SaypYu (originally SaypU) ( ; acronym for "Spell As You Pronounce Universal alphabet project") is an approximative

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

of 24 alphabet letters to spell languages, including

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

. The spelling system was developed by the

Syrian Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...

banker Jaber George Jabbour to write English more phonetically. The 24-letter alphabet includes 23 Roman alphabet letters (after excluding "c", "q", and "x") and the addition of a 24th letter, the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation ** International Phonetic Association, the organization behind the alphabet * India pale ale, a style of beer * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA ...

letter " ɘ" (close-mid central unrounded vowel) to play the role of schwa. The letter represents the initial sound of "ago" or "about". The SaypYu project promotes "the simple universal phonetic alphabet" which is intended to facilitate a quick and convenient

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

for verbally penetrating foreign situations and pronouncing unusual place-names reasonably quickly and accurately. The official website of the project has published thousands of words in amended phonetic system inviting others to make suggestions, additions, and corrections as a collaborative project. SaypYu is not intended to replace, but to complement the highly sophisticated and elegant

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 ...

(IPA) which is used in professional dictionaries. It currently borrows the " ɘ" directly from the IPA, but possibly this may be replaced by a * or @ for less sophisticated systems. The system while based on phonetic alphabet, represents phonemics instead. Enough similar sounds, are written identically, as the th-sounds found in english are both spelt with th while IPA uses /θ/ in "thin" and /ð/ in this.

Origin

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' Education Editor (Greg Hurst) reported in the article "Learning a new language? It's as easy as ABK!": The project was launched on 10 December 2012 by Jaber George Jabbour, Director of the Logos Capital Ltd. (UK), who is of Syrian origin, widely travelled and has encountered difficulty pronouncing words spelt in conventional Roman text such as ''Leicester Square'' which becomes, in SaypYu: ''Lestɘr skwer''. Its declared purpose is to make pronunciation easier and foster international understanding. According to

BBC Learning English BBC Learning English is a department of the BBC World Service devoted to English language teaching. The service provides free resources and activities for teachers and students, primarily through its website. It also produces radio programmes w ...

project report by Karen Zarindast "Spell as you Pronounce" in the section ''Words in the News'':

SaypYu Alphabet letters

IPA to SaypYu Map

is spelled as simply tsh.

Criticism

The project was aired on Canadian national radio. The presenter Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed: *Dennis Baron, professor of English and linguistics at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

, noted that a common linguistic understanding existed between the American colonists and the British authorities in 1773, and there have been numerous civil wars, such as that of 1861–1865, which have tended to be resolved not by talking, but by military force. He acknowledged the failure of

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

to gain adherents, but speculated that may be because of a cultural deficiency—while SaypYu sought to preserve existing linguistic cultures, much of English culture is bound up with its quirky spelling—in short, it needs to be expanded to be useful. He noted that a German president has suggested English should be an EU utility language. *Henry Hitchings, a British journalist and the author of ''The Language Wars: A History of Proper English'', observed that there were numerous similar proposals, and that the IPA had identified 107 distinct sounds plus diacritics. Accordingly, he doubted that SaypYu could currently cope with tonal languages, but accepted that this may be addressed if the system develops. The limitations were too great for many languages. Many inventors of language and spelling systems were culturally detached from the reality of the incredible complexity and subtlety of human linguistic interaction.

References

External links