Kannada’s. (For example, /noʊ/ in Kannada is ನೋ while Telugu is నో, much more compact indeed)

Kannada script for English ಕಾನ್ನಾದಾ ಸ್ಕರಿಪ್ತ ಫೋರ ಇಙಗ್ಲಿಶ

The ‘Look of Disapproval’ ಠ_ಠ is a popular emoticon on the Internet that also happens to use a letter from the Kannada script. As someone who enjoys reading and learning new things, I found myself reading about Kannada script. As I read more about it, I noticed that Kannada had a lot of letters, like the Thai and Burmese scripts I had adapted previously, and supported consonant clusters too. These are features that, in my view, made Kannada script especially suitable to adaptation for writing languages like English.

Burmese script for English ဗဲရ္မီဇ စ္ကရိပ္တ ဖိုရ ဧိငဂ္လိဍ

Note: This blog uses Unicode Myanmar script. If your default Burmese font is the non-Unicode ‘Zawgyi’, the Burmese text may not display as intended

After creating the Thai script adaptation, I began checking out other Brahmic scripts to learn how they work, and ended up learning a few to see if I could write English with them. Burmese script had a large inventory of letters and diacritics that are arranged differently depending on context, giving it a complex appearance. And because I like complex challenges, I decided that I had to learn Burmese script next.

(OLD) Thai script for English ทั่ ษริฎ ฟ็ร อิงดิๅช

NOTE: this is an outdated version of my Thai script adaptation, please check out the latest and greatest version instead.

After having used my adaptation of Hangul for a while, I wondered if other writing systems could be used to write English phonetically. I soon focused my attention on Thai script, with its large inventory of letters and diacritics.

Adaptation process

In the original Thai orthography, up to 6 letters were mapped to the same phoneme, but used to represent Thai tones.

(OLD) ‘Yongogul’, a Hangul adaptation for English (‘이옹오굮’, 어 한굮 야덮테썬 뽈 잉그낐)

This article is deprecated – for something much better and more true to the Hangul aesthetic, check out my latest attempt at Hangul for English!

Hangul is an alphabetic script widely used to write the Korean language, and was originally developed in 1446 by Joseon Dynasty ruler Sejong the Great and his ministers to improve literacy. As the only widely used script in the world to be based on linguistic features, I thought it would be cool to have a go at adapting it to write English.

The end result is a slightly hacky phonetic system that I call Yongogul (from the Korean words for ‘English language’ and ‘writing’ put together), which fully utilises all letters in standard Korean hangul. Nevertheless, it works pretty well and visually looks like actual written Korean.

Hangul adaptation for English, old version

Note: This is an old version of Hangul for English (aka Yongogul). For a more improved version, click here.

 

Short story excerpt sample text

This is a text from a short story I wrote while studying for high school final exams. I’ll be using this as a sample text to demonstrate a script or orthography’s appearance and features.

I had a strange dream that night.

In that dream, I found myself awakening, lying on soft green grass, in a fantasy 8-bit world surrounded by computers. The luminance of blinking modems and warm, cheerful chiptune music filled the air. Although everything looked blocky and square, it brought me back to those days. Of all the computers I saw, 1 of them was playing my favourite song! I jump and leap in joy over the sight. I then saw my house, and I said “Hi” to my best mates, who were waiting outside. We walked together, having a cheery chat about the computer game I was working on earlier.

“So what’s that cool game gonna be about, eh?” one of them asked.
“If you loved Mario, you’ll love this!” I said.
“Awesome!!! Can’t wait to see it!” Inside me the fire to keep me going became stronger.

We walked into a vivid sunset. I reminisced the memories of past summers, playing retro video games in the cool shade, even though the sun outside peaked at 42 degrees and melted everything else.

EBEO, a phonetic Latin orthography for English (E fenétik Látin órŧogrefi for Iŋgliś)

Note: This orthography has been deprecated. For something much better, check out Yet Another Alternate English Orthography (YAAEO).

English has a very complicated orthography that is inconsistent and troublesome, with its many silent letters such as ‘gh’ in the word ‘though’ (đò) and the ‘b’ in ‘debt’ (dét). And shockingly, some letters can be pronounced differently – ‘gh’ is also pronounced ‘f’ in words like ‘laugh’ (laf) and ‘cough’ (kof)! There’s surely a better way to write it phonetically, isn’t it?

Introducing EBEO (Even Better English Orthography), a revised Latin script orthography that utilises 15 additional diacritic-capped letters and 3 additional letters to expand the traditional 26 letters to cover all 43 English phonemes. Unlike traditional English orthography, each letter represents exactly 1 single English phoneme, and only that phoneme.

It’s not the prettiest orthography out there, but it makes a good starting point for describing any alternate scripts I choose to adapt. It can also be used for transcribing texts written phonetically in other alternate scripts for English, such as Shavian, Deseret and Quikscript.

Advantages:

• It uses simple diacritics and simple letter modifications (so you don’t have to learn too many weird letters like Þ)
• Supported by just about every professionally designed Latin script font
• Each letter represents a single English phoneme, avoiding the ambiguity that can be caused by using 2 or more letters (digraphs) to write a phoneme
  • Common English diphthongs are also written with 1 letter
• More compact than conventional English orthography
• Some common English words retain their spelling

Disadvantages:

• It uses diacritics (need to use a special keyboard layout)
• Many other common English words will have different spellings (kof kof)