Romic alphabet

The Romic Alphabet, sometimes callled the Romic Reform, is a system for writing down sounds proposed by Henry Sweet. It was made from Ellis's Palaeotype alphabet and English Phonotypic Alphabet, and the International Phonetic Alphabet is made from the Romic Alphabet.. In the Romic Alphabet every speech sound had a letter, and every letter was a single sound. There were no big letters; there were letters derived from small capitals, but these were their own letters.

There were two types, Broad Romic and Narrow Romic. Narrow Romic utilized italics to mark small differences of speech, but Broad Romic was less specific.

Tables

Consonants

The consonants were organized into a table to show how and where in the mouth the sound was made :[1]

  Lab. Lab-D. Dent. Alv. Palv. Pal. Velar Labv. Phar. Glot.
Nasal mh  ·  m     nh  ·  n   ñh  ·  ñ ŋh  ·  ŋ      
Plosive p  ·  b     t  ·  d   c  ·  ɟ k  ·  g     (ʼ)?
Fric./approx. ϕ  ·  β f  ·  v þ  ·  ð s  ·  z ʃ  ·  ʒ ç  ·  j x  ·  ᵹ ʍ  ·  w ɹh  ·  ɹ h  · 
Lateral       lh  ·  l   λh  ·  λ ꞁh  ·  ꞁ      
Rhotic       rh  ·  r          

Vowels

The vowels were organized into this table.[1]

Tense vowels
(italicize for lax vowels)
Front Central Back
High i · y ï · ü ʌ · u
Mid e · ə ë · ö a[2]· o
Low æ · œ ä · ɔ̈ ɐ · ɔ

In "wide" vowels, the tongue is described as relaxed and flattened; in "narrow", it is tense. This is the same as calling vowels lax and tense. Lax vowels are italicized. Other than the back unrounded vowels and ⟨ə⟩ being the symbol for IPA [ø], Sweet's vowels is almost the same as the IPA.

Sweet also said the sounds were:

⟨i⟩: French si, ⟨e⟩: German See, Scots say, ⟨æ⟩: Swedish lära
⟨y⟩: French lune, ⟨ə⟩: French peu, ⟨œ⟩: Swedish för
⟨ï⟩: Welsh un, ⟨ë⟩: German Gabe, ⟨ä⟩: English sir
⟨ü⟩: Norwegian hus, ...
⟨ʌ⟩: Gaelic laogh,[3] ⟨a⟩: English but,[2] ⟨ɐ⟩: Cockney park
⟨u⟩: French sou, Scots book, ⟨o⟩: German so, ⟨ɔ⟩: English law

The lax vowels are:

⟨i⟩: English bit, ⟨e⟩: English men, ⟨æ⟩: English man
⟨ə⟩: French peur, ⟨œ⟩: (German götter is œ but with a rounder mouth)
⟨ï⟩: English pretty, ⟨ë⟩: start of English eye, better, ⟨ɑ̈⟩: start of English how, Portuguese cama
⟨ü⟩: English value, ⟨ő⟩: French homme
⟨ɑ⟩: English father, ⟨ɒ⟩: Swedish mat
⟨u⟩: English put, ⟨o⟩: German stock, English boy, ⟨ɔ⟩: English not

History

The 1877 version of the Romic alphabet was a lot different from the 1892 version. It was very similar to Ellis's Paleotype.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Henry Sweet, A Primer of Phonetics, Clarendon Press, 1892.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 In broad transcription, Sweet used Template:Anglebracket for French patte and Northern German mann and, as long Template:Anglebracket, for English father and German name, while he used Template:Anglebracket for English come, which has the same vowel as but (see next symbol) – essentially the same as the usage of these letters in the IPA. However, these transcriptions may be remnants of his earlier sound values for these letters – see #History.
  3. ↑ This is indeed a high back unrounded vowel [ɯː] in Scottish Gaelic.

Bibliography

  • Sweet, Henry. (1877) A Handbooks of Phonnetics, Including a Popular Exposition of the Principles of Spelling Reform, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (on archive.org)

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