The Standard Alphabet is a

Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses Letter (alphabet), letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this gr ...

developed by

Karl Richard Lepsius Karl Richard Lepsius (; 23 December 181010 July 1884) was a German people, Prussian Egyptology, Egyptologist, Linguistics, linguist and modern archaeology, modern archaeologist. He is widely known for his opus magnum ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten ...

. Lepsius initially used it to transcribe

Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...

in his ''

Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien'' (literally "Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia", where "Ethiopia" was then a synonym for Nubia) is a monumental work by Karl Richard Lepsius published in Prussia in 1849–1859. Like the French ''Descrip ...

'' and extended it to write

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

, published in 1853, 1854 and 1855, and in a revised edition in 1863. The alphabet was comprehensive but was not used much as it contained a lot of

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

marks and was difficult to read and typeset at that time. It was, however, influential in later projects such as Ellis's Paleotype, and diacritics such as the acute accent for palatalization, under-dot for

retroflex A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...

, underline for Arabic emphatics, and the click letters continue in modern use.

Vowels

Vowel length is indicated by a macron (''ā'') or a

breve A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...

(''ă'') for long and short vowels, respectively.

Open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue ...

s are marked by a line under the letter (''e̱''), while a dot below the letter makes it a

close vowel A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately as close as possible to ...

(''ẹ''). Rounded

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s are written with an umlaut (''ö'' and ''ü'' ), either on top or below, when the space above the letter is needed for vowel length marks (thus ''ṳ̄'' or ''ṳ̆''). Unrounded back vowels are indicated by a 'hook' (

ogonek The tail or ( ; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American langu ...

) on ''ę'' or ''į''.

Central vowel A central vowel, formerly also known as a mixed vowel, is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately halfway between a front vowel ...

s may be written as one of these series, or as reduced vowels. As in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

, nasal vowels get a

tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...

(''ã''). A small circle below a letter is used to mark both the schwa (''e̥'', also ''ḁ'' etc. for other reduced vowels) and

syllabic consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''awful'', respectively. To represe ...

s (''r̥'' or ''l̥'', for instance).

Diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s do not receive any special marking, they are simply juxtaposed (''ai'' ). A short sign can be used to distinguish which element of the diphthong is the on- or off-glide (''uĭ, ŭi''). Vowels in hiatus can be indicated with a diaeresis when necessary (''aï'' ). Other vowels are ''a'' with a subscript ''e'' for ; ''a'' with a subscript ''o'' for , and ''o̩'' for or maybe . The English syllabic is ''ṙ̥''. Word stress is marked with an acute accent on a long vowel (''á'') and with a grave accent on a short vowel (''à''). Klemp (p. 56*–58*) interprets the values of Lepsius's vowels as follows:

Consonants

The Lepsius letters without predictable diacritics are as follows: Other consonant sounds may be derived from these. For example, palatal and palatalized consonants are marked with an acute accent: ''ḱ'' , ''ǵ'' , ''ń'' , ''χ́'' , ''š́'' , ''γ́'' , ''ž́'' , ''ĺ'' , ''‘ĺ'' , ''ı́'' , ''ṕ'' , etc. These can also be written ''ky, py'' etc. Labialized velars are written with an over-dot: ''ġ'' , ''n̈'' , etc. (A dot on a non-velar letter, as in ''ṅ'' and ''ṙ'' in the table above, indicates a

guttural Guttural Phone (phonetics), speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise t ...

articulation.) Retroflex consonants are marked with an under-dot: ''ṭ'' , ''ḍ'' , ''ṇ'' , ''ṣ̌'' , ''ẓ̌'' , ''ṛ'' , ''ḷ'' , and ''ı̣'' . The Semitic "emphatic" consonants are marked with an underline: ''ṯ'' , ''ḏ'' , ''s̱'' , ''ẕ'' , ''δ̱'' , ''ḻ'' . Aspiration is typically marked by ''h'': ''kh'' , but a turned apostrophe (Greek ''

spiritus asper In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( or ; ) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even afte ...

'') is also used: ''k̒'' , ''ģ'' . Either convention may be used for voiceless sonorants: ''m̒'' , ''‘l'' .With the apostrophe placed ''before'' the ''l'', presumably to avoid stacking it too high to print Affricates are generally written as sequences, e.g. ''tš'' for . But the single letters ''č'' , ''ǰ'' , ''c̀'' , ''j̀'' , ''ț'' , and ''d̦'' are also used. Implosives are written with a macron: ''b̄'' , ''d̄'' , ''j̄'' , ''ḡ'' . As with vowels, long (geminate) consonants may also be written with a macron, so this transcription can be ambiguous. Lepsius typically characterized

ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a Airstream mechanism#Glottalic initiation, glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with Aspirat ...

s as tenuis, as they are completely unaspirated, and wrote them with the Greek ''

spiritus lenis The smooth breathing (; ''psilí''; ) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word. Some authorities have interpreted it as repre ...

'' (''p’'', ''t’'', etc.), which may be the source of the modern convention for ejectives in the IPA. However, when his sources made it clear that there was some activity in the throat, he transcribed them as emphatics. When transcribing consonant letters which are pronounced the same but are etymologically distinct, as in Armenian, diacritics from the original alphabet or roman transliteration may be carried over. Similarly, unique sounds such as Czech ''ř'' may be carried over into Lepsius transcription. Lepsius used a diacritic ''r'' under ''t᷊'' and ''d᷊'' for some poorly described sounds in Dravidian languages. Standard capitalization is used. For example, when written in all caps, ''γ'' becomes ''Γ'' (as in ''AFΓAN'' "Afghan").

Tones

Tones are marked with acute and grave accents (backticks) to the right and near the top or the bottom of the corresponding vowel. The diacritic may be underlined for a lower pitch, distinguishing in all eight possible tones. Tone is not written directly, but rather needs to be established separately for each language. For example, the acute accent may indicate a high tone, a rising tone, or, in the case of Chinese, any tone called "rising" (上) for historical reasons. Low rising and falling tones can be distinguished from high rising and falling tones by underlining the accent mark: . The underline also transcribes the Chinese ''yin'' tones, under the mistaken impression that these tones are actually lower. Two additional tone marks, without any defined phonetic value, are used for Chinese: "level" maˏ (平) and checked maˎ (入); these may also be underlined.

References

* Lepsius, C. R. 1849. ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten un Äthiopien''
Full text at Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum (MDZ)
* Lepsius, C. R. 1854. ''Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet: Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in europäische Buchstaben''. Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hert
Full text available on Google Books
* Lepsius, C. R. 1855. ''Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet: Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in europäische Buchstaben''. Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz
Full text available on Internet Archive
* Lepsius, C. R. 1863. ''Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters'', 2nd rev. edn. Williams & Norgate, London
Full text available on Google BooksFull text available on Internet Archive
* Lepsius, C. R. 1863. ''Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, 2nd rev. edn. London 1863'', modern reprint with introduction by J. Alan Kemp, John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam 1981
Preview available on Google Books
* Faulmann, Carl 1880. ''Das Buch der Schrift enthaltend die Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und aller Völker des Erdkreises'', 2nd rev. edn. Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Wien
Full text available on Internet Archive
* Köhler, O., Ladefoged, P., J. Snyman, Traill, A., R. Vossen: ''The Symbols for Clicks''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Standard Alphabet By Lepsius Latin alphabets Writing systems of Africa Phonetic alphabets Writing systems introduced in the 1840s German inventions 1849 introductions Egyptology

Vowels

Consonants

Tones

See also

References